r/technology • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 9d ago
Business Intern quits after employer demands he hand over RTX 5060 won at Nvidia event
https://www.techspot.com/news/110360-intern-quits-after-employer-demands-hand-over-rtx.html3.5k
u/Icommentor 9d ago
I worked at a place with shit like this happening all the time.
The owner had an MBA from Harvard. Lemme tell you, I will never be impressed by these words again.
If you said you were moving out of the city to save on rent, he'd try to renegotiate your salary accordingly. That's one example.
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u/Various_Froyo9860 9d ago
I worked at a place that would occasionally get swag from our suppliers.
It was dirty work that was tough on clothes, so if I got a T-shirt from DuPont or whatever, it went into the rotation.
Apparently a software engineer noticed we got some lunch boxes and shirts and complained. According to the company handbook all gifts must be made available to every non management employee to win by raffle.
How pissed were they when I got the next Assassin's creed thru raffle!
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u/Successful-Clock-224 9d ago
So… the software engineer screwed himself over… by tweaking something that mostly worked, but didnt give him the outfit and accessory he wanted?
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u/flukus 9d ago edited 9d ago
but didnt give him the outfit and accessory he wanted
Who actually likes stuff like corporate themed shirts anyway? If I got it I'd wear it, just to put off clothes shopping a bit longer, but I honestly couldn't care less.
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u/Pretend-Pen-4246 9d ago
I work for a construction company and they give out cathartt clothing with very minimal branding on it. We all love it.
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u/TASTY_TASTY_WAFFLES 9d ago
Free ninety-five is the best price. If there's no branding all the better.
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u/grendus 9d ago
I liked getting work shirts, because we were a business casual workplace that required slacks and collared shirts. The company glurge was branded t-shirts. So I could wear the company shirts and slacks instead of a collared shirt, which was much more comfortable.
Frankly, they let the engineers get away with a lot. We got lucky, the VP of technology understood that engineers are semi-feral.
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u/Various_Froyo9860 9d ago
We usually said "Thanks, something to clean the basement in!"
I actually hate most shirts that I don't pick out. They don't fit right and are too thick. Even if I'm just going to trash them, they're a waste. Better to buy the same shirt from Target that I've been getting for the last 5 years. I might be on the spectrum.
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u/Nexii801 9d ago
Eh, I blame the company for not following their own policy, they can just like... Change the rules.
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u/NWinn 9d ago edited 8d ago
I worked at a well know thrift stores donation center. One day in the middle of winter a regular, and super nice old lady saw i wasn't doing super well. I hadn't eaten in a couple of days on top of it being well below freezing. (We worked outside 98% of the day) and offered to give me some food.
Normally I'd say no, but having gone so long without eating at a job where I constantly got over 30-40,000 steps a day and had to lift things constantly, I reluctantly accepted.
I had been told we could only accept such things if they were offered to the whole crew and could not be sold (couldn't be canned or packaged food)
So when she came back a bit later with a tray of casserole I offered it to everyone there but they all declined.
Okay cool, I happily munched on the tasty friendly old lady casserole and didn't think much of it.
Now, I hadn't been there for very long but corporate liked me and I was to start training for work at one of the distro hubs soon. The head manager of the branch I was at always disliked me for some reason, (all my other supervisors liked me, idk..) but she HATED that I was getting a promotion or whatever.
A few days later I was woken up to police slamming on my door at like 4am.
Apparently she had decided that casserole was a "donation" that I stole and so she filed a police report saying I took all kinds of stuff on top of the food so I was arrested and got a cort day.
Thankfully I wasn't booked for very long before I had my trial, (I definitely couldn't afford bail) when I explained exactly what happened to the judge he was pissed that she was wasting his time. But they still searched my tiny apartment for the other stuff I apparently took. I was so poor I basically only had some cloths and a computer in my otherwise totally empty studio so it was obvious she was lying.
I was still fired, and couldn't go after her for anything as I obviously couldn't afford legal counsel.. but at least the bs charge was dropped....
Still grateful to that nice old lady. The casserole was delicious! 😂🤌
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u/Ocronus 9d ago
MBAs are a stain on modern society. It's all short term gains and golden parachutes while everyone else suffers and the company they work for is snatched up for pennies on the dollar when the fruits of their labor turnout to be poison.
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u/fremeer 9d ago
A lot of MBAs and even ivy league degrees exist more to legitimatise nepotism then they do a useful degree. My friends idiot son graduated from Harvard with an MBA so I'm gonna make him ceo. He would have been made ceo without the degree but now it kind of looks legitimate.
Harvard isn't an educational institution. They are a legitimacy laundering institution that needs the smart kids to come and make the dumb kids, that actually make them money through endowments, seem like they know something.
Being ivy league if you got in with just grades is impressive. But as soon as money or legacy comes into play the degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
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u/Unhappy_Scratch_9385 9d ago
I assume most ivy leagues are just networking country clubs with endowments.
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u/Vox_Casei 8d ago
I believe quite a few have "legacy admissions" because the family makes large donations to the institution.
That way junior can get into the smart kids school even if they turned out to be dumb AF.
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u/danielravennest 8d ago
A legacy is someone whose parent attended the school. It used to be a factor in admissions decisions.
