Thread by @GergelyOrosz

Manager: "Your bonus this is $X."

Dev: "Umm... it should have been exactly $3X."

M: "No, the target is $X."

D: "No, my recruiter said I would get at least $3X."

M: ".."

D: "I have it in writing."

That manager was me, and this was a story of being burnt by a rouge recruiter.

The recruiter did put it in writing... in an email from the company domain, never shared with anyone else at the company.

This was about a year earlier, and the recruiter was long gone by then. Having left with the reputation of "The King of Closing Candidates."

Now I knew how.

So when you hear the advice "get it in writing", make sure to get it in writing AND COPY YOUR FUTURE MANAGER or other non-recruiters at the company.

Rouge recruiters exist, and getting it in writing will only help expose this unfortunate fact.

Also: get it in the contract.

This was a standalone email.

The contract did not have anything related to this. The dev said "but this one email.."

It's not a contract you signed. It was a promise from a recruiter - that was not even true, or shared with anyone at the company!

And yes, contents of contracts need to be honored.

A company put a promise in contracts on bonuses that they then did not meet... until people brought out their contracts.

The company paid up, as it was in the contract.

If it's not in the contract: it's not a shared agreement.

This situation is different in a small vs big company.

Small companies can easily honour stuff like this.

This was at a massive company that had strict policies. So even though as a manager I tried to make it right: legal reviewed and assessed "it's not in the contract."

"This person could have sued."

No, because the contract had a very specific term to protect against anything *not* in the contract, for any similar instances: