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Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers [updated]
An anonymous reader writes "The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. Microsoft, which recently laid off 1400 employees, is now claiming that some of those lucky schmoes were inadvertently overpaid on their severance package. A letter from the company, which was subsequently circulated on the internet, states: 'We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.' Microsoft has confirmed the authenticity of the letter, but it's not known what the amounts in question are, or how many of the 1400 were affected." Update: 02/24 14:00 GMT by T : VinylRecords writes "Well, now Microsoft has recanted, saying that the situation has resulted in unfortunate amounts of bad press and public relations. 'This was a mistake on our part,' said a Microsoft spokesman in an e-mailed statement. 'We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner.'"
What if they agree to use their severance to buy Vista: Ultimate Edition?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
"A letter from the company, which was subsequently circulated on the internet, states: 'We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.' Microsoft has confirmed the authenticity of the letter, but it's not known what the amounts in question are, or how many of the 1400 were affected."
How's that any different than when the government overpays you?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
There's nothing at all accidental about it. It's a cruel joke perpetrated by cruel people.
Yea, definitely. I bet those guys over in payroll were all like "Hahah, wouldn't it be hilarious if we paid those losers that got fired more than we should? We'd give the company even more bad press, and if we're lucky we might even get fired ourselves!"
I'm not a Microsoft employee, but I'm friends with many - and I've intern'd there a number of times.
Microsoft doesn't treat their employee's like "cogs".
As a OSS zealot, I expected to hate my time there - but they really do treat their employees well. Just because they had their first-ever layoff doesn't mean that they treat their employees badly.
Even though they have tons of cash in the bank, they risk bad publicity to get the overpayment back
Instead of declining comment, they admit the letter is valid, thus proving a general lack of confidence
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
What do you mean it's in my contract? You mean that 50 page thing full of legal jargon? Who has time to read that? I just scrolled down and clicked "I accept."
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
Bill doesn't hang around the office much actually nowadays.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
IANAL but i'd expect the fees related to going after individuals who refuse to give back the money probably costs more than just letting them keep it. they'll probably just write it off and note that ex-employee's name in the HR database as a "do not hire"
Or better yet: "Dear Steve Ballmer, Please accept this drawing of a 7-legged spider..."
I understand completely then. Sometimes I find Excel gives me non-trivial rounding errors too.
I guess you must have some unique skills, or are a leader in your field, or your resume is so good that it would also open doors and guarantee you a new job without references. Pretty confident for this economic environment, huh?
You'd be surprised how much zealotry you can accomplish at Microsoft :) There's opportunities everywhere!
There's at least one large product with decent Unix support thanks to my efforts (unrelated to my internship, even).
My point was this: Microsoft does evil things, but we all know that. But no one ever said they treated their employee's evilly.
You don't have to be blind to be a zealot. I prefer to think my zealotry is based on reality.
When you train the people in payroll to keep clicking "Allow".
In the past, Microsoft has settled fines by giving away the fine value in money-off vouchers for schools to buy cheaper copies of Windows (in areas where the schools had tended to use the competition's systems, naturally).
These workers should do the same thing. Print up a few dozen vouchers for $100 off a week's contracting rate.
Generally you do have an obligation to return someone else's property that accidentally came into your possession. You'd be guilty of theft if you knowingly kept it despite knowing that it came into your possession by accident; if you had reason to believe it was legitimately yours, you could plead not guilty to theft, but would probably still have to return it if a court determined it wasn't rightfully yours (i.e. not paid as part of a legitimate contract, or given as a gift). In this case if the employees had signed paperwork specifying a particular amount of money, and they got a larger amount, they would have trouble arguing that they believed it to be anything but an accidental overpayment. I guess you could try arguing that it was a legitimate gift from Microsoft, but I doubt that would succeed.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It might be bad PR, but why is it bad morals?
If you accidentally overpay someone, you shouldn't ask for the money? I'd argue that if you know you've been overpaid, keeping the extra money is bad morals.