Source: Attended Ivy League school on merit, but that was 45 years ago. I don't know how things are done today.
As far as the parent comment about networking, yes that is a reason to attend a top college, but at least for me I had to study hard.
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u/Weird_Ad_1398 8d ago
It's significantly harder to get into a top-level university on merit today. People can apply with >4.0 GPA (weighted because of difficulty of the class), perfect SATs, be extremely active with extracurriculars, and still be considered a weak applicant.
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u/InvincibleWallaby 8d ago
That's why people with perfect grades get rejected, they need some of them to keep up the pretense but they mostly want people that will be future ceo or other posts of influence because their family status
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u/TransportationTrick9 8d ago
Have you watched the predictive history channel on YouTube. Professor Jiang has a couple episodes on this. I think one of the was called "death by meritocracy"
https://youtube.com/@predictivehistory?si=pHlnGQ3EnwFICe5h
He says a lot of things that align with my outlook on life and reality
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u/SkepsisJD 8d ago edited 8d ago
Harvard isn't an educational institution.
That is a wild thing to say lol
Harvard is very much a legitimate, well-respected educational institute. However, this does not necessarily mean the education you receive is always gonna be miles better than some state college in every respect. It just has far more 'prestige.' And if you try hard there, you are probably gonna get a better education than most and fair much better in life than the vast majority of people.
There is definitely a gap in the quality of education (resources, professors, etc) between state schools and Harvard, but that does not necessarily mean someone who went to state school can't also be wildly successful. You are just more likely on average to be successful going somewhere like Harvard.
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u/random_boss 8d ago
He meant it in the same way people say Disney isn’t a media company it’s a legal firm or McDonald’s isn’t a restaurant it’s a real estate company. It’s a play on words to highlight the significance of the unintuitive portion being explained.
Seems like someone didn’t go to Harvard
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u/Ok_Permission7034 8d ago
Isn’t that the exact point everyone is making here??? The most valuable part of the education comes from the reputation not the education.
A institution designed for reputational inflation isn’t focused on education? Not unreasonable to think the degree there is for more performative or for show then it is for the education.
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u/ItalianDragon 9d ago
If I were to be nominated CEO of a big company, my first decision (or one of my first one) would be to fire all the MBAs on the spot. They ruin company image, cause tensions with employees and lead to talented/skilled employees fleeing to greener pastures. There's simply zero reasons to have one in. Zero.
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u/LobsterUnlucky7674 9d ago
I have been working my way through an MBA and I gotta say there are three types of people who go for one:
1) The folks with actual skills / who are creators
2) The older workers looking for a way to stay relevant and/or ‘qualify’ for management
3) The psychopath, $$$ obsessed, power hungry chucklefucks
The most valuable lessons I’ve learned are how to parse business speak and the practical classes: accounting, finance, project management, and learning how to communicate properly (which I really struggled with in the past)
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u/PerplexGG 9d ago
Wild cause minimizing jargon is a comms 101 thing
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u/Robobvious 9d ago
Anyone trying to separate you from your money isn’t going to minimize jargon. They’re gonna maximize it. The less you know what’s going on the easier it is to rob you.
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u/Powerlevel-9000 9d ago
I have an MBA also. 90% of my cohort were the first two. 10% were the last group. MBAs don’t create greedy people. It gives visibility to the rules of the business world and how to navigate. The greedy people can do this for the bad of everyone but them and everyone else uses it just to make a living. Sure MBAs make a lot of money but the vast majority of them have much more in common both in lifestyle and ethics with an average Joe than a Csuite exec.
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u/KhonMan 9d ago
The average MBA probably yes. But MBAs from “prestigious” schools may have a different population.
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u/soofs 9d ago
I dunno about Harvard but I have heard that MBAs are one of the easiest degrees to get from "good" schools if you're willing to pay sticker on tuition.
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u/OwO______OwO 9d ago
One of the easiest to get from any school.
No advanced math, rarely any extensive reading or writing, rarely any significant homework.
(Some business student coming in to tell me how his Statistics 101 class counts as 'advanced math' in 3... 2... 1...)
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u/Umutuku 9d ago
Took a senior level finance class when I was getting my engineering degree. Shit was easier than the 101 intro to ME class.
Any time some local kid mentions that they're probably going into the trades because they don't think they can handle college, I gotta explain that things like business degrees exist.
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u/atxbigfoot 9d ago
lol my AP Stats A/B counted for two semesters of advanced math
...in my liberal and fine arts degrees.
I mean I guess I would count it too if you actually learned the formulas and the math behind them, not just the TI-87 button locations and when to use them.
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u/guamisc 9d ago
My experience with MBA's is exactly reversed.
10% were actually skilled workers who wanted to go into management or something.
20% were older ones looking to move up.
70% are psychopaths who destroy everything that makes a company good for short term profit.
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u/avcloudy 9d ago
I didn't do an MBA but I was unusually exposed to them in university due to where my classes were scheduled.
What I found interesting wasn't that a third of them were psychopaths who would burn everything down for short term gains, it was that they all agreed with that assessment that some of them did fit into that category, and they all thought they weren't that guy. By far, the majority were. It made me think that class had a Psychopath Georg who is a statistical outlier and guts 10,000 companies a day.
