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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   26391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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In real estate or other transactions, people often put money down in the same sort of way, basically just pre-paid. Are all these things absolutely terrible, because then the counterparty will just arbitrarily harm them?

The problem with the employment contract is that the employee can't leave the job without losing money, and therefore the employer can harm the employee in ways that the employee could otherwise avoid by leaving the job.

There isn't anything similar to this for most penalty contracts. You could sell someone a house and arbitrarily harm them, let's say by shooting their dog, but refusing to follow through on the house contract won't save their dog, while leaving a job does save you from on-the-job harm.

h-What? Leaving a job doesn't save your dog if your employer shoots your dog, either. This makes no sense to me.

There is a class of things an employer can do to you that do get prevented by leaving your job. There isn't something comparable for most contracts that have penalties. Of course killing your dog is an example of something that's not comparable--there's nothing that is.

There isn't something comparable for most contracts that have penalties.

I don't believe this part. There's literally all sorts of shit that can be stopped (FYI, you actually mean "stopped", because you clearly don't mean "prevented") if you exit other contractual relationships. Perhaps you could start describing some items in the class of things you're thinking about in the employment context, and then we can check to see if there is anything comparable elsewhere. Without any examples (or, I guess, some conceptual description of this class), it's kinda hard to believe.

The big thing the employer can do is make the working conditions for your job worse--"voluntary" mandatory overtime, forcing you to move to keep the job, suddenly changing the job description on you to something worse than the original job (maybe requiring you to do more dangerous or uncomfortable things), or for that matter just bad management that the employer is not incentivized to deal with because he knows you're stuck there. There isn't anything similar that someone could do if you're making a business transaction with a penalty clause, given a realistic business transaction and a realistic job offer.

(Unrealistic transactions don't count. If you bought a house and forgot to specify which house, the seller could say "well, I changed my mind, you're getting this worse house, which is worse by an amount less than the penalty.")

The big thing the employer can do is make the working conditions for your job worse

Sure, and in contracts, counterparties can do things to make, e.g., the negotiating conditions worse. Or to make the subject of negotiation worse. Pages have been filled in the M&A world about the problem of merger targets "getting lazy" with managing their business, letting things start to fall apart, or paying out questionable outlays that perhaps you would have fought against. There's all sorts of harmful stuff they can try to do; that's the source of a variety of standard contract clauses that are used to try to mitigate their effects in advance.

You also haven't responded to deferred/annual bonuses. Honestly, it seems like you just don't like that they can change your working conditions at all. That's fine; it's annoying. It's not at all unique to things like tuition reimbursement with a clawback. Let's put it another way; let's hypothesize that they've heard your complaint; you don't like clawbacks, but you're fine with bonuses. They can "fix the glitch" by just structuring it differently. In the before days, you'd pay the tuition when it was due, submit your receipts, and they'd reimburse you immediately, subject to a year-long clawback or whatever. Now, in the after days, they'll promise future reimbursement; you just pay your tuition yourself, and after a year, you'll get a "bonus" if you're still there. Congrats; you made it worse.

There's all sorts of harmful stuff they can try to do; that's the source of a variety of standard contract clauses that are used to try to mitigate their effects in advance.

That's why I specified realistic contracts. Yes, of course, if the contract is sufficiently screwed up, they can do things to you to make the contract a lot less appealing and you can't get out of it because you have to pay the penalty. But realistically, contracts of this type will have lawyers on both sides to mitigate this problem, standard clauses to mitigate this problem, or both.

Honestly, it seems like you just don't like that they can change your working conditions at all.

If they change your working conditions and you don't have a penalty for leaving, you can just leave.

Let's put it another way; let's hypothesize that they've heard your complaint; you don't like clawbacks, but you're fine with bonuses.

The same problem applies to bonuses, of course, unless the pay without the bonus, minus personal costs (such as paying tuition yourself) is market rate.

The same problem applies to bonuses, of course, unless the pay without the bonus, minus personal costs (such as paying tuition yourself) is market rate.

This is truly wild. Especially because you're getting into situations where it going to be essentially impossible to determine "market rate"; especially because in many places, the bonuses and tuition reimbursement plans are, themselves, part of the market rate. One example would be the financial industry, where bonuses are a huge part of compensation, to the point that for many folks, it hardly makes sense to talk about a market rate without them. Additionally, if you have two job offers that are otherwise all equally the same, but one offers a tuition reimbursement program (either in a standard form or in your Made It Worse form), that one may be preferred, thus making that type of comp part of the market rate. As is the case with most situations where people want to imagine that they know a magic "natural value" for something, you probably don't. The market is constantly deciding how much these different compensation schemes are worth, and you can't magically detangle it from your intuitions about "market rate".

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