
Failing the startup game at Unbabel - andreasgonewild
http://esoteric-code.blogspot.com/2014/09/failing-startup-game-unbabel-yc2014.html
======
malanj
It seems that given Andreas' move to join the startup - if his explanation is
accurate and complete - the level of responsibility of the founders does
increase. I've been a founder asking people to move before and I've always
felt that it adds a significant extra responsibility. You need to be quite a
lot more certain it'll be a good fit before asking someone to move to join
your company.

In my mind "culture fit" is the responsibility of the founder. If you're
recruiting someone, you need to make the call if they fit into your culture.
You can't really blame the person you're recruiting for not fitting in. You
can (and should) fire them if they're not a fit, but it's still your hiring
mistake, and you need to take the responsibility for it.

If a mudslinging contest can somehow be avoided, it'll be great to have a
response from the Unbabel founders. There are probably some good lessons for
both coders and founders here.

~~~
adambenayoun
Moving across continents to work for a company which you're not sure it'll
work well with them is a too big risk to take to be honest.

I'm a founder of a startup and I would only move someone across the continents
after working with him for a while. For example I would fly him over for a
month to work for us to see if there's a fit (without asking him to leave
everything yet), covering his expenses, flights and anything other expense he
would incur.

I understand if the startup is paying for relocating you but you're still
taking a big risk, there's always the chance that you would be let go if
you're not a good fit.

How other are mitigating this risk? Is working remotely for a couple of
weeks/months with occasional flying viable and moving only after you spent
some time with the company viable for others here?

~~~
seestheday
How many people are realistically willing to do a trial for a month?
Developers are in demand. They likely already have a job.

~~~
potatolicious
Depends on where you are. Developers are in demand in major US tech hubs
(read: SFBay, NYC, Seattle, Austin), they are not nearly as hotly fought over
everywhere else, particularly in Europe and Asia.

It's important to remember that the "companies prostrating themselves at your
front door offering you bonuses and perks and lavishing dining you" is an
American Tech Hub phenomenon. While I doubt UK coders are doing badly, I doubt
they are as in-demand as they would be in SF or NYC.

~~~
seestheday
I still think that this is very limiting. I'm in Canada (Waterloo, Ontario)
and I just can't see trying out at a company for a month.

That said, I'm "old" (36), and have family responsibilities. If I were a naive
recent grad I might have entertained doing this.

~~~
potatolicious
I went to Waterloo and still have friends there - the job market may be pretty
good for Canada, but it's a far, far cry from what you'd see in an American
tech hub.

Trying out at a company for a month isn't really that bad when the demand is
so intense you can literally line up 3-4 competing offers in under a week if
things don't work out. There is sadly no place in Canada where the demand is
_that_ high.

------
vasco_
For the record

I am a co-founder and CEO of Unbabel. I feel that I should respond to these
allegations.

1 - The contract we had with Andreas was full time employee contract. The
first three months were "at will" which means that either one was free to
terminate the relation at any time. We have a signed contract to prove it and
I am happy to share a sample of the contract to anyone that wants. When we
fired him, we not only paid him what we owed, but we paid him an extra 15 days
of work in addition to $1000 dollars to offset any unexpected costs. Which we
didn't have to. We also have receipts of all the transactions, If need be.

2 - We fired him because he was a terrible fit to Unbabel. It became clear
very quickly that it would not work. In the end the responsibility of hiring
him was ours, and we are really sorry it did not make the right choice. This
made it clear that we have room for improvement in our hiring processes.

3 - He did really well on interviews and we went to considerable lengths to
bring him to Portugal. We paid his airplane ticket, we lent him money for
rent, we helped him search for a house, amongst other things. I am personally
really proud that Unbabel is an example of how we can capitalize on excellent
talent in Europe and Andreas was the first person from Sweden. We have people
from 5 nationalities at Unbabel and we pride ourselves in having a great
environment to work with.

4 – We believe that the culture of the company is extremely important and we
devote a lot of energy to it. Everyone in Unbabel is expected to participate
actively in the company Meaning that they are part of the planning, and
encouraged to be autonomous in creating the best products possible. We truly
enjoy working with each other and spending time together. For example, every
week we go surfing on Wednesday morning in the beautiful beaches of Lisbon. It
is not mandatory, but every one has loved it so far. It is an amazing way make
sure that every week we hang out together outside the company.

We try really hard to make sure that working at Unbabel is an amazing
experience. We pay well above average for Portugal, which means that you get a
really good life here. We offer health insurance, surf lessons, catered
lunches once a week and beers on Friday afternoon. We give you autonomy and
agency, we are transparent about the company every employee has a chance to
make a difference. Come and see for yourself what it is like to work at the
best Translation Startup in the world. A position just opened up :)

~~~
7Figures2Commas
I'm always surprised when a company is so quick to publicly comment on a
sensitive personnel matter, but that said, it's interesting to note what this
response _doesn 't_ contain.

The OP basically called into question the quality and stability of Unbabel's
platform ("The code was a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-
implemented features and misleading comments. Of the few automated tests that
existed, most didn't even run anymore") and the competence of the people
behind it ("The team lead was the only one who knew anything about the system
and he was either busy trying to patch things up by himself or working with
the other person they had hired for my position before I got there"). The
subtle implication of the post: the OP may have been terminated because he
recognized these things.

Are the OP's claims true? Who knows, but the response here doesn't directly
address them at all. Instead, there's ambiguous language like "terrible fit",
corporate-speak like "we believe that the culture of the company is extremely
important" and a poorly-timed "A position just opened up :)"

Frankly, if I was the founder of a tech company and I made the decision to
respond publicly to a situation like this, the claims about my platform and
the competence of my team would be my focus and I'd address them head on.
After all, such claims could become very harmful when encountered by
prospective employees, customers and partners. Given that, it's curious they
were completely ignored.

~~~
neilk
> The code was a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented
> features and misleading comments.

In my experience, a lot of code is like this, and the majority of startup code
is like this. I have found there's almost zero correlation between startup
success and good coding practices. I have no data, but I suspect there's a
negative correlation.

Before you protest, I know that _your_ code is a shining example of clarity.
But if you consider all the incentives for a startup, there's much more value
in being experimental, and highly responsive to customer demands, than there
is in charting a stable, long term course. People celebrate pivots like it's
cool, but this is what it does to the code.

Just a forewarning for anyone who is going from a more corporate world into
startupland.

~~~
jacquesm
I can't comment about any specific code bases for obvious reasons but I'm more
often than not positively surprised by the quality of the code at the start-
ups that I look at. Of course there are corners being cut, but usually that's
for very good reasons marked with copious 'todo's. Start-ups _definitely_
aren't equal when it comes to this and in my experience there is a definite
correlation between those that ride that fine line between being in a hurry
and making a good product and those that create a mess and those that try to
be perfect out of the gate.

The idea here is that you do the best you can within the constraints, not that
you use your start-uppishness as an excuse to be sloppy or to produce crap.

