even people who like traveling rarely want to spend 80% of their income on it
Two additional perspectives for looking at how much we should expect this to be a bad deal:
Spending 80% of your income on traveling is uncommon, but spending 80% of your income on housing, food, and transportation while paying a premium for living in a desirable location is actually pretty common among young professionals?
After graduating college I spent several months washing dishes for ~$200/wk, because I wanted to spend the summer at at a camp that charged vacationers ~$800/wk. I knew what I was getting into, had a good time, and don’t feel like I was exploited.
I think “Chloe made an informed decision to do this” is a reasonable argument. I don’t think the evidence so far proves that was what happened[1], but if proven I’d agree it answered my concern on this front.
But if that’s the argument, why bring up the amount Nonlinear spent on her at all? The question would be whether they covered the agreed upon expenses to the agreed upon level (no promising luxury housing and delivering tenements- admittedly unlikely to be the problem here- and no promising medical care and then arguing about necessary expenses- and it sounds like there was ambiguity on what would be covered there). Nonlinear could spend less than projections while still following the agreement and it would be fine.
If you are calculating expenses, it’s a mess. Many people do spend 80%+ of their income on housing, food, medical, etc, but you still can’t count $1 on housing your employer chose as equivalent to $1 on housing you chose. It’s (probably) not $0 either, housing is housing, but figuring out the discount factor is hard even when everyone feels good about the situation. Figuring it out now seems impossible.
As I see it the options are:
Nonlinear and Chloe agreed she’d be paid travel expenses + a stipend. The $ total of the expenses is irrelevant as long as they covered what they said they would.
Nonlinear led Chloe to believe she’d be paid $N in salary, and then coerced or tricked her into accepting expenses + stipend. The dollar value of the expenses is irrelevant here too.
Nonlinear and Chloe agreed she’d be paid a stipend plus $70k/year in travel and living expenses, with most living choices made by Nonlinear. This agreement begs for trouble. How do you divide expenses? Do you split the airbnb evenly? By bedroom? Is it fair Kat + Emerson get a discount for sharing a room when they’re dating? What happens when Chloe’s boyfriend visits? How much does Chloe value that trip to St Barts when what she wanted was a day away from her job? How do you check if the boss is reporting honestly? This is the scenario in which actual expenses incurred are most relevant, but it’s such a doomed agreement I can’t bring myself to care.
The contract looks pretty clear, but by Kat’s own account Chloe seemed to be operating under a different set of beliefs while working. This might be a reading comprehension issue on her part, but I think there’s a lot of room for her to feel misled by verbal statements made earlier. Or by the job listing, which lists compensation as $60k-$100k/year without mentioning much of it will be paid in travel.
Nonlinear and Chloe agreed she’d be paid travel expenses + a stipend. The $ total of the expenses is irrelevant as long as they covered what they said they would.
That’s currently my view, yes. The evidence NL has provided for this (contract, texts, transcript) seems pretty strong to me, and while I could imagine Chloe presenting counter evidence (was never sent the contract, screenshots are misleadingly cropped) it’s not what I’m expecting?
EDIT: But thanks for pointing out the job ad: if a role is advertised that way and someone applies expecting that I’d think there would be more than NL has said on the way to ending up with the arrangement they seem to have gone with. I’ve now asked Kat about it.
EDIT2: The job ad bit is all a red herring: it’s post-Chloe and the original one just said “amount dependent on role fit and employee needs”.
why bring up the amount Nonlinear spent on her at all?
Isn’t it Ben and Chloe who are bringing this up? And then NL is engaging because the amount spent does seem to matter to some people?
Her correctly explaining in her own words how the compensation package works seems like more than enough evidence that she understood the compensation package she was signing up for. The fact that we also sent her a work contract and also recorded the original conversation in question and you can see it yourself I think proves more than can usually ever be proven in such cases that she made an informed decision about the compensation package.
FYI, when I click on some proportion (possibly 100%?) of these links to the Google doc (including the links in your comment here) it just takes me to the very start of Google doc, the beginning of the contents section, and I can’t always figure out which section to click on. Possibly a mobile issue with Google docs, but thought I should let you know 🙂
Thanks for letting me know! Strange. It shouldn’t be doing that. Usually if you wait a couple of seconds, it’ll jump to the right section. It’s working on both my mobile and laptop.
If you try waiting a couple seconds and that doesn’t work, let me know. Maybe DM me and then we can troubleshoot, then we can post the solution up when we figure it out.
Thanks for checking! Have now figured out the issue, the thing I described was happening when Google docs opened in safari (which I knew), but I’ve now gotten it to open in the app proper.
The “spending 80% on travel” is quit misleading, because it comes from counting AirBnB costs as “travel” expenses. That would make sense if they were just traveling for a short period of time, say, to go to an EAG, but if you only live in AirBnBs, then counting that as travel instead of rent seems misleading.
If that’s true, I have spent $0 on housing in the last 4 years, and that doesn’t seem right.
If you don’t count housing as a travel expense, then it comes to only 6% on travel, which is pretty reasonable given that we literally travel full-time.
(Also, it’s irrelevant because rent shouldn’t count as travel expenses, but even if we did count it, it would still only come out to 68%, not 80%. I don’t know where this 80% is coming from.)
