
Ask HN: How to Respond to Company Hiring in Bad Faith - throwaway94
I am a grad student that recently took a 3 month internship at a medium sized startup. After tendering a leave of absence from grad school, vacating my apartment, moving across a large country, and paying for a short term rental in a high cost market, the startup laid off all contingent employees and is still operating with statutory employees. This literally happened within 5 minutes of reporting for work. I am at the start of my post-grad career so I don&#x27;t really want to start legal action, but my total financial impact is greater than $20k in lost wages and time. Does anyone have advice?<p>I am hesitant to provide much additional detail at this time but I am also uncertain how to proceed.
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sfrailsdev
Not a lawyer. Itemize the list and costs. Gather up any emails, letters,
contracts, agreements, etc.

You can potentially pursue them in small claims court (limits may be higher
then you think), where the costs are relatively small, or talk to a lawyer, an
initial consultation may be free.

You can also send a letter to the company, saying that you relied on that
offer of a job for a specific period and suffered financial damage (detailing
it) because of there misrepresentation or omission of material facts, and
requesting they pay such and such an amount to compensate you.

Finally your state labor relation board or whatever may agree you have some
claim on your one day's wages.

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itamarst
"Start legal action" may not be possible at all. If it is possible, there's a
range of possibilities in between "lawsuit" and "do nothing." If the company
has hard-to-argue with legal duty to pay you then a letter from a lawyer might
suffice.

Step 1: talk to startup, say "this is not cool" and see if you can get them to
cough up some money.

Step 2: If that doesn't work find a labor lawyer and just asking them what
they think. They'll probably be able to say "don't bother" or "I can write a
letter for $X, but it probably won't work" etc. without you having to pay
upfront.

In parallel: assume it's a loss and find some work.

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rhapsodic
If your story is true, what do you have to lose by publicly naming and shaming
this company? They might offer you some compensation to repair their
reputation.

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taway_1212
You can gain a life-long reputation of being "difficult".

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rhapsodic
No one has ever gotten such a reputation strong enough that I became aware of
it. I've seen many examples, however, of companies responding to public
shaming by doing the right thing, or some semblance of it.