This just sounds symptomatic of a bureaucracy, which any sufficiently large company becomes over time when it passes a magic threshold of size, complexity and number of employees. It used to happen regularly when I was in the military, and to me and/or my troops on a number of occasions. (Started to become much more rare when the Defense Finance and Accounting Service - DFAS- automated in the, what, mid-nineties?) Sometimes I would catch the error first and try to repay it, only to be told I'd have to wait until the "system caught up." So, I'd just bank the money, then wait until I'd either be surprised by a zeroed pay-check, an angry memo, or both. So, then I'd go back to the "disbursing" office and straighten it out by repaying the overage now that the "system" is prepared to receive it. A bureaucracy is neither evil, good, nor even conscious; it just seems that way. Who said, "never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity"? They call bureaucracies "mindless" for a reason.
The letter asks for repayments to be sent to Fargo, North Dakota. If I got a letter purporting to be from my former company asking me to send money to a totally different state from that where I had worked and that where the company was based, I'd be more than a bit suspicious. This is apparently legit, but I wonder if any employees thought it was a scam (a scam by other than Microsoft, anyway)...
I agree. This happens all the time. Accountants and HR people are just human, and they make mistakes. Sure, the systems are mostly automated, but when there are exceptional events or conditions change (this WAS Microsoft's first massive layoff), mistakes happen, and people pay it back all the time. The same way if they underpay you, they'll give it back.
Now, the only difference is those are people who got fired...so unless there's a legally binding agreement over this package (like, if something was signed...which it probably was), they have no reason to pay back, and they're probably not in the mood to do so. But again, if they signed papers, they don't have much choice.
Also, MS has offered to help some of these people to get new jobs, and even may hire some of them back in the future. Thats typical in IT in general. So unless some of these people REALLY hate Microsoft to the level of an average slashdotter, its not in the former employee's best interests to screw their former employer over. May cause issues getting references too, if t he direct supervisors catch ear of it.
Nah, I bet their accounting staff are using Excel, and came across another bug such as this one.
You know, I sometimes have the feeling that if some megacorporation figured out a way to make a profit torturing puppies to death, people like you would say, "Well, you know, they're just honoring their obligations to the shareholders!"
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
For those that don't get it (like me):
http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html
and then it "sold" on ebay.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Being a cog doesn't mean you are not treated well. I change the oil in my car regularly, and yet it is just a cog in my life, easily replaceable. The reason Microsoft treats its employees well isn't because they actually care about their happiness, it's because it makes better business sense for the employees to be happy. They work harder that way. Cogs in a wheel.
A good company will be one that treats me as a partner, not as a coding machine. Such companies exist, and I've worked for them, even if they are rare (but becoming less so!). Even in manufacturing, companies like that exist. One example is Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation. It is an employee owned company. The management doesn't consider itself better than the rest, they work as a team, and they don't have layoffs. They have an open system, where the employees actually understand what management is doing, instead of just being told to do it. If someone is having trouble doing they job, instead of firing them, they get taught how to do better. Maybe they don't have free massages for the workers, but the workers are treated like human beings, who have judgement and capabilities, and they get their fair share.
I suggest reading "The Great Game of Business." Although the book is targeted towards management, it completely changed my idea of what a company can be, and it's not a free xbox.
Qxe4
And when a large group of us applied for unemployment, we got more than we should have.
After a few months, we all got a letter from the unemployment office wanting the extra money back. Good luck with that, except I still owe them money and the debt never goes away.
If I ever get laid off again, I can't draw a penny until the original amount is paid off out of what I will draw if I end up unemployed again.
When it was all over, the unemployment office sent me a postcard asking what I thought about my experience with them. I sent them a postcard back that was just short of having a federal marshal knock on my door. If I was at home right now, I would post a copy of it. It was a laugh riot.
transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Dear Microsoft,
It has recently come to my attention that I have needlessly paid licensing fees for multiple OEM licenses relating to use your Windows computer operating system (hereafter referred to as "malware").