In fact, the majority of the real messes I see are not in start-ups but in
more established companies where the original developers have long since moved
on. Large codebases where very few people (if any!) have an idea of what is
really going on.

~~~
hawkice
Seconded.

I have been at startups where it's a total mess that will never be cleaned,
and I've been at startups where the code is always tip-top because everyone
knows you get big B2B points for implementing their dream feature right after
a regular "how are you liking our service" followup.

I haven't worked at mega-corps, but I've seen bits of code that is so much
worse than imaginable that I expect there are places that scrape pretty far
below the bottom of the barrel, but that might just be a volume issue (the
worst 1% of code will be mostly mega-corp code because most of _all_ code is
in mega-corps).

------
onion2k
A _really_ big problem for startups lies in attracting high quality coding
talent. There aren't many experienced developers who're in a position to take
the necessary risk joining a startup and working for a reduced income for a
while. Consequently any startup that screws over a developer isn't just
hurting their own rep, but they're damaging the chance of success of _every
other startup_ by reducing the size of the talent pool.

Whether or not Unbabel did something wrong here is a matter of speculation
without more details, but there's still a lesson in it for every startup
founder - developers are _necessary_ and _important_ to your success so being
nice (especially if the relationship isn't going well) is a Good Idea.

~~~
TomGullen
> there's still a lesson in it for every startup founder - developers are
> necessary and important to your success so being nice (especially if the
> relationship isn't going well) is a Good Idea.

If a founder is only being nice to someone because it's a good idea and in
their interest, they are an asshole. It's not a lesson you should need to
teach anyone.

~~~
onion2k
The lesson is that it's hard to find good developers.

More generally, it's quite hard to find good <anythings>. People assume that
available talent fits some sort of bell curve, with lots of 'average' people
out there, but really it's more like an inverse square curve - there's a lot
more people at the bottom end than the top. When you find the good ones you're
nice to them because it's in _everyone 's_ interest.

~~~
TomGullen
> When you find the good ones you're nice to them because it's in everyone's
> interest.

Why do you have to differentiate being nice to people based on their abilities
in any way at all?

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point?

~~~
onion2k
You should be as nice as you can to everyone, but pragmatically speaking you
can't. There isn't enough time, money, or energy available. There are a good
reasons to prioritise certain people though - I was suggesting that people who
will have an impact on the startup industry are such people.

~~~
TomGullen
> You should be as nice as you can to everyone, but pragmatically speaking you
> can't. There isn't enough time, money, or energy available.

Being nice to someone isn't the sum of all time, money and energy expended on
someone. It's just treating them with respect and dignity when your path
crosses with theirs.

------
BSousa
I feel sorry for you, I really do!

Not knowing the details of your contract I can't say for sure, but with the
recent changes in employment law in Portugal, I think legally (not ethically)
they maybe in the right. I can put you in contact with a lawyer that
specialises in this kind of situations, but honestly, for 1.5 months salary,
it isn't probably worth it for you (justice system in PT is very very slow,
though they do tend to stick with the employee in these situations, even when
the law isn't on their side).

If you don't mind me asking, what made you move from Sweden to Portugal to
work at this startup? Was it Portugal that attracted you? Knowing the salaries
and economic situation of the country, specially compared to Sweden, it
confuses me a bit why you would do it, but if it is Portugal as a country that
interests you, shoot me an email, I maybe able to help you out.

Best of luck

~~~
andreasgonewild
I only learned about the loop hole in Portuguese employment law from this
discussion. That's one thing I really hated about Portugal, they just don't
offer any information in English, even the signs in the museums are in
Portuguese, it's no mystery to me that a lot of the translation startups are
based there.

The thing is, were I come from, if you have a contract for three months, you
have a contract for three months. And I was treated like royalty up until the
exact moment when I didn't agree with their practices. Live and learn, I
guess.

Unbabel is unique in that it's based in SF and offer compensation on that
level in Portugal. Landing a job in SF is pretty much impossible as a European
so this seemed like a nice compromise.

Thanks, but from the experience I had with both my employer and my landlord in
Portugal I'd rather not do business with any Portuguese people ever again.
Sorry.

Thanks!

~~~
BrotherBrax
What loophole? It's not something missing in the law, it is very well detailed
in the law (see links in a previous post of mine, or from some other posters
as well). Swedish contract law also seems to have trial periods, BTW:
[http://www.business-
sweden.se/PageFiles/10381/Employing%20st...](http://www.business-
sweden.se/PageFiles/10381/Employing%20staff%20-%20contracts%20and%20conditions.pdf)

In Sweden it seems that the employer must always give two weeks of notice,
that's not the case here. But on the other hand you were paid two extra weeks
of wage.

I know for a fact that Luxembourg, UK, and Bulgaria at least have trial
periods as well and they are typical in these countries. I don't know about
other EU countries, nor do I know whether they are typical in Sweden. But they
are certainly not loopholes.

(BTW my apologies if I sound blunt, I love my country and don't like seeing
false statements posted which make it seem that working here is very bad, when
the truth is quite the opposite -- after the trial period is over, you are
very well protected and can expect a job for life unless the company goes
bust, goes through a major layoff, or fires you illegally, in which case
courts and unions will defend you)

BTW here in Portugal you can also have a 3-month contract. They are uncommon
in the IT world, but they exist especially in less well-paid positions
(supermarkets, call centers, etc). In that case the trial period cannot exceed
15 days. If your contract says "com termo certo" (meaning "with predetermined
duration"), then you did have a 3 month contract and are entitled to legal
action.

Have you tried translating the contract on Google or Bing to understand what
it says?

------
Turukawa
There was a great piece of advice I was given about 20 years ago by the South
African guru of franchising, Eric Parker:

"Run your small business as if it was a large business", or, "Start as you
mean to go on".

There is a great deal of bullshit in the tech industry; that chaos is somehow
normal and that planning and the principles of good management can wait "till
we're big". It should be painfully obvious that once chaos has set in, then
that is the business environment and it cannot change.

If that environment includes hiring in panic and treating people badly, and
the organisation survives anyway, then that organisation becomes one in which
toxic relationships are rewarded indefinitely. It will be unsurprising that
people like the OP will find it horrifying and be forced out.

~~~
andrew93101
"Run your small business as if it were a large business" is a quote that I
would disagree with for startups, for two reasons:

\- it encourages premature scaling

\- many large businesses have lost the ability to innovate and lost the
ability to respond quickly to market changes.

Both of those consequences can be fatal for a startup.

~~~
Turukawa
Nope, small companies that don't think about growth while they have the time,
cement bad practice.

"Run your small business as if it were a large business" is more about
conscious decision-making and awareness of consequence. Do your admin, make
sure payroll is documented and people are paid on time, make sure that
managers pay attention to work-load and communication, develop work practices
that support people rather than assuming everyone is committed to 24-hour days
... sweat the small stuff so that your employees can get on with the thing you
hired them for without concern.

It's all those assumptions that get small businesses as they scale. And then -
if they survive - they become horrible, impersonal large businesses.

A small business is like a small child. All the potential is there, but
surround that child with all the clutter of a poor environment and it will
become an adult that perpetuates the system it was raised in.

"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," said the
Jesuits. They knew what they were talking about ;)

------
mmgm
In the Portuguese labour law the default "experimental" period lasts a minimum
of 90 days (for both employer and employee).

During the experimental period any of the parties may void the contract
without any compensation (except for the time already worked) unless noted
otherwise in your contract ...

Also there is no notice period required.

As a disclaimer, I note that I am friends with one of the founders of Unbabel.
I don't know their side of the story and I am sad this happened to you.

Still, from what you say, as far as I can tell, they acted within the
boundaries of the portuguese labour code.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
This highlights one of the risks with going and working in another country -
what seems fair, reasonable and legal to you may be very different in another
country.

As someone who lives in Europe I find American hire / fire at will contracts
terrifying (getting rid of someone in the UK can be a torturous process, in
other European countries even worse) but obviously in most states (?) in the
US they're the norm.