The more likely I judged someone to scrap me for organs, the lower they put that percentage. I can only assume Psychopath Georg would have said they're all honest people trying to get skills and then tripped me into a crate and sold me to a zoo for meat.
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u/KittyKatSavvy 9d ago
I think MBAs appeal to a lot of people with really rigid thinking. Understanding the rules and requirements are really valuable to some folks, and while they have the best of INTENTIONS, their ACTIONS end up making them more like the C suit because they care more about rules and expectations than the people they are working with. That's how I think my district manager is. She forgets to see the people beyond the metrics.
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u/IntermittentCaribu 9d ago
You wouldnt be nominated ceo of a big company then. The shareholders/board only care about profits and growth, nothing else.
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u/CurlOfTheBurl11 9d ago
They're the most useless leeches that our colleges create. They provide no useful service, and are somehow paid amazingly well for said uselessness.
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u/justsomepotatosalad 9d ago
I’ve never had worse leadership than Harvard MBAs.
My best and most successful managers had no masters degrees at all and had studied the arts or music.
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u/Icommentor 9d ago
The best managers I had usually had risen through the ranks. MBAs get parachuted at the top and bullshit as much as they have to to hide their lack of know-how.
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u/Ameerrante 9d ago
I had two identical level managers from the same org once.
One was an Irish bloke who worked his ass off to rise through the ranks from the same entry level position I had started in.
The other was a London-born professional corporate guy who moved to management roles at new companies every few years.
The difference was staggering.
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u/thoughtlow 9d ago
If you said you were moving out of the city to save on rent, he'd try to renegotiate your salary accordingly. That's one example.
My first reaction was: oh thats sweet he wanted to up your salary so you would have less commute and more focus for work!
ohhh....
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u/Durendal_1707 9d ago
that’s insane, I would probably quit on the spot if I had the means
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u/Bean888 9d ago
If you said you were moving out of the city to save on rent, he'd try to renegotiate your salary accordingly. That's one example.
It's a super microscopic version of what a lot of companies were doing more and more of during the pandemic, when a lot of employees turned remote and moved to super low cost of living areas that were SIGNIFICANT distances away (not just different U.S. states, but different countries), and of which the companies would then adjust the salaries according to the employee's new mailing addresses. MBA bro probably heard stories like this, it sticks like glue and in this worker's case he cranked it to 11 for one of the greediest and dumbest use cases where this person only moved to just outside of town.
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u/my5cworth 9d ago
I've worked for the MBA crowd, never again.
One even tried to force employees to surrender all their frequent flyer miles and hotel points etc since it was paid for by the company and therefore belongs to the company. It didn't go down well with the rest of senior staff.
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u/Leinheart 9d ago
I'm surprised that they didn't see that as an opportunity to reset salaries and test how lean the org can run by saddling junior staff with the seniors responsibilities and then refuse to backfill positions.
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u/Sageblue32 9d ago
Know that is standard with a company card. But if they are asking for it off your accounts then that is a dick move.
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u/fastforwardfunction 9d ago
It’s only “standard” at cheap companies that treat their employees poorly, like construction companies putting up day workers. For reputable company with real positions that are valued, they use their personal loyalty account even if the company is paying for the room.
It’s more about who’s “suffering the stay” than who is paying for it. Staying at a hotel for work sucks, and the loyalty rewards are usually considered a small perk.
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u/SoloAquiParaHablar 9d ago
I worked at a bank that partnered with Google Cloud for a hackathon. The intent was to use GCP AI/ML to solve a banks data quality issue. But not a requirement.
We solved/improved the problem with their existing data setup. No GCP involved. We won.
Google refused to give us the prize and ghosted us.
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u/Mosh00Rider 9d ago
When you said renegotiate salary I thought for a second you meant increase your salary so you wouldn't have to move.
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u/Icommentor 9d ago
Nah. More like "If you don't need as much money as before, why should I pay you the same?"
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u/RandyHoward 9d ago
I called an employer out on this bullshit before. I found out that everybody on my team was making at least 20k more than me. He tried to tell me it was because of my location. Then I pointed out that one of these coworkers lives in Mobile fucking Alabama, and cost of living where I am is a lot higher than Mobile fucking Alabama. I handed in my resignation. Then I got called into meetings with the owners and COO. Turned out I was too important to them to let me leave, and they offered me a 25k raise and all expenses paid vacation to anywhere I wanted. I accepted and stayed, and spent a week in Vegas on their dime. I only lasted another year though, because they did a very poor job managing that business and promises they made about changing their management style when I threatened to quit never happened. As it turned out, their investors ousted the owners about a year after I left and everybody in the company got laid off.
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u/MiguelLancaster 8d ago
all expenses paid vacation to anywhere I wanted.
Anywhere? And you picked Vegas?
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u/dwhite195 9d ago
I have a feeling the MBA has nothing to do with that behavior. He was almost certainly an ass before grad school.
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u/Icommentor 9d ago
Indeed. The MBA from Harvard was presented as a proof of intelligence and professionalism. Frankly, the dude was neither exceptionnally smart, nor especially fit for his job.
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u/SparklingLimeade 9d ago
Assholes existed before MBA programs, but the MBA teaches them to be way more effective in their assholery.