I have upon many occassions purchased a computer from a vendor who is in the unfortunate position of being a Microsoft partner. Microsoft has continually discouraged its OEM partners from shipping "naked" (sans operating system) PCs. This has led to the situation where I, as both a consumer and business purchaser of laptop, desktop and server class computer hardware, often find it difficult to avoid paying licensing fees relating to your Malware when I order a new system. This is troubling since I neither want to run, nor to purchase a license enabling me to run your malware.
Furthermore, I have suffered financially for many years as a result of your Malware being installed on the majority of desktop computers. Many of my web site customers are infected with a specific bundled component of your malware ("Internet Explorer"). Supporting this doubles the development and maintainance cost of my companies web site.
I ask that you refund my overpayment on unwanted licenses for your malware and make a further payment in respect of losses incurred by my company due to the "Internet Explorer" component of your malware. The net amount you owe to myself is $60,000 payable by check or money order within 14 days.
Thanks,
Anonymous Coward
c/o slashdot.org
When I quit at Amazon, they actually offered me a legal document (optional, of course) promising them that I wouldn't sue for giving references. If you sign it, they'll allow your manager/coworker to give references, if not they only gave name, rank, and serial number. If you think the references would be good you sign it, if not you don't. I expect to see more companies doing that in the future.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It wasn't their first-ever layoff. Just the first that ever made such a huge media splash.
Oh man, no joke.
Guys used to have mysterious allotments coming out of their LES' now and then, with little recourse to find out other than some pay clerk telling you to do a "pay inquiry". Over-payments, no-pay-due's, all kinds of random stuff that was just inevitable in a paper-and-red-tape bureaucracy.
THL phish sticks
What do you mean it's in my contract? You mean that 50 page thing full of legal jargon? Who has time to read that? I just scrolled down and clicked "I accept."
I see - you mean that legal document by which I am no longer bound* now that the agreement has been terminated by you. kthxbye!
(*) IANAL YMMV E&OE IMHO GTFO STFU
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Yeah, my father was in the Navy and had this kind of thing happen all the time. Once even the other way around, where DFAS paid much less than normal and "caught up" with next month's payment while my parents were scrambling around going WTF.
I hear of this kind of thing much less frequently nowadays though. I joined myself and haven't had problems, although our Chief of the Boat managed to run afoul of a DFAS screwup.
You know, I sometimes have the feeling that if some megacorporation figured out a way to make a profit torturing puppies to death, people like you would say, "Well, you know, they're just honoring their obligations to the shareholders!"
The sad thing is that the people who said that would be correct. In fact, there probably is a corporation out there right now making a profit from torturing puppies (probably a cosmetics company).
Corporations have a legal obligation to make a profit. They do not have a legal obligation to do the right thing. In fact, most seem to think that the legal obligation to turn a profit trumps the legal obligation to follow the law (in nearly every circumstance, if the chance of getting caught * the fine it would have to pay < the ROI from breaking the law, the law gets broken).
Modern corporations need severe public oversight. Or we could nix the public stock market and finally get the Supreme Court to announce "Corporations are not People". I don't think I'll live to see either of these things come to pass.
How is this "greedy" or "cruel" at all? It's roughly the same thing as being given too much change at a store. There are about a half-dozen posts above yours that talk about the government (or is it "greedy corporate American government"?) making exactly the same type of mistake.
Nice that you pointed out that Microsoft is not the first and only company or organization to ever make a payroll error. But where did you come up with the anti-"big evil corporate America! Waaah!" jab, based on this event?
The way a court would view this would have almost entirely to do with what had (or hadn't) been agreed on beforehand. If their employment contract or severance paperwork specified a dollar amount either explicitly or implicitly as a percentage of salary, then they'll need to pay the money back. It is clearly an error in that case, and you agreed to a different amount. It'd be no different than if in a store you accidentally hand a cashier a $100 bill instead of a $10 one for a $10 item. They don't get to keep the extra, they need to give you back $90.