Lesson to learn - before you agree to work somewhere else, understand the
culture and legal framework you're going to be working in if at all possible
and set your expectations accordingly.

~~~
DanBC
> (getting rid of someone in the UK can be a torturous process,

It's really easy to get rid of employees in England. While it's not quite "at
will" it's pretty close.

You don't even need to give a reason in writing if the person has been working
for you for less than 2 years.

[https://www.gov.uk/dismissal](https://www.gov.uk/dismissal)

> You have the right to ask for a written statement from your employer giving
> the reasons why you’ve been dismissed if you’re an employee and have
> completed 2 years’ service (1 year if you started before 6 April 2012).

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
It really isn't, trust me, I've been through it a few times (as an employer).

There is a lot of detail hidden behind this:

"If you’re dismissed, your employer must show they’ve:

* a valid reason that they can justify * acted reasonably in the circumstances

They must also:

* be consistent - eg not dismiss you for doing something that they let other employees do * have investigated the situation fully before dismissing you - eg if a complaint was made about you"

There actually aren't that many valid reasons. Cultural fit certainly isn't
one (and has the potential to get you in all sorts of equalities issues if
there is any possibility that age, religion or anything else can be seen as a
proxy for the way you didn't fit).

If you want to claim someone isn't good at their job you need to be able to
back it up and show you gave them every opportunity to turn it around
(including having given them all the relevant support and training). Generally
speaking that would be a performance management exercise (several weeks of
monitored performance) which is time consuming and rubbish for all involved.

And that's before you even get into the whole performance is hard to
accurately measure in IT issues.

The investigated fully part is also important. If you diverge from your stated
policy (or a reasonable policy if there isn't one stated - the ACAS one is
usually the template) then you can be found against at a tribunal even if you
reasons and evidence were sound.

Obviously people do ignore all this and get away with it (particularly in IT
where people can often get new jobs relatively easily) but that doesn't mean
you will or that what you did was legal.

Your best shot is if the contract has a defined probation period (3 to 6
months) during which you can pretty much get rid of people at will but after
that, even before 2 years is up, it's going to take some work. It's not
impossible but it's an exercise which will take a lot of your time and likely
have a significant impact on team morale.

------
teraflop
Is this a good place to ask why the title of this link was changed? It was
originally the same as the title of the blog post, including "(YC/2014)".

I've noticed this kind of alteration a number of times on stories about YC-
backed companies, and I don't recall ever seeing it when the story was
positive.

EDIT: And now the post is getting rapidly demoted on the front page, below
links that are older and have fewer votes.

~~~
dang
The (YC XYZ) tags are for major third-party articles and launches. We take
them out of the titles of blog posts. I'm not sure exactly why, but it's been
the convention for a long time. This, however:

> I don't recall ever seeing it when the story was positive

... is just sample bias. By far most cases of this are positive stories.
Indeed most are blog posts written by the companies themselves. Sometimes they
even complain and think we're biased against them, which of course is not
true, just sample bias again.

Re the story rank: users tend to flag stories that have a high controversy-to-
substance ratio, and moderators penalize such stories. In the case of negative
posts about YC or YC-funded startups, our policy is to penalize them less, not
more. But that doesn't mean we do nothing. Why? Because the heat of
indignation guarantees massive upvotes. There needs to be a countervailing
factor or such posts would fill the front page every day. It's a balancing
act.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
Thank you. Just a small piece of feedback: I clicked the title expecting a
story on Unbabel failing the startup game, ie: I thought they'd gone bust and
this would be a post-op.

~~~
hawkice
I had similar expectations, and I am glad the flags / downvotes still had
weight. I was able to chime in on a code quality discussion, but this has
been, for the most part, a very bizarre discussion that I (and most of HN, I
assume) is not capable of litigating.

------
ehurrell
I have to say I admire your courage in writing this. I've been put in a not
dissimilar situation in the recent past. I said nothing. I'm hoping one day
the situation will resolve itself, but I doubt it, and I suffered a lot for
it. Thankfully I'm out of immediate danger now.

I hope this leads to a positive conclusion for you, as I have a lot of respect
for the difficulty of startup life, but none for those who behave dishonestly
rather than face the consequences of their actions.

~~~
andreasgonewild
Thanks. At this point this isn't about me anymore, it's about transparency and
telling both sides of the story. In my opinion Unbabel behaved like total
jerks and were getting away with it. I'm getting to old to let stuff like that
slip anymore.

------
linker3000
I feel for you too. It wasn't a startup and the job was local, but I took a
salary drop and swapped a cosy-but-unrewarding role with a global corporate to
join a 40-strong SaaS development company that wanted someone to come in and
sort out their internal and customer support infrastructure - they had no
strategy, procedures or hierarchy and were constantly firefighting - shuffling
resources between projects according to which customer complained the loudest.

It became clear very quickly that the two founders who brought me in wouldn't
embrace any change that didn't come from them, and they had a total fear of
empowering anyone else to make executive decisions - even about their own team
members; I constantly found my guys being assigned to firefighting for other
teams without my knowledge, so workload planning and scheduling knowledge
sharing periods was impossible - we had information silos all over the place
and if someone went on vacation they would often be called or emailed
frequently because they were the only ones who knew about a specific part of a
project or system. I wasn't allowed to attend support review meetings with the
customers - the Directors went alone and told me what had been agreed, and
they constantly dealt directly with one of my guys (the company 'guru'),
assigning him work and making it impossible for me to grab his time so he
could share his skills with the rest of the team - I highlighted it as a
serious business risk that this guy was the only person who knew some of the
tricks with some of our internal and customer infrastructures, and that he
wasn't encouraged to document or share his knowledge, but they dismissed my
concerns.

When we had _that_ Friday afternoon talk after 9 months of trying to bring in
some best practices and semblance of organisation, I left the office for the
last time with a sense of great relief that I was out of the clusterfuck.

It only took me a few weeks to find a much better role and I hope things work
out for you too.

Edit: Looking back at what I wrote, it might be that the OPs circumstances
just offered the opportunity for a bit of a personal rant, which was not the
intention. My main point was based on the fact (not explained at all by me in
my post) that when I met the two Directors (twice), prior to joining, the
setup and opportunity for me looked very positive, and I was convinced I was
going to be empowered to fulfil the role. Things turned out very differently,
and I clearly did not fit in with the company culture the founders wanted to
both leave and stick with simultaneously (it was their comfort zone, and
although they knew is was not the best was to run a business, they ultimately
couldn't leave it). Moral: Shit happens, despite due dilligence, but that
doesn't make it right.

~~~
untog
Stories like this (and my own experience) kind of sum up why I don't intend to
work for another startup unless it's one I've founded. Too many people out
there are taking roles with <= 1% of equity and thinking that they're going to
be part of something big. Instead, they have no power to make decisions and
make less money than they should. Working for a startup _because_ it's a
startup is always a bad idea.

~~~
sheetjs
That doesn't excuse certain behaviors like breaking a contract early (we
haven't seen the contract, but it's reasonable to assume there's some
provision)

After seeing this and similar situations like
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152933)
involving YC companies, it's hard not to conclude that there may be something
culturally broken at the accelerator level.

~~~
Quizz
It's called inexperience and immaturity - people seriously expect a bunch of
twenty something's who've never operated a business to get things right in 3
months? Or better yet, can you imagine the abuse if you worked for a startup
led by 28 year old Steve Jobs today?

