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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)
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.
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..."
they risk bad publicity to get the overpayment back
You think MS cares about bad press anymore? In my recent memory... The Zune date bug, the failure of many 360s, DRM schemes in everything, the disaster that was Vista, and the meh responses from the media for any of their new endeavors.
I honestly don't think that MS has any more credibility to ruin.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
They probably won't need luck if the following happened. Paperwork is drawn up stating that the terminated employee gets paid $2,000. Supervisor and employee sign off on that sum. Retard typing in the info for the check keys in $20,000 instead of $2,000.
The employee can't possibly think that he/she actually deserves the extra $18,000 after agreeing to the original sum.
I understand completely then. Sometimes I find Excel gives me non-trivial rounding errors too.
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.
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.
Nah, I bet their accounting staff are using Excel, and came across another bug such as this one.
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.
I don't have any strong evidence, but it sounded more to me like their methods for calculating what a person should be paid was just discovered to be faulty. If it really were some sort of entry error into their payment systems it seems like it should be one or two very isolated cases. When combined with that line that "some laid off employees were also undercompensated," it paints a picture for me of a broken formula. The fact that they call it an "administrative error" rather than "accounting error" also points me in that direction.
As such, these people probably agreed to the package that they ultimately received. If Microsoft actually had any right to collect the over-payments, they probably would have said so in the letter to ensure greater initial compliance--even if they ultimately had no intention to go after the money with the lawyers.
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
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!
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.
But they overpaid them by giving them copies of XP.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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.
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!
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.