Now if there was no agreement on amount, then MS is probably SOL. If they just said something like "You'll get a severance bonus upon termination," without bothering to state the amount, then the employees can keep what they got. MS will only get it back if the employees are nice about it. However, this situation isn't real likely.
My bet is that they probably did have an agreement in place before hand, most of the time when there's something like this there is a preexisting agreement. In that case, the employees are going to have to give the money back.
It's not just the military. A professor I worked with in college once started getting his entire annual salary on each monthly check. It took him and the department accountant three months of arguing with the university to get it straightened out.
"I'm sorry sir, but when we attempted to verify your prior employment they said they never heard of you."
I think MS got what they deserved here.
Should the employees give it back?
Yes. Anyone who keeps something that doesn't belong to them is an honorless cheating scumbag.
Will they?
Probably not. What possible leverage does MS have to make the employees do what they should? The ex-employees have no reason, other than honor, to give it back. MS has no leverage, they shot themselves in the foot.
Personally, I think that all the workers who don't cough up the dough are just exploiting microsoft's blunder to advantage themselves.
However, since MS has exploited weakness to make itself stronger and stabbed its competitors in the soft underbelly (netscape anyone?), I think this is nothing more than a bit of bad karma biting them in the arse.
They really have no choice but to write it off as a blunder. Expecting the ex employees to be honest? Hah, they're lying cheating human beings! What do you expect them to do?
The only way I see MS coming out ahead is by taking people to court over it and tacking on punitive damages for a breach of constructive trust. Knowingly keeping or disposing of property that isn't yours is called conversion.
MS screwed itself over and needs to let it go because of the bad PR that fighting karma will create. But those folks who kept the overpayment for themselves are a bunch of dirty rotten cheaters and should be ashamed of themselves.
And the nincompoop in the payroll department? A ripe target for both a canning and a negligence suit owing to breach of fiduciary duty. This is really the only person I see MS able to go after without a major karmic backlash. If the action was deliberate, then it's embezzling and he/she deserves jail time.
But they overpaid them by giving them copies of XP.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This sort of thing happens all the time, banks overpay, payroll overpays, people overpay. It happens, if you get called out on it, you are legally and morally obligated to return the money(personally I tend to point out the mistake if I see it being made as well, but that's me).
Is it a little petty to be going after terminated employees if the amounts are fairly trivial? Yeah. Do we know that the amounts are trivial? No. Remember an average of an extra grand per employee is 1.4 million dollars, not exactly pocket change, even to Microsoft.
Companies do this all the time, it's part interacting with human beings who can and do make mistakes. If anyone other than Microsoft had done this, the article wouldn't have been written.
Usually, the "official" termination date occurs at the end of the severance period. Most companies retain the "right" to recall you from your enforced sabbatical during that period.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_related_to_Microsoft
You mean the "Get The Facts" study that, like all the others, has been widely ridiculed for its inaccuracy? Try actually producing a good product instead of resorting to misinformation to get sales.
Sam ty sig.
The affected employees should repay Microsoft in the form of coupons that Microsoft can exchange for their services in the future.
That was no accident, it's part of the stimulus package.
It might be bad PR, but why is it bad morals?
it's a slippery slope. one day you're overpaying employees you've fired, the next day you're stabbing hobos to death.
were one of the unlucky ones laid off from work, I would really like to say the words, "So sue me," and not return the money. But, to take the ethical high ground and pay back the money is really the best course of action because it makes you look like the good guy. You will be more apt to be considered for rehire. I dislike M$ intensely but I won't stoop to ethics violations .... including pirating M$ software. Returning the money only makes you smell like a rose. I know that those laid off are suffering, but, at least you aren't alone. The suffering is widespread and getting worse by the week. The only silver lining to this cloud is that the government needs to pay attention to the plight of the working class and middle class because the adverse economic conditions are so widespread. The unemployed are no longer a statistical minority, and while sad, will actually help in the long run.