~~~
jonnathanson
Absolutely, but that doesn't excuse the behavior, and that's an important
thing to keep in mind. If anything, it needs to be emphasized. If we, as an
industry, truly believe that talent is our best competitive advantage, then we
should act accordingly.

My biggest concern about Steve Jobs's legacy is that people can all too easily
draw the wrong lessons from it, or use it to justify bad managerial practices.
Steve Jobs's managerial style was as much of a hindrance as it was a benefit.

Obviously I'm not saying you're one of those "Steve Jobs was an asshole, so I
can be" types of people, or that you're condoning them as such. But a lot of
people do think that way, and a lot of people condone thinking that way. On
the whole, it's an influential and problematic narrative.

------
annnnd
There is a slight point in founders' favor - sometimes when you need to get
out and just get the stuff done, you don't write test for every non-essential
piece of code. You also just copy/paste that controller, because you know you
will probably throw most of the code away anyway. All you want is to know if
the _business model_ works. After all, you are not building core systems for a
financial institution. And you know that if it takes off there will be more
than enough time to fix stuff properly.

That said, I __strongly __disagree with not paying your employees fully. If
you are a founder, you have an obligation to the people you hire. YOU SHOULD
PAY THEM! If you think you should pay them only for a month and a half, fire
them on time. In the end, bad match should always be founder 's
responsibility.

EDIT: HN could really use "Preview" button. :)

~~~
a_c_s
Fired after 1 month but paid for 1.5 months: seems generous to me.

~~~
annnnd
Depends on the contract - they agreed on 3 months.

The core of the problem is that they didn't hire him for a shorter time (test
run) / weren't able to use him for the remaining time.

------
jacquesm
There is a 60 day period in which you can be let go without further notice
('trial period') so legally they are in the right, but morally, after letting
you move from one country to another and without in any way assisting you in
cushioning the blow they are jerks (assuming this one-sided view is the
unvarnished truth).

But better that you are out of there now than a year down the line, if they
are like this then that saved you a bunch of time and a lot more hardship.

------
anmonteiro90
As injust as Unbabel's behavior towards you might have been, I feel this story
is being told from a rather extreme perspective, wouldn't you agree?

As a 37-year-old who has been writing code since 8, I feel that you should be
more used to finding clumsy code, especially in a startup (that I suppose is
iterating very fast, trying to make ends meet).

As someone who confidently relocated from Sweden to Portugal, were you aware
of the Portuguese economic situation? Didn't you make sure you had enough
savings in case it all went down the drain (as it turned out to happen)? I
can't help to feel that you took this somewhat blind leap with little to no
information at all.

This doesn't all mean that I blame you solely; the situation is, of course,
tremendously shameful for Unbabel.

~~~
andreasgonewild
I wasn't surprised to find bad code there. I was surprised that my job didn't
seem to include making it better.

Unbabel is based in SF and is unique in offering SF level compensation in
Portugal. Perhaps I was naive in expecting them to honor our contract, it does
seem like fucking people over is business as usual in Portugal.

~~~
ergodic
Context: I lived in Lisbon four years and know one of the founders of Unbabel.
I do not know you, neither your story.

Regarding your comments:

> That's one thing I really hated about Portugal, they just don't offer any
> information in English

>Thanks, but from the experience I had with both my employer and my landlord
in Portugal I'd rather not do business with any Portuguese people ever again.
Sorry.

>it does seem like fucking people over is business as usual in Portugal

>Have you had any experience with the Portuguese state or legal system? I'd
probably still be standing in a queue somewhere.

Blaming the whole country for a 90 day experience does not seem very
proportional to me.

Again, I do not know your story and can not speak for the veracity of your
facts. What I do know is Lisbon (and I have lived many years in Spain and
Germany to compare with). From that I know that you are just being, at best,
exaggerated and I wonder if you have been exaggerating other stuff too.

~~~
paulojreis
Yet, as a portuguese, it's hard to dismiss his claims. The queues and slow
state services, the "fucking people over" (mainly in employer-employee and
vendor-customer relationships), the lack of information in english (unless you
consider the restaurant menus as sufficient)... well, you run into this every-
fuckin-day.

He may be escalating his issues, but - again, as a portuguese - I don't think
he got the wrong idea about the sad state of affairs here.

------
qxmat
I feel for you.

I made a similar leap from an OK-paying regional job at an established niche
cashcow to a London start-up. The perks: a coffee machine, senior pay cheque.

The reality: a shit coffee machine, low moral, no realistic prospect of a
profit and no willingness to pivot. 80% of costs have been sunk on a Facebook
clone 'with a spin' while the owners try to sell snake oil to investors. We
operate like the bad slides of 'Good vs Bad Startup' are a blueprint for
success. The owners, almost weekly, come up with an idea someone has to coach
them away from - a long ironically drawn out confrontational meeting of: "we
don't have the resources". The bit I expected to pay off (medical monitoring
hardware) turn out to be crappy I2C/SPI bridges any e.eng graduate could whip
out in a month :(

I've had long look at myself: how could I turn down other offers yet accept
this?! I'm still unsure why. For a while I feared that I deserved this - I'm
one of them, one of the guys who decided to create their own header based HTTP
authentication system key by a timestamp: a crap programmer.

It's been 4 months. Poor tests are still committed despite my best efforts to
teach the one doing it that they should test a result not implementation (only
1 test damn it!). We don't use any JS frameworks on the front-end (yet alone
my other true love: Typescript) because the last lead dev couldn't understand
the immeasurable benefits of model binding. I've done - by no means single
handedly - an incremental rewrite of the entire code base (front, middle and
back). Although they're paying me on time, they missed my post probation
increase :( I could go on but this is probably not the right forum.

In short: it's not worked out for me either. Thankfully I've got an excellent
track record so I'm off in 3 days to a proper PLC. I heard large companies,
like the BBC have 15 (FIFTEEN) designers in their News division alone... I
can't wait to have just one designer unencumbered, available and talented.

The whole saga has left me with the strong suspicion most startups are a joke
(no I don't want to be a DBA/CSS/JS and C# guru who maintains the iOS
codebase!).

Inept owners who're unwilling to pivot, often trapped by the sunk cost
fallacy, or owners expect to create a market with their 'one true solution [to
a problem you no-one has]' plague the startup scene. No product should ever be
a Facebook clone :(

For what it's worth, if I was hiring now I'd interview you solely on your
written language skills (which are better than most native English speakers,
myself included).

~~~
raverbashing
Sorry, what's a PLC?

~~~
untog
Public Limited Company:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_limited_company](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_limited_company)

------
morgante
If you read between the lines, it seems like this job definitely wasn't the
right fit. Hence, they were probably in the right for letting you go.

But they're definitely in the wrong for how they handled it. In particular,
knowing that you moved to Portugal for the job, they should have given you
severance sufficient to cover relocation back to Sweden.

~~~
practicalpants
> they were probably in the right for letting you go.

They violated his three month contract. They are not just morally wrong, but
legally so as well.

