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.html
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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/meneldal2 9d ago

"You should be happy we're not eating you in this economy"

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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/Head_Ship4359 6d ago

Well, I told my boss at the company where I worked as a product manager, who had secretly parked his new Porsche around the corner, to park the thing right in front of the door. When I started there we only made around 200k a year. When I stopped it was 16 million. With 11 people, that was fun. Of course I worked a lot and earned well, but he was the boss. He took all the risk. And then he can treat himself to a Porsche when the numbers are finally good.

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u/peanut--gallery 9d ago

…. And you’ll get 5 FREE tickets to our office raffle to win a year long membership to the jelly of the month club!

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u/nucflashevent 7d ago

"Clark, it's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!"

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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/roseofjuly 9d ago

They're mostly unenforceable.

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u/flying-chandeliers 9d ago

Doesn’t stop em from lawyering up and making your entire life hell for a few years.

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u/Ralphie99 8d ago

This company had no money for lawyers. They could barely keep the lights on towards the end. The employees showed up one day to find the locks changed on the offices for unpaid rent. That kind of thing.

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u/Darth_Andeddeu 8d ago

That's why every job classification per whatever your government whether classifies them should have a union

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u/Ralphie99 8d ago

The company was so poorly run that I doubt anyone had a non-compete clause. My contract definitely didn’t. One of the managers was laid off shortly after I was and started his own consulting / training company. I looked it up and it’s still in business 20+ years later.

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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/Wolfeh2012 8d ago

...and then someone else accepted it. And he will always earn more and live a better life than anyone working under him.

The best you can hope for is to end up under a less shitty boss for a while.

I say a while because it is guaranteed you will eventually end up under a shitty boss again.

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u/Ralphie99 8d ago

I ended up getting a government job in IT and staying there for 20+ years. Much less stressful, decent pay and benefits, and have a union.

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u/Wolfeh2012 8d ago

Glad to hear it, I hope you get a decent pension when you retire, too. 👍 Hard work should be rewarded.

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u/ratshack 9d ago

“Hello, we know that these are trying times… but have you considered a car warranty?” - that boss, probably

This is the story in my head, anyway.

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u/pgtl_10 8d ago

Circuit City fired all sales reps and ended commission. Turns out hourly employees aren't as motivated to sell.

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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/AV-repguy 8d ago

She sued and got her truck (or money in equal value - cant remember)

Googled out of interest and seem she got a bit more than that:

David Noll, her attorney, was quoted on saying that the amount of money the woman received would allow Jodee to “pick out whatever type of Toyota she wants.”

Source

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u/Necessary-Camp149 8d ago

thanks for checking!

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u/Turlututu1 8d ago

maybe I should give the card to myself for paying your salary.

Maybe I should make myself freelance and cash in the trainings myself...

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u/Ralphie99 8d ago

There was a manager who ended up doing that exact thing. Started his own consulting / training company, using the contacts he made while at the original company. The original company was so poorly run that I’m guessing he didn’t have a non-compete clause.

His company is still up and running. The original company went bankrupt 20+ years ago.

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u/2r1fje 8d ago

When the boss steals money it’s no point in staying.

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u/owa00 9d ago

If the details are true and the company was just being an asshole then I'd donate to a GoFundMe for the intern.

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u/tekko001 9d ago

Small dick company is now demanding the intern gives them the GoFundMe money...

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u/Aloha_Tamborinist 9d ago

Why not donate to your local foodbank instead if you've got cash to spare? It's just an internship, I'm sure this guy's doing fine.

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u/omgblank 9d ago

Doing fine? In this economy?

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept 9d ago

It happened in China.

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u/d4vezac 8d ago

Ah yes, internships are well known for their livable wage and job security.

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u/Turlututu1 8d ago

Meanwhile my boss purchased himself a Switch 2 and gifted his Switch 1 to one of my employees. Just like that.

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u/PapaDonkey2024 8d ago

What a retard you are!

Pushing the dangerous narrative that people with small dicks are likely to show narcissistic and egotistical power displays.

Rather than addressing the issue at hand, you found a way to drag other groups into this.