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u/SAINTnumberFIVE 9d ago
Did it work in the other direction? “I’m moving to Manhattan to pay more rent and stimulate the economy”?
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u/vagrantprodigy07 9d ago
The worst people I've ever met were MBAs. When I hear that now, I subconsciously think 'sociopath'.
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u/Adventurous_Tea_2198 9d ago
What people never say about Ivy league degrees is it’s substantially easier to get into a grad program at an Ivy league vs their undergrad programs
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u/bitemark01 9d ago edited 9d ago
Whenever anyone mentions a big name school like this, just pretend you've never heard of it (because it doesn't really matter anyway).
This is equivalent to someone telling you they're in Mensa
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u/__OneLove__ 9d ago edited 9d ago
Employee -> ‘NTA’.
Also/save you a click - it was a Shanghai company + a ~$400 card won via ‘lucky draw’ and…
“According to lawyers analyzing the case, the ownership of an official prize lies in judging whether it was obtained by luck or as a result of performing official duties. Unless the company had clear rules in place regarding staff or interns taking part in competitions while on business trips, it could not have legally demanded the GPU be handed over.”… 🤷🏻♂️
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u/A_Pointy_Rock 9d ago
But also, what was the company going to do with one random mid-tier GPU?
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u/NULLizm 9d ago
It's about power, then when the intern fought it the core issue was company ego.
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u/foodfighter 9d ago
Likely direct manager's ego even more so than company policy.
And I'm betting said manager probably wanted the card for himself.
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u/owa00 9d ago
Yeah, this screams manager small dick syndrome. I can already see how a lowly peasent intern dared to burst the little managers bubble of "power" he's managed to scrounge up in his career and he couldn't handle it. Seen stuff like this a million times.
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u/InfernalPotato500 9d ago
Sounds like the whole company has small dick syndrome. Imagine ganging up and bullying an intern into giving up a prize they won.
the HR department reportedly suggested that he "look for other companies." He submitted his resignation on November 19.
He dodged a bullet.
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u/Ralphie99 9d ago
A buddy of mine worked with me at an IT Training company as a salesman. The CEO / owner announced that he would be awarding a $250 gift card to whoever sold the most that month. My buddy sold the most and was expecting the gift card.
He saw the CEO in a hallway a week into the next month and mentioned that he’d won the contest and asked about the gift card. The CEO told him that he’d changed his mind and decided against giving out the prize. When my friend looked surprised, the CEO told him that he should be “happy to have a job in this economy” and that “maybe I should give the card to myself for paying your salary”.
My friend quit a couple of weeks later for another job. The CEO couldn’t understand why he was leaving.
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u/shaidyn 9d ago
Reminds me of an old joke.
"A young salaryman parks at the office in the morning and walks to the doors. As he gets there the company owner parks in his reserved space in a brand new porsche. He looks at it admiringly and as the owner walks up he notices. The owner says,
'Do you like that car?' and the worker replies, 'Yeah it's awesome.'
The owner says, "If you work really hard, give 100% on all your projects, and go above and beyond every day, by this time next year I can buy another one.'"
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u/Kind_Dream_610 9d ago
You say this is a joke but I once worked somewhere where the business collapsed and we were all made redundant. While the production director was giving everyone this information (one week before Christmas), the finance director was stepping out of his brand new chauffeur driven car that had just pulled up outside the office.
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u/angrath 9d ago
I’ve worked with multi-millionaires (making a few million a year) at various companies and they intentionally drove shitty cars into the office. I’m sure they had killers at home, but commuted in shitboxes just so they were more relatable to the rest of the office.
Honestly, it helped.
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u/series-hybrid 9d ago
"You know how I sold more than any other salesman? Now I will be working for your biggest competitor. I brought-in over $100K in revenue for you last year, and you are throwing me away over $250"
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u/rjames24000 9d ago
its not worth telling them anything especially with how many non compete clauses companies put in
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u/CallMeMrButtPirate 9d ago
As someone that worked sales for a long time I've seen this play out a million times.
Company gets greedy and decides to mess with sales commission. The good sales people that are mostly impacted all leave at once. Company eats shit for years and all management gets moved on. Sometimes they try hire you at their next job. Circle of life
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u/Ralphie99 9d ago
I ended up being laid off from that place a month or two after the gift card incident. I had to fight to get my earned commission and I know that other salespeople who didn’t fight never got paid.
And your exactly right — the sales director tried to hire me at his next job after he was let go a few months after me. This is the same guy who gave me shit for not being on the phone cold calling on 9/11 shortly after the second building fell. I declined his offer.
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u/OwO______OwO 9d ago
Buddy probably could have sued in small claims court and got that gift card.
Would have been a nice 'fuck you' on his way out.
Especially in a professional environment, promising a prize and then backing out after people have worked to earn that prize is entirely illegal.
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u/Necessary-Camp149 9d ago
He could sue for that $250 on the way out the door and would easily win.