If anything it sounds like they're pushing him around because they don't think
he'll make the legal effort to get 1.5 months of pay.

~~~
BSousa
They probably didn't.

Again, without knowing the contract, I can't say for sure, but what most
likely happened was he was hired with a fixed term contract (Contrato Termo
Certo), which is a kind of employment contract very common in Portugal. This
doesn't mean he can't be fired for 3 months. There are various provisions for
the company to do so (from probation period to lack of productivity or unfit
for the job) but they do require some process (the employee has to be informed
by writing, is entitled to some severance, etc). On this, and if the account
is true is where the company maybe in more trouble. If he worked for 1 month
and got 1.5 months of pay, that .5 maybe the severance he is entitled to (not
sure about the values so I can't specify if that is correct or not)

As for the generality of the Portuguese employment law, you usually have 3
kinds of contracts:

\- independent contractor/recibos verdes: This is usually a business to
business contract, where the 'employee' has little rights regarding employment
law except the ones provisioned in the contract itself. Employee also has to
pay all taxes/social security. There has been some crack down on these as
employers were abusing employees and avoiding paying taxes. There are similar
provisions to this in the UK for example with their IR35, which means even if
the contract is of this nature, they will be taxed as full-time employees.

\- fixed term contract: An employment contract with a set end date (can be
renewed for a certain amount of times). The usual rules apply regarding
vacation, pay, firing processed etc. These regulations are law and while there
is some margin to tweak the amounts, they can't be modified or you can't sign
of your rights away.

\- non-fixed term contract: This is what most countries have as standard
employment contract but in Portugal it is a bit harder to come by. While
things changed recently, up until a few years back, most employers didn't want
to do this contracts since firing an employee in this cases is next to
impossible without paying a huge settlement amount. So employers usually did
fixed term contract with new employees, renew them for the allowed number
(usually in total used to be no more than 18 months) and then either let them
go (with no severance) or move them to this kind of contract.

------
btipling
The truth of it is that the startup life isn't for every engineer. Startup
code is messy. You don't have architects who draw UMLs for you, you don't have
the luxury of time to do things right. At a small startup everything is often
falling apart at the seams. Morale can rise and crash, repeatedly, like a
roller coaster. Small startups often have to visit the iron bank of technical
debt and take out a huge loan to put in that feature a very important customer
wants right that second. Tests are very important, but spending too much on
them can waste precious time. You're always flying low to the ground. You're
looking at the short term: days and weeks, not months and years. That said,
technical debt sucks and should be avoided at all cost, but priorities aren't
the same when you're a three or four person team with about a year's worth of
runway.

~~~
enjo
>At a small startup everything is often falling apart at the seams... >Morale
can rise and crash, repeatedly, like a roller coaster... >You're looking at
the short term: days and weeks, not months and years...

None of this rings true to me. Not at any startup I've worked at/founded at
least(6 in total over the last 12 years). In reality good startups are
relatively even keel.

Hell I would argue that startups, almost by definition, think MORE in the
long-term than their larger counterparts. In a startup you are always
progressing towards a long-term goal, constantly taking in feedback and making
adjustments.

It's much like sailing to a small island thousands of miles away. A mistake in
navigation in the beginning that goes uncaught will put you farther off course
than one farther along on your journey (although sometimes that mistake means
you discover North America and then pretend like you meant to do that all
along).

The point being, if your startup is constantly in panic mode or is constantly
trading long-term stability for short-term satisfaction then you should
probably be thinking about leaving. At least from my point of view.

~~~
carterehsmith
Did you ever work for a “non-startup”? Like, you are a car manufacturer, have
to create some telemetrics software that has to work reliably in all kind of
conditions, and hopefully not kill people, and has to be supported for the
next 12 years minimum?

Compare to the startup that can just “pivot” at will and/or just end it with
one of those “it was an amazing ride” blog posts.

Not trying to be smart, just presenting some perspective.

~~~
enjo
While that is absolutely true, I don't follow how that relates to my post?
There is nothing inherent about the flexibility of a startup that means it has
to be the frenetic roller-coaster that the thread starter referenced.

------
jprince
As terrible as this experience was, what's most alarming is that you're 37,
have been working for nearly 20 years in this field, and don't have enough
savings to tide you over even two months without work. You really need to
learn to save your income and cut your lifestyle.

I hope that if it turns out your story is true, that these guys are in some
way brought to justice, karmic or otherwise. Best of luck.

~~~
jprince
This guy is a symptom of an alarming trend I've seen in the field. We're all
riding high, spending every $ we make because we think the end will never
come. I think it will, and a lot of us are going to be bankrupt.

I don't care what financial disasters may occur - I very much doubt they'd
occur in such frequency that over 20 years of working in a high income job
this guy wouldn't have 15,000$ handy for something like this. If he made 80k
per year for 20 years, that's 1.6M dollars. Let's say 800k after taxes. You're
telling me in 20 years, he couldn't save 15k out of 800k? Less than one half
of one percent of all money made?

Also, I'd expect if he didn't have that much handy, he wouldn't have been
naive enough to relocate without any kind of backup funds in case things went
south with a startup, which often happens.

It all points to a certain ignorance when it comes to financial matters with
this guy - the fact he relocated without enough funding to fall back on
suggests not that he has weathered several storms over a 20 year period, one
every year wiping out all his savings, but that he has a pattern of monetary
mismanagement stretching back to the beginnings of his career.

EDIT: Accidentally replied to my own comment but meant it to be to the "you
dont know me, you don't know my problems" naysayers below.

~~~
BSousa
The thing you have to understand, 80k USD is a very very very high salary for
most people (even developers) in Europe. And the ones that make that can most
likely see 1/2 of that go away in taxes/social security. Cost of living will
probably be higher than the equivalent salary in the USA.

On the other hand, people should get unemployment benefits when situations
like this occur, unfortunately for him, the moving countries may have
prevented that (for Sweden employment agency, he quit his Swedish job, not
fired, and for Portuguese one, he didn't work enough months to qualify. I'm
sure there are some international provisions for these situations but they are
beyond me).

~~~
bellerocky
$80K is not so much at it might seem when you're living in the Bay Area. Rent
for a small apartment $24K a year living outside of San Francisco, and up to
$30K+ inside the city. Everything is very expensive. When I lived in another
city I could get by at $500 a month for a similar apartment.

~~~
BSousa
That is an excellent point, and very fitting. If you take in account 80k is
current salary, and most likely started at 40k and over 20 years raised it
(lets say linearly), making an average of 60k over those 20 years, and paying
high taxes, I doubt many would be able to save much as well unless your
partner also worked. Also, Stockholm has quite high rents, looking at [1],
studios start at around 1000 usd and small apartments at 1600 or so (not in
central Stockholm, but suburbs)

[1]
[http://www.bostaddirekt.com/Private/default.aspx?custType=0&...](http://www.bostaddirekt.com/Private/default.aspx?custType=0&Areas=7001&apmnt=1&other=0&Room=0)

~~~
jprince
Whether or not you can live comfortably is not in question. If you're only
making enough in your city to live comfortably if you use all of your money to
do so, then you need to live uncomfortably. There are plenty of poor living in
all of these major cities and they get by on less than 80k, or even 60k, so it
stands to reason if you're making that much and you can't afford a burn-fund
then you're probably making bad choices.

------
god_bless_texas
I'm sure there are two sides to every story, but you can guarantee that if
they did this to you they'll do it to someone else. I'm consistently amazed by
people and companies who operate without integrity. I think about Paul Graham
talking about startup founder factors as people who break the rules. I'm
fairly certain this is not what he's talking about.

~~~
andreasgonewild
On the other hand, and this is really the point of the whole thing to me,
maybe next time they'll think twice.