A bureaucracy is neither evil, good, nor even conscious; it just seems that way. Who said, "never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity"? They call bureaucracies "mindless" for a reason.
I think one could make a good argument for bureaucracies exhibiting consciousness. I think that they long ago reached the point that computerized AI will reach in the future, but with humans and rules as their brains. It's always fascinating to see a bureaucracy do something that no one within it wants or understands, and it happens more than one might expect.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I initially read that as "furries", which made this article VERY disturbing...
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
At least how many digits we're talking about...
Most fonts keep numbers monospaced. Other characters in the fonts may have variable widths, but almost all fonts keep numbers the same width. This has to do with lining numbers up in columns when doing reports.
I measure about six pixels per number. The zip code is about 30 pixels wide (6 pixels x 5 digits = 30).
The blanked out area is 42 pixels wide. Now some of that is two spaces and a decimal point. Spaces look about 4 pixels and a decimal point is probably 2 or 3 pixels (it's hard to tell since the document was scanned in anti-aliased). That leaves 42 pixels - 3 pixels (decimal) - 8 pixels (spaces). About 32 pixels, or about 5 digits. Put 2 on one side of the decimal, and that leaves a number between $100 and $999 as an overpayment.
Actually, this sounds about right for a math error of this type, and isn't too unusual based upon the complexities of this type of payout which includes includes considering the base salary, bonus payouts, unused vacations, unused sick leave, years in service, ranking, etc. Add in some government specific stuff, 401K vestments, stock plans, and who knows what else, and you can see how complex this can get.
Still, it's hard to understand all of this: Microsoft laid off 1,400 people. If each of them received what seemed to be about $1000 in overpay, you're talking about $1.4 million dollars at the very most. If the average mistake was $300 and only 1/2 the people got that, you're talking about $200,000 (a more likely, but still quite large sum).
Heck, the paper work alone to send out these letters and to track them probably costs Microsoft more -- not to mention the bad will and publicity it'll generate.
...YOU pay Microsoft severance!
Direct click from the get the facts web page, you click on case studies, you get this message. I took that screenshot about two years ago, I really doubt they've kept their whole web site laid out exactly the same this whole time. Now you have me wondering though, how does malice exchange places with incompetence? I fail to see how anything here can be atributed to malice aside from your idiocy comment, which only shows your own. Check the date it was posted to photobucket, then tell me if you really believe the link from that day will still be valid toady.
You are correct in all but one minor point. They do not have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholder's profit margins. They have a fiduciary responsibility. This does not necessarily mean 'financial'. It actually means that they have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholder. I will concede that it is generally assumed that by default the best thing for the shareholder is to make as much profit as possible, but it does not have to be the case. For example, most HOAs are in fact corporations. The board of most HOAs must follow their fiduciary responsibility which is assumed to be making the living conditions as good as possible. It is not assumed to be making as much profit as possible.
Other than that, You are correct.
Wow... Government spending equals concentration camps?
- These characters were randomly selected.
Prove it!
Let Microsoft prove it in a court of law that it overpaid them.
Just because a BIG corporate demands money from you doesn't mean you have to bend over.
If i claim Microsoft wasted my money due to faults in its XP, would Microsoft bend over and pay me? NO
They will regretfully inform me of their inability to pay and thank me for my comments.
So, i have to sue them.
Similarly, each such employee should send a simple regret letter expressing their deep regret at microsoft and stating clearly their personal policies prevent them from paying. Neither confirm nor deny you owe them money. State POLICY.
Simple.