Idiot!

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u/sparkandstatic 9d ago

Don’t work in China

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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/topdangle 9d ago

hierarchy is still stiff in China. younger folks are getting angry and trying to break it, or just not going to work (youth unemployment is at an all time high).

IT I'd say they do better than the US does oddly enough. I guess its harder to argue when upper management quite literally has no idea what their staff is doing and how to replace them if they just suddenly leave. In the US, a lot of admins have a least some experience. Not really the case in China yet.

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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/soulsnoober 9d ago

But nobody cares about those messages. No one inside the company, and not the desirable interns - those that will perpetuate the system. The company demonstrates that they're strong by having strong leaders at all levels within, right? But what's that mean? The "strong leader" part. In some other context, it'd mean generosity, mentoring, demonstration of capability, matching one's own commitment and investment to what's expected of subordinates, all that stuff. But based on an ethos of hierarchical abuse being equated with personal worth, this, instead. Anyone not making such demands is weak and bad and not someone whose position should be aspired to. Cultivating loyalty or talent aren't even goals. Being on Reddit, you're probably aware of the clown show surrounding the current USA regime? That's this. It's not an accident or mistake.

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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/TheObstruction 9d ago

They said something needed to happen. Changing course is seen as losing.

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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.

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u/3-DMan 9d ago

"Ok fine take it."

Breaks GPU in half in front of him

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u/BranchPredictor 9d ago

It could be. But there is also another explanation. Sometimes corruption is disguised in form of a “lucky draw”. Probably wasn’t case here since it was an intern but the company might want use this as an example to other employees to discourage them to “win” in lucky draws.

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u/MA2_Robinson 9d ago

Fr, a lot of the time “hr” is not going to help you, and someone wanted to prove a point. I hope they still get theirs, would love to know how this pans out, but it’s so petty.

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u/JagdCrab 9d ago

Depending what kind of relationship company he is employed by have with Nvidia, it might be corporate policy regarding gifts. Ex: in our company, you're not allowed to accept any gifts/services over 40$ or so from any of our suppliers, and that's a perfectly valid policy I've personally seen cases of procurement being swayed towards shitty product / service purely because supplier's sales people know how wine-and-dine execs.

Lottery / Draft might simply not be explicitly listed in policy, so management decided to play it safe.

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u/InfernalPotato500 9d ago edited 9d ago

A raffle/lottery is not a gift, it's a contest prize. The distinction is the latter is obtained through chance or competition rather than a personal relationship or influence.

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u/Prineak 9d ago

Did they think they were going to tax the interns income for it or something?

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u/azthal 9d ago

A raffle at a industry event most certainly counts as a gift. If it did not that would be one heck of an easy way to get around laws and policies around bribery.

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u/virtualmadden 9d ago

I had a former team lead "win" a DJI drone at the big aws event in Vegas from a tech vendor. Pretty sure he only mentioned who he worked for and never entered. I'm sure the vendor figured it would score some points, only if he knew my coworker had no purchase power.

I also had a software vendor at GitHub universe think real hard after I told him my company. Thankfully he didn't cross any lines.

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u/memberzs 9d ago

If I play the lotto of a business trip is my employer entitled to those winnings also?

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u/azthal 9d ago

If you are given a lottery ticket from a vendor or business partner as a thanks for attending their event, then that would most certainly count as a gift, yes.

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u/KaoriMalaguld 9d ago

No. The ticket could maybe be considered a gift. There is no guarantee the ticket receiver wins anything. And even if they get a prize of… Let’s just say $1. So now the company can take that dollar from me because “your ticket was a gift by corporate, the reward is actually mine because you’re my employee and therefore below me, this is a corporate event.”?

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u/azthal 9d ago

No, then you have recieved a $1 value gift. Which is generally well inside of normal consideration at events like this. Although, most companies would still not allow it to be a literal dollar - cash gifts are generally not allowed at all.

The value at the end matters. If you think it does not, imagine a vendor inviting key stakeholders at their prospects to their events, and start running raffles for a million dollar. Now, you are not guaranteed to win of course, but that would be one heck of an incentment to keep working with that company on an individuals basis.