------
kfk
I see a clear lack of management, communication and leadership skills here.
For how meaningless those words might seem here on HN, it really shows when
startup founders do not have them. And it's not even a culture fit issue,
dealing with people that are not a 100% fit is part of the challenge of
managing a business.

~~~
VLM
"part of the challenge of managing a business"

Part of the benefit, you mean. Although we're only hearing one side, sounds
like the culture there is pretty screwed up, so bringing in a guy with higher
standards is obviously an epic culture fit fail but possibly the only way to
repair the companies culture.

Although "pretty screwed up" sounds subjective, there are objective
observations, and if they're not fulfilling contracts that's a rather
objective measure (did a bank deposit occur or not?)

If you have a screwed up situation, and hire a guy who fits right into it as a
perfect cultural fit, you haven't solved "the" problem, you now have two
problems.

------
chroma
I agree with many of the other comments here: If this story is true, Unbabel's
behavior is reprehensible. That said, look at Andreas Wild's G+[1]. He has
another recently-created blog in which he spouts off some weirdness about
consciousness and astrology[2]. This makes me think he is a somewhat unstable
person. And it reinforces my initial feeling that we should wait for both
sides of the story to emerge before forming conclusions.

1\.
[https://plus.google.com/108299200044097592336/posts](https://plus.google.com/108299200044097592336/posts)

2\. [http://esoteric-
keys.blogspot.com/2013/12/consciousness.html](http://esoteric-
keys.blogspot.com/2013/12/consciousness.html)

~~~
andreasgonewild
You have got to be f*cking kidding me! I've studied more Esoteric literature
and practiced more Yoga than most. Have you considered that maybe, just maybe,
you have no idea what you're talking about?

------
purpleD
When I was a few years out of school I went to my second job and inherited a
huge code base with 4000 line java files, no tests, no one who worked on the
code still around, etc, at a big non-tech company. I was young and stupid to
think I was a bad programmer that I couldn't fix it all in a few weeks by
myself.

I know it's in the past now, but try to avoid situations like this. If you
can't, talk to your boss about what can reasonably be done in what time frame.
Now I would try to figure out which parts can realistically be refactored and
which can be isolated and rewritten iteratively make things better. I wouldn't
take on new features unless I was confident I could deliver with spaghetti
around.

------
seren
This is a bit of a cliché but I wonder if there are some cultural differences
at play there. Like the hectic and chaotic pace for a Swede, would be business
as usual for a Portuguese. This is likely not the root cause, but it probably
did not help the miscommunication, maybe even during the recruiting phase. I
also assume that if OP is not a native Portuguese speaker, it was harder to
fit in, and it was easier to miss a critical info you're colleague could be
discussing. I expect UnBabel to answer that OP was not communicating enough,
etc. which could only be due to cultural differences.

~~~
andreasgonewild
From having lived most of my life in Sweden and three months in Portugal I'd
say it's mostly the opposite. The further south you go the more things slows
down.

But I agree, some of the parameters that got us here are probably cultural.
One thing I did notice was that a lot of the communication in the office was
in Portuguese, which obviously means I didn't get that information.

------
logn
I don't know about European labor laws or your contract, but by US standards I
don't think they did anything wrong and a blog post such as this would be
perceived negatively.

edit: I mean no offense but just wanted to make you aware how this would be
perceived by US readers potentially. US is lacking in a lot of labor
protections.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, "being a jerk" is not a legal concept; there are many things that are
perfectly legal, and still something - to quote Eric Naggum - "that you do not
do if you want to be a moral being and feel proud of what you have
accomplished".

------
fun2have
Before you started working together, did you discus what would happen if
things did not work well? Was your salary closer to that of the norm in
Sweden, or that of the Portuguese? The difference is substantial. Did they
think you where amazing at first and had too high an expectation? If you
salary was closer to the Swedish norm then they may have thought that 2 weeks
pay was a very substantial amount.

In Portugal, I believe, that unless you let people go before the trial period
is over, then a whole lot of protective measures kick in.

For anybody looking to hire anybody abroad it is having the conversation about
what happens when things don't go well.

It would be good to hear the Unbabel side of the story.

[Disclosure] Two of the founders are what I would call acquaintances of mine.

------
webwright
It was unclear to me what the terms of the contract were in terms of early
termination of the agreement by either party. If you're moving for a 3 month
"try before you buy" agreement, it's good to have that clause in the agreement
or at least discuss it.

Say something like, "You guys seem like you're pretty organized, but I've
heard a horror story or two about startup hiring... Companies pivoting and
laying people off/etc. Given that I'm moving for this opportunity, can we have
a clause in the agreement that spreads the risk around a bit? Say, if you guys
let me go for any reason before the end of the contract, I get $X as a
severance in consideration for my moving expenses, etc."

------
raverbashing
I see two sides to this:

\- Is Unbabel making money? If they haven't shipped yet, bad for them, but on
the other side, the software may be doing its part (of generating revenue)

\- People sometimes come with an idealized view that in a perfect world all
code is fully tested and follows all rules and conventions. Most often than
not, it doesn't.

There's a balance between improvement for the sake of code and adding new
features and bugfixes (not necessarily related to the lack of unit testing or
stuff like this)

" I repeatedly asked for more guidance but all I got was reprimands for not
taking every little detail into account in the code I wrote."

Here's the thing, no one will hold you by the hand. There's a lot of things
you'll have to find out by yourself.

~~~
personZ
This is why I never take these sorts of stories at face value. I'm not casting
aspersions on the author, but at the same time I'm not willing to blindly
accept the same against others. In these sorts of situation, invariable both
sides feel they were wronged in some way.

I've hired, _and directed_ , people who just didn't work out, and many of them
could write something very similar to what the author submitted.

Because what I was hiring were people to help propel us forward in short-
order, and did everything possible to filter and convey expectations of the
same, but some hires needed so much direction, so much hand-holding, and so
much oversight that they ended up literally being a net negative on velocity
of the whole. So it just wasn't a fit and we had to split ways.

There are different companies, at different stages and sizes, where that sort
of thing is perfectly okay. But at anything where the word "startup" might be
applied, it just isn't the case.

------
pkorzeniewski
That's why I'm very suspicious when it comes to stories about "wonderful work
environment" at startups. I'm sure there are quite few startups where people
really like to work, but I've a feeling most startups are chaotic, unorganised
and ego-driven by the founders. To me it's the extreme opposite of big
corporations, where everything is over-managed and run by well-defined
processes, whicih may be sometimes irritaing, but at least you (usually) know
what you're standing on.

~~~
JonLim
I started ignoring most of those "my workplace is so great!" posts after
having had a few startups under my belt. It typically is a giant clusterfuck,
but if you believe in the business, enjoy your responsibilities, and can
handle the nonsense thrown at you, you'll be fine.

Every workplace has its ups and downs, would be weird if it were 100% perfect,
eh?

------
FollowSteph3
I hate to say this but whenever you relocate that is your decision. The
company isn't really in any obligations to keep you or pay your move back
unless you pre-negotiate that either with a signing bonus or as a clause in
your contract. Generally a relocation is offset with a signing bonus and
higher salary which is why the risk is worth it, but never doubt that it's a
risk you have to take. I know because I've done it myself before, moving
countries and all.

~~~
spinlock
OP had a 3 month contract which was not honored (according to this side of the
story). That's why he lost his deposit on the apartment that he'd let for 3
months.

~~~
FollowSteph3
But did it have an early termination clause he omitted. Every single contract
I've seen has an early termination clause in it.

~~~
andreasgonewild
Kind of hard to tell when the entire f _cking contract is in Portuguese and
you depend on someone else to explain it to you. I still have no idea if the
clause is in there or not.