Microsoft will spend 10x times the money on lawyers to recover the money from you.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
There's a difference. As an intern, you responsibilites end at the end of your internship. So no one is cracking the whip over your head or forces you to come to work on Saturday (otherwise you won't want to join after you graduate). Once you become an FTE (full-time employee) all of that will change. For one, there will be "stack ranking" where you're ranked against your peers according to the perception that management has of you. If you don't pay attention to "visibility" -- you won't get promoted, no matter how much of a genius you are. You will learn this in about a year or two. Another killer thing is that nowhere does the TEAM performance come into the equation. You're competing solely with your peers for a fixed size pie. The problem with this is that someone has to get a shitty review score in order for someone else to get a good review score. If all members of your team are good, you may have to whore yourself to the management in order to get promoted. But that won't be easy either, because your team members are not stupid, and they're doing the same thing.
This is how FTEs are forced into overtime, ridiculous schedules, and other unreasonable demands. Needless to say, this shit doesn't work on interns, since they couldn't care less if they get a promo.
After about 2 or 3 years there I figured things out and started acting accordingly. I maintained a reasonable, albeit not outstanding, promotion velocity while flat out refusing to work weekends and overtime (except in the final stretch of the shipping cycle). I did good work, I kept my manager (and skip-level manager) informed, and I set the expectations beforehand with each new team I moved to.
That said, the endless fucking performance review cycle did me in and I decided to go somewhere where I'd be actually focused on my job, not on keeping everyone informed.
I did learn a TON, though, both about software engineering and about corporate life (or, shall we say, warfare). I can't recommend Microsoft highly enough for someone who's just out of college, if only for 2 or 3 years.
Don't make a mistake of staying longer. The compensation system is engineered in such a way that you really start liking the numbers in your paycheck at around 3 or 4 year mark. Stash away some cash and move on.
You should have got your cat to accept for you.
How do you read your taskbar? :|
Sam ty sig.
I'm not sure if that indicates superior marketing skills, or just the general idiocy of the population ?
The idiocy of the population is there and it makes such things possible but in order to be the only brainwasher (or the major one), like MS, you need the superior marketing skills.
ics
Hey, someone has to release the mosquitoes. They dont get out of the jar by themselves.
Usually, the "official" termination date occurs at the end of the severance period. Most companies retain the "right" to recall you from your enforced sabbatical during that period.
This is not accurate. Severance is a post-employment payment and does not occur until after your termination of employment. As such, companies do not retain the right to recall an employee to work. They do on occasion enfore certain other rights during severance such as non-compete (where allowed, and sometimes even where not allowed), non-disparagement, non-solicitation, etc. Assuming Microsoft has completed all payments to individuals and now wants to recoup, they are likely going to have a hard time doing so as it will require the willing agreement of the person who got the payment - and how likely is that. Without voluntary repayment, they will have no recourse other than to sue, and that would likely end up being a big drain on resources, cost more than it would recoup and big a huge PR disaster.
Oh man, no joke.
Guys used to have mysterious allotments coming out of their LES' now and then, with little recourse to find out other than some pay clerk telling you to do a "pay inquiry". Over-payments, no-pay-due's, all kinds of random stuff that was just inevitable in a paper-and-red-tape bureaucracy.
Ah yes, I remember the "good old days" of my first enlistment (87-93) how we used to joke about the "Lies and Exaggerations Statement". I never had any expenses beyond beer and cigarettes, so the "surprises" never hurt me, but I watched a lot of married guys with kids go through hell. It was so regularly F'd up that our company commander at Ft Hood had to borrow three bucks from me for lunch off base because he'd loaned all his spare money to a guy whose LES had come up ZERO with a wife and screaming baby (or was it a screaming wife and baby?) to contend with. I suppose DFAS fixed a lot of it, but I never paid much attention on my second active duty period (2001-2003)... I just came home and found a bunch of unspent money in my account.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
About 90% of the (Anonymous) commenters at MiniMSFT. - The notorious bitchy insider blog.
As expected in a company that size, at the lower levels one is expendable, and any higher up one's energy is entirely consumed with political survival.
This may help explain the quality of the product, management and strategy that we have been seeing for the last few years...
you had me at #!
When's it going to declare itself Comrade Adam Selene and help us plan the Revolution?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.