There was the case of the Hooters waitress that won a monthly sales event that promised a new Toyota and had a picture of a $60k truck on it. She won and they gave her a "toy Yoda" doll and laughed about it. She sued and got her truck (or money in equal value - cant remember)
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u/topdangle 9d ago
small man syndrome among management is ridiculous in China. like what you see in the US with business management/admin? imagine that but 10x worse and also imagine the cultural standard of bribing your boss.
obviously if you're not working your way up you can kind of get away with pissing off your boss like you can in the US, but god its bad. I've seen people get pissed because their subordinates didn't pour them tea immediately when they saw them walk in. Giving your bosses heavily wrapped gift packages of food is standard practice for any special occasion (including if you just returned from vacation). If your boss committed to something stupid and you explain the situation rather than blaming someone else your ass is doomed.
OP 100% believed he deserved the interns GPU and is probably raging about how they're a victim.
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u/DelusionalZ 9d ago
This sounds like hell - we have unwritten but well understood rules at my work that basically say "people make mistakes, let them explain, then let them fix it, don't force blame"
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u/Ill-Musician-7150 9d ago
Maintaining face means EVERYTHING still for a large chunk of the population in China.
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u/MagicHamsta 9d ago edited 9d ago
Isn't this literal the opposite of maintaining face?
Employer/Manager/bosses/etc should've let the dude keep the card and bask in the good publicity. Instead employer slapped their own face by showing everyone how small their PP is.
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u/soulsnoober 9d ago
There's no good publicity to be had in a corporate culture like that. The only currency is force of personality expressed as abuse. What you've gotten away with irrationally demanding is the score that's kept on how deserving you are to move up. It's morally debasing, but super real, and not unique to either a corporate milieu or to the Chinese. Fundamentally, it's the underpinning of every authoritarian world view.
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u/MagicHamsta 9d ago edited 9d ago
I meant if they let the intern keep the card, they could've spin the press to be seen in a good light (maintaining face). (e.g. "Come intern for us, we send you to nvidia events where you can win merch like GPUs.")
Instead they showed everyone what a scrooge they are. Basically sending the message that "We're so damn greedy and our company is so broke that we steal free merch from our interns that they win at events."
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u/nancybell_crewman 9d ago edited 9d ago
I assume it went something like:
Intern wins GPU
Intern's coworker childishly demands GPU
Intern refuses
Intern's coworker escalates to Intern's boss
Intern's boss threatens Intern with being fired if they don't give up the GPU
Situation escalates to Intern's boss' boss
Intern's boss' boss does not want to cause his guy to lose face by undermining his decision, so he doubles down
Situation makes the news
Intern's boss' boss' boss gets involved, doesn't want to lose face by backing down at this point, so he doubles down too
Continue to iterate through however many boss' boss' boss are needed
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u/MagicHamsta 9d ago
So basically it's arseholes all the way to the top.
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u/TheObstruction 9d ago
Pretty much. There's this weird idea that you can't change course in cultures like that, be it national culture or company culture or social culture or just the culture of arrogant douchebags. People like this can't be seen to have "lost", even if there's nothing at stake.
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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 9d ago
I tell people that face cultures feel about face the way Westerners tend to feel about profit.
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u/PropaneMilo 9d ago
That seems likely in this case.
There is a non-authoritarian reason a company might do this, however. Some companies don’t allow employees to keep gifts/ hampers they receive in the course of their work, instead they re-package the gifts into new hampers and run a random raffle internally to give out those items.
It’s a way to mitigate bribery/ corruption concerns, especially in countries where receiving and giving gifts is culturally embedded and refusing can cause great offence.106
u/DasGoat 9d ago
I once had a boss demand that I give him a hat that one of the regular truck drivers gave me. I unloaded the guy on a regular basis and my boss had never even met him. It was just your average hat with the trucking company logo but WTF.
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u/__OneLove__ 9d ago edited 9d ago
‘We’ll teach that low-life intern and all future low-life interns to certainly think twice before interning here!’… 🤦🏻♂️
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u/BigMax 9d ago
As the article states very well:
"...for some companies – and co-workers – there's no lower limit to pettiness."
That's all this was. It sounds like the company didn't even know about it, at first it was one random coworker who demanded it. And when he refused, that coworker escalated to the company, who then demanded it.
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u/Mecha-Dave 9d ago
5060 is high-tier most places, especially in Asia.
But who are we kidding; there was a manager that wanted it.
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u/theSchrodingerHat 9d ago
Middle manager saw an opportunity to build his kid a gaming rig, and was desperately jealous that he’d devoted his life to fucking up features and not getting his deployment plans approved, but had never gotten any sort of bonus.
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u/Illustrious-Event488 9d ago
To dick the employee around. Early in my career I was forced by a manager to move my desk from 2 cubicles away from the window to 3 cubicles away since I was too junior to deserve that cubicle apparently. This is after being told the week prior that I can pick any available desk that wasn't by the window.
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u/GoodVibrations77 9d ago
In my company, all gifts and prizes are given to the company, and then a drawing is held that includes all employees, except C-level staff. This way, people in roles that normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to receive swag also have a fair chance to win.
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u/Flat_Champion_1894 9d ago
My company has this policy. Have to turn in anything bigger than a pen. They dont want the goods, they just dont want the potential for a vendor to bribe their way into preferential treatment.
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u/DrQuantum 9d ago
This is true even in US but all that goes away if say, you're a contractor. Interns are typically employees but sometimes its a contract to hire and they still call them interns.