What I can't get through my head is why you'd write a contract at all if both
parties are free to do whatever the f_ck they want anyway...

~~~
DanBC
You can write fuck - writing f __*ck causes italicization.

Did you take the contract to someone outside Unbabel to check?

~~~
andreasgonewild
No, the contract was presented and explained to me by the founders, at the
time they treated me like royalty so it didn't even cross my mind to question
them or waste money on a Portuguese lawyer. And where I come from, having a
contract means you need a good reason to break it.

------
andystannard
Hi I think they are legally able to do this from my understanding of EU law.
It sucks especially if you have had to relocate for the job but you obviously
were not enjoying working for them. It sounds as if the lead dev might be
feeling overprotective of his own work and does not want to let go.

I am sure you will find another job easily enough as good devs are in demand.
Hopefully at a place where you are valued and can contribute your skills

~~~
richardwhiuk
If the contract has a minimum period, then they have to show ' cause' when
firing someone.

Not being a good fit won't be good enough. If it was, the minimum period in a
contract wouldn't be worth anything as that's easy for an employer to say with
no backup.

This issue is a major difference between typical contracts in the EU and the
at will employment status which is typical in the US. It makes it 'easier' for
startups to operate in the US, and means that international companies will
hire slower in the EU, but are more likely to let US staff go if they have to
change staffing levels quickly.

Depending on the rental contract - if it's anything like the UK, the author
may have a cause of action against the landlord as well - normally there's a
minimum notice period.

~~~
DanBC
> Depending on the rental contract - if it's anything like the UK, the author
> may have a cause of action against the landlord as well - normally there's a
> minimum notice period.

"kicked out" could include "followed all the legal procedures and evicted me".

~~~
andreasgonewild
That's not really what happened though. I had a contract for a minimum of four
months on the apartment. Which wouldn't have been a problem for me even if I
quit after three months. I deposited the last months rent when I signed the
contract. When I informed the landlord that I could only stay two months, she
kept the deposit and forced me to leave the apartment in the middle of the
second month.

~~~
DanBC
Your landlord treating you illegally is not unbabel's problem.

Did you seek help from Portuguese legal system for your landlord problem?

~~~
andreasgonewild
Have you had any experience with the Portuguese state or legal system? I'd
probably still be standing in a queue somewhere.

~~~
DanBC
So, it's never you?

------
segmondy
It comes with the startup game. What would you have done if the startup ran
out of money in a month? You pack up and go home, this also happens, where
sometimes they think they have money, and perhaps weren't paying enough taxes
or a deal that was going to come through fails.

The reality is that if you join a startup, you should take your job day to
day. You should consider it an adventure. Do not expect it to be organized
like a corporate job. There is going to be a lot of GROWING PAINS, for young
folks with no real world experience, they don't know better. For someone
experienced in the industry, man, is it painful! But with that experience, you
have to figure out how to lead, your work is not just to code, the bigger
puzzle to solve is how to slowly bring about best practices, and you will get
a lot of resistance.

You lead by showing. Don't worry about others, they don't wanna write tests?
fine, write your own tests, write extra for others if you can. They don't want
to document or use revision control? Do so, one day, someone is going to read
the comments in your code and realize that it makes sense to document, or read
a process document. It might take time, but they will see the light.

In a startup environment, do not complain! It helps nothing, you must wade
through the garbage, that's just the way it is. I'm much older and I know this
reality. I work for a big company, it's "boring", it pays great, a lot of
startup's court me trying to get me to get on board for half the salary and
promise of fun, but nope! I'll work more with less discipline and less pay and
no stability. I know this. Should I ever join one, I can assure, I won't cry
if they shut down the next day after I joined, that's the gamble. Startups
fail more than they succeed.

~~~
andreasgonewild
Again, this isn't about the lack of safety nets, this is about behaving like
total jerks and getting away with it.

I did try to flag problems, I added more tests, I proposed improvements and
went ahead and implemented them. And here we are. Seeing the light implicates
seeing anything at all besides pieces of paper with funny faces on.

------
matheusbn
According to Unbabel website:

>We are a fast growing, fast paced startup who is trying to change the world
by making comunication seamless in any language. Source:
[https://www.unbabel.com/jobs/](https://www.unbabel.com/jobs/)

#Comment:

Well there is something wrong with their communication.

------
nrshirj
>I arrived in the final stages of a big rewrite of the core architecture that
was already late. The code was a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-
implemented features and misleading comments. Of the few automated tests that
existed, most didn't even run anymore.

I feel for you. But with your experience, this shouldn't be a surprise for
you??

The focus in Startups is to get the code out and get a (paying) customer and
the priority is not always on the quality of the code/tests. In the Enterprise
world you have some more time to do more tests, code review et. al and may be
you got used to it.

~~~
SnacksOnAPlane
Mindless duplication shouldn't be a part of any software project, full-stop.
It takes only slightly more time to refactor code into functions than it does
to copy and paste, and the difference in comprehensibility is massive.

------
troels
_After one month of insanity and abuse I was called to a Friday afternoon
meeting with the founders. They told me that they felt that we had a
difference in style and that they didn 't want me to work there anymore. Just
like that, no further explanation._

A bit curd perhaps, but following the rest of the story I suppose it makes
sense? This sounds very much like a culture misfit to me.

(To be clear: I am not passing any judgement on the handling of the matter
here. Or on who to blame on the misfitting)

------
gyardley
I've often wondered why incubators like YC don't have sessions that say 'from
experience, these are the sort of behaviors that are counterproductive for
your startup - watch out for and avoid them.'

I know that as a first-time founder I screwed the pooch in all sorts of ways I
could've avoided with a little more guidance.

------
fimdomeio
I fear that if the OP was portuguese, what happened would probably look kinda
normal. In the last 10/15 years or so most labour laws have been destroyed or
made irrelevant and the crysis just made it even worse. With the scarcity of
money it appears to have grown a culture of chaos. To me this story is just
another one.

------
pender
The real lesson to be learned: don't jump out on a limb without pre-
established safety net.

Moving to a new country seems like pretty big risk to take on a 3 month
contract. Heck I wouldn't move from a current job to another one in town
without a signing bonus to cover the risk.

~~~
andreasgonewild
The problem here isn't that I didn't have a safety net, I'll survive. The
problem from my perspective is they behaved like total jerks and were getting
away with it.

~~~
pender
Did u change the content of your article since originally posting it?

~~~
andreasgonewild
I removed the reference to my current financial situation as some people took
it as an invitation to speculate about my private life and start giving
financial advice. The point I was trying to make is that I'm not trying to get
rich by squeezing more money out of Unbabel.

~~~
pender
As I remember it, your original write up painted a picture showing that you
were in dire straights as a consequence of the situation. That came across, to
me, as going too far. The outcome of your situation was certainly impacted by
them, but really you put yourself in the situation and therefore it's outcome.
While I do think they were being cheap, they did not land you there - you did.

I hope it works out better for you in the future. I'm pretty sure it will, you
obviously have the skill... just need to find a better fit.

------
ransom1538
Ok. I have been hacking in startups for 10 years or so. A few rules to note.
1) Startups almost always fail. Pretty much assume at any point you can be let
go for any reason. If you can't afford to blow 3 months of salary and be paid
in "promise" \- don't do it. 2) Startups are not for everyone. Enjoy good
code? Like a peaceful atmosphere? Need comments? Love structure and strategy?
Welp - you will fail at a startup. In my 10 years: startups are trench warfare
with company ending deadlines. As an exercise: Try borrowing money from your
best friend and not paying it back. 3) Legal. You are going to sue a former
employer? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employers will avoid
you like the plague. Try starting a board meeting with: "Our newest employee
is in a legal battle with their former employer...".

~~~
prawn
_" Legal. You are going to sue a former employer? What a great way of ruining
your future."_

Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it up.
Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your future.
Future employees will avoid you like the plague.