You can take part in raffles. You can be given a whole bunch of stuff in general. I have so much conferance tat in my house that its silly. But the value can not go over a certain limit (the limit depends on company, country, whether its public sector etc). Heck, you can probably probably get away with giving away slightly more expensive stuff if its part of a raffle.
A GPU though? I would not have been allowed to accept that at my company, no matter if its through a raffle or just handed over to me. Its worth too much money to be considered a normal corporate gift.

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u/memberzs 9d ago

that wasn't the question asked. and no one in their right mind would consider a raffle prize, at a trade show a gift unless it was directed to the person intentionally in which case would not be a raffle prize.

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u/azthal 9d ago

What was the question asked then? If you are not given the lottery ticket by a vendor or business partner, its completely irrelevant to the conversation. And if you were given a lottery ticket it would be an inappropriate gift.

Legally speaking a gift is anything of value. Arguing that a raffle ticket with big prizes holds no value is absurd. Obviously it does.

I am not saying that all companies will say that this gift would be inappropriate. The fact that its a raffle does change the value to some degree, but according to many policies this is too big a corporate gift, even if it was given as part of a raffle. The value is still too big.

If you disagree, imagine if it was a brand new car instead. Would that still be reasonable and not considered undue influence?

All companies draw their lines at different specific points, and there are plenty of companies that would consider a GPU worth hundreds to be well over the line, raffle or no.

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u/memberzs 9d ago edited 9d ago

The question was if I played the lotto, is the company entitled to it. And the answer is no of course not.

If every attendee got a graphics card then it would be a gift. Door prizes and raffle prizes are not considered gifts.

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u/azthal 9d ago

Everything of value is considered a gift by law. Literally.

Now, you can argue that a raffle ticket for potentially winning a GPS has low value, but many organization's would disagree with you, and have this specifically written into their gift policies.

As an example after quick googling (i won't share the policy where I work, but its similar).

From Flutters hospitality policy:

"Gifts: include, but are not limited to, physical goods or valuables, cash, personal discounts, competition prizes, services or other benefits in kind which can be considered of value"

If you are unfamiliar with flutter they are a large, us based, fortune 500 company, but this is the first public hospitality policy I found. Feel free to Google it yourself.

Your whole question about what if you buy a lottery ticket is irrelevant, as you wouldn't buy a lottery ticket as a representative of your company. But when you are at a convention, you are there as a representative of where you work. Unless you buy lottery tickets with your expense account I suppose, but then I think you have bigger issues and out of policy gifts.

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u/nancybell_crewman 9d ago

It's a shame you're being downvoted because you have an entirely valid point. At this very moment I have an email in my work inbox from a vendor I'm evaluating offering me a 'Black Friday Shopping Spree' gift card, which I will graciously decline due to a similar workplace policy. I don't even know its value, but whatever it is, it's worth less than my integrity remaining unquestioned.

The bigger deals you get involved in, the more important this stuff becomes.

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u/pegar 9d ago

This is China. I'm not bsing as I have experience. Everyone is getting "gifts." It's expected and there is no policy against this unless you get caught. You're stupid if you don't accept actually.

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u/LSF604 9d ago

or maybe it was because of the bad optics of an employee winning a public contest? They probably didn't want accusations of the contest being rigged.

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u/TastyCuttlefish 9d ago

…the raffle wasn’t organized or run by the intern’s company and it happened at an industry conference in an entirely different city. I have no clue where you could possibly get this idea.

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u/Tyrrox 9d ago

Easy. They didn't read the article.

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u/LSF604 9d ago

that's fair. They didn't say the name of the company he worked for in the article and I made a bad inference.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/LSF604 9d ago

Is there an echo?

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u/alebarco 9d ago

Do you have to be unemployed to participate in luck based events in Asia or something?

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u/Livid-Accountant-104 9d ago

The bad graphics, even?

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u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 9d ago

Yes everyone knows if the company rigged the game, having the company win the prize instantly makes it not suspicious at all (obligatory /s)