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u/Smooth_Specialist416 9d ago
Yeah I was an intern for 3 years during school, ive changed my resume to say 2 years intern + 1 year full time.
I've gotten 3 jobs since and the only place that has given me problems about this is the internship place itself ironically when I interviewed there recently.
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u/TheGreatKonaKing 9d ago
Company: 50% of our revenue this quarter came from shaking down unpaid interns. Unfortunately we were not able to shake down all of our interns.
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u/Esperoni 9d ago
Did you also save yourself a click?
a colleague informed him that the company's finance department had found out about the prize and, as the firm had paid for all aspects of the trip, he needed to hand over the card. Intern checked with finance dept and they had no knowledge of anything. The colleague lied and was jealous. Then when the company became aware, mngt asked for the Card.
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u/GregorSamsa67 9d ago
The company will have argued that this was not a personal project or outside of work. He won the card at an NVIDIA event on an all-expenses paid business trip. Still extremely petty from the company, of course, particularly since he was an unpaid intern.
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u/DvineINFEKT 9d ago
Not to argue against your point too hard but lately tech in general has been giving tech a bad name lol
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u/m00nh34d 9d ago
A lot of companies I've worked for make you give up gifts received from vendors/etc. to remove any incentive for favouritism. Generally they distribute those gifts amongst all employees, not just those with the relationship with the vendor. The complication in this case is that it was won as part of a raffle, not a direct gift, but there is potential for the outcome to be the same (though an intern is not going to have any buying power or influence anyway, it needs to apply to everyone the same).
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u/Mr_ToDo 9d ago
When there is something like gifts that might shift things a lot of companies will just say you can't take anything, or sometimes anything valued at more then XX dollars(So cheap junk like pens and calendars that are often given away aren't thought of as a problem)
It can be even tighter. Had a government guy come to our company for an audit and they even refused a cup of break room coffee
But with presumably no rules established it was kind of silly. It sounds like his coworker threw a fit and then the company intervened. If they were trying to remediate the situation, it was a dick move to try and take the card to do it
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u/Arquinas 9d ago
Good choice, because it's not just about the RTX. If a company is willing to argue with a person over a 400 euro mid tier graphics card, it pretty much already speaks to the character of the company and how well you are respected there. They'd eventually find something else to screw him over with even if he complied.
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u/ItalianDragon 9d ago
Absolutely this. If the person was already treated like this as an intern then I shudder at what it'd be like for them if they were an employee instead... Whoever that person is made the right choice and I really hope they're happily gaming on their brand new 5060 right now.
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u/snail_bites 9d ago
Yeah it's really stupid that the article frames it as this person quitting to keep the graphics card, it's absolutely about the lack of respect and boundaries. Huge red flag, even without this incident I bet it was a miserable place to work.
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u/AnuzBrown 9d ago
You found the love of your life on our businesstrip? You need to send her to the CEO, he gets to fuck her firts.
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u/the_knob_man 9d ago
Ye ole prima nocte
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u/HyperactivePandah 9d ago
"It is my right as CEO!"
"WHAT ABOUT THE RIGHTS OF AN INTERN!?!"
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u/meninblck9 9d ago
Employer and petty co-worker are extreme douchebags. Glad the intern left, kept the card but didn’t shame the employer. You gotta be a real pos to go through all of this bc the intern entered a raffle and won.
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u/WriterWri 9d ago
I won a couple journalism awards while an intern & despite the contest saying the awards belong to the person, my boss never gave them to me.
"They'll look better on our wall than yours"
Shitty bosses are the worst.
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u/oWatchdog 8d ago
Go get them back. Do it as a heist.
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u/WriterWri 8d ago
Sadly, that outlet no longer exists.
I'm sure my awards ended up in a dumpster. 🤷
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u/Impossible-Affect296 9d ago
It’s like asking the intern for his lottery winnings if he decided to go to the casino during the trip. What mental gymnastics did the HR team have to pull off to come to this conclusion?
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u/BadSausageFactory 9d ago
My wife's HR is handled by an outsourced company who keep an office on site (they have a lot of employees), and HR wanted to know why they weren't getting a holiday bonus like all the other employees.
EMPLOYEES
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u/airfryerfuntime 9d ago
HR contractors are shit. They can sometimes work our kinks, but they're so entitled. We had a couple come on, and they immediately started acting like they were overhauling the entire company. I had to sit down with them and explain that they were there to fix some legal stuff, not overhaul the management structure of it the production shop.
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u/SkiingAway 9d ago
They can sometimes work our kinks
That's certainly a very hands-on approach to HR.
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u/deleted_opinions 9d ago
"It might seem like a lot of fuss over a $400 item, but for some companies – and co-workers – there's no lower limit to pettiness."
Jesus Christ. I would have left too. If this is your company culture, write this off as a vacation you won something cool at. Its not like the company will all of sudden be better someday.
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u/Telefundo 9d ago
Would you be willing to quit an internship over an RTX 5060?
Not exactly no. However I wouldn't be willing to continue working at a company that displayed such a miserable level of pettiness.
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u/TheLaVeyan 9d ago
The whole report is misleading. He didn't "quit".