~~~
morgante
> Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it
> up. Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your
> future. Future employees will avoid you like the plague.

Yup. Neither party comes out looking good from this.

~~~
rtpg
I have a hard time conjuring up much sympathy for Unbabel in this situation.
Work is work, and this person has come to one of the only recourses.

Also, informing the community that a company doesn't seem to value the work of
its employees should be valued.

~~~
morgante
> Work is work

I agree, but in what way is Unbabel not compensating for the work actually
done? They just prematurely said no more work would be done for them.

~~~
prawn
Depends how you're defining work. There's work (production at the desk) and
there's work (moving to take up a job, social life with colleagues, all the
decisions that come with employment).

As a very small scale employer, I feel responsible for my employee(s). They
depend on me for rent payments, mortgages, savings and so on. I think that
responsibility extends further for someone moving country to join your
company.

I think retaining enough savings to stay fed is on the employee and don't buy
that likely exaggeration, but with early termination like this, I think an
employer should be looking to accommodate a foreign employee where they can,
at least provide a bit more warning or mediation.

------
joshmn
Hi Andreas,

Shoot me an email (in profile); I'd like to help get you some food at the very
least.

------
andrewljohnson
If the contract says 3 months, he should be paid for 3 months, end of story. I
think the blog needs to include the contract to really know if anything
illegal is going on.

~~~
FollowSteph3
The thing is we're only seeing one side of the story. It assumes both parties
agree.

That being said generally all contracts have an early termination clause. He
doesn't comment on what that is. Generally with 3 month contracts, it can be
pretty short. It doesn't necessarily mean finish the 3 months.

To give you an analogy if you hire a general contractor to renovate your home
for a 3 month contract, you can terminate the contract early if it's not
working out for you. Maybe the contractor is amazing but you just ran out of
funds. In any case the issue is that there is always an early termination
clause in contracts. I would be curious what his is...

~~~
andreasgonewild
The whole contract was written on paper in Portuguese. I still don't know if
the clause is in there or not. They certainly didn't mention it when they
explained the contract to me. Naive, yes probably, but I prefer not suspecting
everyone of being assholes before the fact.

~~~
FollowSteph3
Something I've learned is never sign any work or business contracts unless you
fully read through it and understand it. Even if this means getting your own
lawyer to read it.

Unfortunately saying you did understand the language is not a valid reason. It
sucks but that's also the reason why thee were so many bad mortgages in the
recent real estate bust. Too many people didn't read their mortgage
agreements.

As the saying goes everything is good while it's good and everything goes bad
when it goes bad.

~~~
andreasgonewild
I agree, lesson learned.

------
Grue3
Sounds similar to one of my jobs. I worked for 2 months, got paid for half a
month. What a waste.

------
BrotherBrax
Since many people are making (wrong) assumptions about Portuguese work laws,
I'd like to chime in as a Portuguese guy working in IT and with good knowledge
of these laws (I like to always be aware of my rights). The critical part of
this argument is the "at will" period that Vasco (Unbabel's CEO) mentioned,
technically called an "experimental period" (EP). Here is a summary (in
Portuguese -- the Google translated version is decent enough) of the relevant
part of the law: [http://emprego.sapo.pt/guia-
carreira/artigo/166/artigo.htm](http://emprego.sapo.pt/guia-
carreira/artigo/166/artigo.htm)

Also, here is the law itself in case you want to read it (articles 111 to 114,
also in Portuguese):
[http://www.legix.pt/Portals/3/docs/CT09-23_Jul_2012.pdf](http://www.legix.pt/Portals/3/docs/CT09-23_Jul_2012.pdf)

The typical way to hire full-time workers in Portugal is indeed a full-time
contract with an experimental period (EP), what Vasco colloquially called an
"at-will" period. These contracts are called "por tempo indeterminado" (or
sometimes "sem termo" or "com termo incerto"), which means "for an indefinite
period". The EP can last between 90 days (3 months) and 240 days (8 months) --
non-managerial roles get 90 days, which is what Andreas had on his contract
(shorter durations benefit the worker). After the EP is over it is VERY hard,
from a legal standpoint, to fire a worker, which is why the EP exists in the
first place.

During this experimental period, the employer can terminate the contract with
no advance notice and paying no compensation for the first 2 months. Between 2
months and 4 months (if the EP lasts that long), the employer must warn 7 days
prior, or pay 7 days of salary as compensation. After more than 4 months, and
until the end of the EP, it is 15 days. The worker can always terminate the
contract with no notice during the EP. After the EP is over, the worker must
provide 1 month of advance notice to terminate the contract, and the company
usually cannot fire the worker at all.

According to Andreas' original post, he was fired after 1 month, during his
EP, which means he is entitled to no compensation. Unbabel paid two extra
weeks of salary (Andreas admits that in his blog post), which shows that they
treated him better than the law requires. If indeed he was also paid $1000
extra (from Vasco's post), that is even further above what the law requires.

Andreas' blog post suggests that he thought he had a 3-month contract, which
he did not. Legally, he could even be fired after 1 day on the job, and get
paid 1 day and nothing more. While Unbabel may be slightly guilty of not
explaining correctly what Andreas signed, I still believe that Andreas has the
majority of the blame for not understanding what he signed or searching around
what are the typical work laws in Portugal. Heck, if I went to Sweden, I'd ask
for an English translation of the contract from someone outside the company,
even if the company itself provided an English translation. What happened with
the landlord seems to confirm this, since he had the legal right to stay for
as long as his deposits lasted, and simply calling the police (no need for a
lawsuit) would ensure that he could stay until his deposits ran out. It is,
again, very hard to evict a person just like that.

In summary: Unless I'm missing something here, Andreas was treated
considerably better than required by law and has no legal grounds for
complaining.

~~~
stale2001
"has no legal grounds for complaining."

What is legal an what is right are two separate things. Yes, everything that
the company did was legal. Everyone knows that. They still acted in bad faith,
though. And this is going to come back to bite them as a developer would have
to be crazy to work in that kind of toxic environment.

------
TomGullen
Now we wait and see how skilled they are at an apologising. (If true).

------
homakov
37 old Java professional from Sweden spends all of his savings in two months?
You have 5 kids or something?

~~~
jacquesm
Or maybe just not a lot of savings.

~~~
homakov
Or maybe he wants his story to sound more dramatic

>So here I am, back where I started with barely enough money to eat.

Come on, you're 37 years old Java professional from Sweden (which is not
Nigeria or something). Even unemployed people there get more money which I
used to make being programmer.

> When I informed my landlord that I wouldn't be able to stay as long as
> planned she kicked me out of the apartment

What, she kicked you even before your paid period? Obviously you're loosing
your deposit but she is not supposed to kick you out.

This story made to sound dramatic, but in reality, I believe, he just wants
unbabel's managers to follow contract rules.

Unbabel is wrong, but it's not a reason to say you're starving and it's their
fault. You're a grown up man, be responsible for your life.

~~~
yuribit
Completely agree, where are all the money you earned in the last 16 years?

~~~
TomGullen
Who cares? He can spend it how he wishes, doesn't detract from the
mistreatment he is claiming in any way.

------
user_id3
They're going for a second round as UnJesus