Two additional perspectives for looking at how much we should expect this to be a bad deal:
Spending 80% of your income on traveling is uncommon, but spending 80% of your income on housing, food, and transportation while paying a premium for living in a desirable location is actually pretty common among young professionals?
After graduating college I spent several months washing dishes for ~$200/wk, because I wanted to spend the summer at at a camp that charged vacationers ~$800/wk. I knew what I was getting into, had a good time, and don’t feel like I was exploited.
I think “Chloe made an informed decision to do this” is a reasonable argument. I don’t think the evidence so far proves that was what happened[1], but if proven I’d agree it answered my concern on this front.
But if that’s the argument, why bring up the amount Nonlinear spent on her at all? The question would be whether they covered the agreed upon expenses to the agreed upon level (no promising luxury housing and delivering tenements- admittedly unlikely to be the problem here- and no promising medical care and then arguing about necessary expenses- and it sounds like there was ambiguity on what would be covered there). Nonlinear could spend less than projections while still following the agreement and it would be fine.
If you are calculating expenses, it’s a mess. Many people do spend 80%+ of their income on housing, food, medical, etc, but you still can’t count $1 on housing your employer chose as equivalent to $1 on housing you chose. It’s (probably) not $0 either, housing is housing, but figuring out the discount factor is hard even when everyone feels good about the situation. Figuring it out now seems impossible.
As I see it the options are:
Nonlinear and Chloe agreed she’d be paid travel expenses + a stipend. The $ total of the expenses is irrelevant as long as they covered what they said they would.
Nonlinear led Chloe to believe she’d be paid $N in salary, and then coerced or tricked her into accepting expenses + stipend. The dollar value of the expenses is irrelevant here too.
Nonlinear and Chloe agreed she’d be paid a stipend plus $70k/year in travel and living expenses, with most living choices made by Nonlinear. This agreement begs for trouble. How do you divide expenses? Do you split the airbnb evenly? By bedroom? Is it fair Kat + Emerson get a discount for sharing a room when they’re dating? What happens when Chloe’s boyfriend visits? How much does Chloe value that trip to St Barts when what she wanted was a day away from her job? How do you check if the boss is reporting honestly? This is the scenario in which actual expenses incurred are most relevant, but it’s such a doomed agreement I can’t bring myself to care.
The contract looks pretty clear, but by Kat’s own account Chloe seemed to be operating under a different set of beliefs while working. This might be a reading comprehension issue on her part, but I think there’s a lot of room for her to feel misled by verbal statements made earlier. Or by the job listing, which lists compensation as $60k-$100k/year without mentioning much of it will be paid in travel.
That’s currently my view, yes. The evidence NL has provided for this (contract, texts, transcript) seems pretty strong to me, and while I could imagine Chloe presenting counter evidence (was never sent the contract, screenshots are misleadingly cropped) it’s not what I’m expecting?
EDIT: But thanks for pointing out the job ad: if a role is advertised that way and someone applies expecting that I’d think there would be more than NL has said on the way to ending up with the arrangement they seem to have gone with. I’ve now asked Kat about it.
EDIT2: The job ad bit is all a red herring: it’s post-Chloe and the original one just said “amount dependent on role fit and employee needs”.
Isn’t it Ben and Chloe who are bringing this up? And then NL is engaging because the amount spent does seem to matter to some people?
My original comment is pushing back against habryka doing so.
Whoops, thanks! Lost the thread here...
The evidence that she made an informed decision are:
Interview transcripts where you can see how we explained it to her. We recorded the actual conversation in question, so you don’t have to try to guess
Work contract
Text messages she herself sent before joining us showing that she understood how the compensation package worked
Her correctly explaining in her own words how the compensation package works seems like more than enough evidence that she understood the compensation package she was signing up for. The fact that we also sent her a work contract and also recorded the original conversation in question and you can see it yourself I think proves more than can usually ever be proven in such cases that she made an informed decision about the compensation package.
Your document says you sent the contract to Chloe 6 days after her start date. When did she sign it?
FYI, when I click on some proportion (possibly 100%?) of these links to the Google doc (including the links in your comment here) it just takes me to the very start of Google doc, the beginning of the contents section, and I can’t always figure out which section to click on. Possibly a mobile issue with Google docs, but thought I should let you know 🙂
Thanks for letting me know! Strange. It shouldn’t be doing that. Usually if you wait a couple of seconds, it’ll jump to the right section. It’s working on both my mobile and laptop.
If you try waiting a couple seconds and that doesn’t work, let me know. Maybe DM me and then we can troubleshoot, then we can post the solution up when we figure it out.
Thanks for checking! Have now figured out the issue, the thing I described was happening when Google docs opened in safari (which I knew), but I’ve now gotten it to open in the app proper.
Good points! Added some more points here as well.
The “spending 80% on travel” is quit misleading, because it comes from counting AirBnB costs as “travel” expenses. That would make sense if they were just traveling for a short period of time, say, to go to an EAG, but if you only live in AirBnBs, then counting that as travel instead of rent seems misleading.
If that’s true, I have spent $0 on housing in the last 4 years, and that doesn’t seem right.
If you don’t count housing as a travel expense, then it comes to only 6% on travel, which is pretty reasonable given that we literally travel full-time.
(Also, it’s irrelevant because rent shouldn’t count as travel expenses, but even if we did count it, it would still only come out to 68%, not 80%. I don’t know where this 80% is coming from.)