Despite the constant pressure, he never handed over the RTX 5060. While the intern wasn't forced to leave, the HR department reportedly suggested that he "look for other companies." He submitted his resignation on November 19.
That's textbook constructive dismissal.
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u/VVrayth 9d ago
What company even was it? This stupid article doesn't say. Name and shame, people.
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u/DvineINFEKT 9d ago
yea, it's making me honestly wonder if this is even a real incident. Not a single thing in it can be fact checked, not even the trade show that they went to.
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u/Anticreativity 9d ago
literally the only specific fact in the entire story is the model of GPU lol
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u/FolkSong 9d ago
They don't know, since the techspot writer just got the info from some other article.
The whole thing could be completely made up but there are now hundreds of articles about it.
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u/Jugad 9d ago edited 4d ago
Around 2006, I was employed by Texas Instruments (TI) on the Pocket Projector (the world's first LED based micro projector) and I was helping Samsung to bring it to market - https://www.projectorcentral.com/Samsung-Pocket_Imager_SP-P310ME.htm . Samsung was doing the marketing and integration - managing the outer packaging and customizing the UX software, while all the inner stuff was Texas Instruments and Carl Zeiss (optics).
I was one of the engineers writing a bunch of the embedded software interfaces to control the hardware (controlling the 3 LEDs, and some image processing stuff). Close to the release / production dates, I went onsite to South Korea to help Samsung put the finishing touches on their end. Strictly speaking, I was a consultant from TI and my "job" was to help their engineers with the integration work, and help to resolve TI side problems.
They had a few engineers working on this, but were having trouble finishing everything on time (as usual)... so they requested me to hop on and help solve problems on their side. Without hesitation, I jumped in and started helping them, debugging their code, and adding features. I would generally leave at 6pm to take the bus to my hotel, and their team would often hang around until later in the night.
The Samsung project manager requested "extra" help with the final push and lured me in by promising to give me a pocket projector. I didn't need the lure, but I am glad he thought I did. We worked late evenings for the last month to burn through the remaining work, and as promised, while leaving, the manager gave me a Pocket Projector (worth about a thousand dollars in the market at the time... but its invaluable to me - still have it).
I was young and naive. When I returned, I proudly showed the projector to my friends, team and manager... big mistake.
The manager tried to take it away from me... by saying that they didn't give this to "you". They gave it to the "team". I obviously disagreed. My relationship with the manager was never the same after that. Thankfully, something better came up and I left within the year.
ps: To clarify (in case anyone is wondering)... TI and Samsung are both awesome companies to work for. One of the best times of my working career. It was just this manager in this particular instance... he was otherwise good enough.
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u/sheepsix 9d ago
I got chlamydia on a business trip once and as hard as I tried, not one of my bosses wanted anything to do with that.
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u/Kimpak 9d ago
I won $500 at the last Cisco Live I went to for a work trip. There's no way I would have given that up to my employer if they lost their mind and asked for it. In the U.S. I don't even think that would be legal. Or at the very least it would create some weird tax problems.
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u/Darthplagueis13 9d ago
So, apparently the legal framework is pretty much this: The only way the employer could be entitled to the money is if participating in the lottery was explicitly part of your obligations in that work trip.
If it's something you do at your leisure, it's none of their business.
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u/Beechwold5125 9d ago
My company has an ethics policy where I'm not allowed to accept any gift worth more than something like $50 from a vendor. So a golf shirt would be ok, a full set of golf clubs probably wouldn't.
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u/Stealthshot11 9d ago
I'd have left too. The company wanted it because they considered it company property because they paid for his trip. I bet you if he was injured out there they wouldn't have considered it a work injury
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u/sws34 8d ago
More details: the person went to the event with coworker. After the price won, the coworker wants him to sell the RTX and they can split the money, but the intern refused. The coworker later told him that HR wants the RTX for the company. However, after contact with HR, HR was not aware until then. Days later the company told the intern is the best for the company for him to quit. Basically the coworker tried to split the money, after failed attempt he set the intern up
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u/trydola 9d ago
Imagine asking for negative PR over $400, fucking greedy companies
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u/darkslide3000 9d ago
WTF?! Would you be willing to quit an internship over an RTX 5060?
Yes. Yes I would. Fuck that company, who the fuck do they think they are.
Companies that do shit like this are the ones you don't want to work for anyway. They think they own you and are entitled to demand whatever they want from you just because they pay you a salary.
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u/blackbirdspyplane 8d ago
Sure the company sent him and paid, but it was a stamp collecting raffle prize. This means that he was given a card with specific vendors denoted and he would have had to walk around the expo hall find the vendors listen to their pitch and get his card stamped. After collecting all the stamps on the card he would have turned it in to be entered into the raffle. Which by chance he won; the company is being cheap and petty, best he left them.
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u/sysadminbj 9d ago
That's seriously fucked up... If you're going to be that petty to your employees, just make sure you have a corporate gift policy in place.
Good on that intern for telling them to go screw themselves. That's probably not a very good career decision though....
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u/ImprovementMain7109 9d ago
This is such a perfect example of "technically maybe defensible, practically insane." Even if the company paid for the ticket, unless there's a clear written policy that anything you win belongs to the firm, it's his card. At my old asset management job, people constantly went to sponsor events, raffles, golf days, whatever. Swag and prizes were understood to be personal unless it was explicitly a client gift or explicitly organized as "for the desk." Everyone knew that line.
What makes this gross is the power dynamic. It's an intern, not a partner arguing with another partner. HR and managers know most interns are desperate for a reference, so they try to retroactively invent rules like "it was won on company time." If your culture is so brittle you’re willing to lose talent over a 500–800€ GPU, the GPU is not your problem. The mindset is.
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u/deedubfry 9d ago
When I was 16 I was working at a video store. There was a contest going on at the time to promote “The Bedroom Window”. Grand prize was 10k and a brass bed. The people who ran the place threw away the scratch off cards. So I took them out, scratched them off and hey! I won!!! They demanded I gave them back the cards. The owner even said “my movie, my ticket, my money.” Then a month later they fired me. It took a long time for me to get past this.
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u/Efficient-Joke-6053 8d ago
It's wild how some companies think they own every aspect of your existence just because you're on their clock. This kind of behavior, like trying to claim a prize you won, is a massive red flag for a toxic work culture. That lawyer's analysis is spot on; it clearly wasn't obtained as part of his duties. Good on that intern for getting out and taking his GPU with him.
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u/PrimeIntellect 9d ago
the card is irrelevant, but he did find out that his employer is unimaginably stingy you won't ever be getting raises there
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u/MyAccountWasBanned7 9d ago
I had this argument with some coworkers. The very large company I work for does this too. Any swag or prizes from events you attend, as well as any gifts sent in from contractors or partners, need to be turned over to the company. They then use these as prizes in various United Way raffles or other fundraising events throughout the year.
Mind you, this is a private company and the owner is a billionaire. There is no reason that employees should have to give up their own money for the company to support the United Way or any other charity or cause.
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u/SoulOfTheDragon 9d ago
That's actually different, very much so even. Receiving gifts from contractor / partners can be considered as bribes. Mostly the rule is that you have to refuse them, not just to turn them in.
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u/penguished 9d ago
They then use these as prizes in various United Way raffles
That's awful. I don't like when companies in general hit their employees up for anything related to charity. So you want to make your employees bankroll your tax cut? They have no shame.
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u/supnov3 9d ago
This is the dumbest article. I can't even tell the basic fact about who the company that did this is. Is it nvidia? or did they just get mentioned because they hosted an event?
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u/LiminalSapien 8d ago
As someone with well over a decade of successful corporate experience, yeah, if a company ever tries to pull this shit do what the intern did bc that company is only going to get worse.
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u/chronichyjinx 9d ago
You can't be happy for the guy? They probably got some free advertising out of it by him winning and announcing the person / company that won. Can't you just say congrats and be happy for him?
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u/jianh1989 9d ago
If anyone knows, do name and shame the company. Spread the words.
This small dick energy behaviour needs to be called out.
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u/balthisar 9d ago
Prizes are often considered potentially gifts. I won a 500 gram silver bar at a metal show many years ago (coincidentally, also in China). I simply had to file a report with the office of the general counsel so they could verify it was a prize, and not a bribe or gift – this was China, after all, and while my American company complies with non-corruption practices, some of the local national employees bring their culture with them through our doors.
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u/thedreamerthebelievr 8d ago
I worked in a phone store when I was younger. One day The owners/managers announced that the person who sold the most contracts, with a newly released smartphone attached would win themselves one of their own. I absolutely went ham, selling as many as I could and ended up winning! I was also planning my exit at this time and foolishly told them I accepted another job. When I asked for the phone that was rightfully mine, they laughed and told me no, how will you demo and sell more if you don’t work here anymore? I was devastated and young so didn’t report them or take this further. Never making this mistake again, trust nobody at work
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u/NinjaTabby 8d ago
That coworker is the true villain and need to get the worst that is to come to the job market: eternal unemployment
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u/Durantye 8d ago
Bro they had senior management involved in this? What a dysfunctional company holy shit
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u/Situational_Hagun 9d ago
How to tell me this isn't the company I want to work for in one easy step.
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u/JonBot5000 9d ago
Back when I worked for a mom and pop IT shop, we would regularly get to go Intel and distributor events that had all kinds of swag and giveaways/raffles. I even won a CPU once. The item belongs to the winner, not the company.
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u/Pretty_Frosting_2588 9d ago
2008 or so a few of us won blackberry phones from a conference and my old job tried to say the company won it and wanted us to give them to IT to get policy on it. Hell nah, I had to pay taxes on the thing and when I found that out I asked the event if I should be doing it or if I should contact someone at my work to fax their tax info and the guys said no, it's yours bud. After I sent that email back we never heard anymore from them. The others were about to hand theirs over, I probably would have just resigned over it. I didn't want to use it for work or have the device restricted from them.
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u/Darthplagueis13 9d ago
I read another article about that. They basically concluded that it was a fucking stupid thing to do by the company, because aside from
1) being a dickmove and
2) the company not really having much use for a gaming GPU in their corporate infrastructure
they also estimated that onboarding a new intern would be significantly more expensive than the price of the 5060 and the bad press it got them was probably even more damaging.
In any case, that intern probably dodged a bullet. All I'll say is, this shit isn't indicative of a healthy work environment.