Framing it as "clawing back" pension contributions is disingenuous (IMO). Stripe applied its stated pension plan policy. It would have been news if Stripe had deviated from its policy.
It is odd that Stripe is the only one who is criticized for it...
I don't see any reason for this article to exist other than to try to "shame" Stripe for doing what many other companies also do.
But...I'm curious what level of disclosure you feel is required beyond saying you work at the company? Personally I don't want to read a bunch of legalese on HN posts. There are enough critical minds here that chicanery gets ferreted out pretty quickly. In this case, there are also multiple posts from others saying that Stripe's practice is if not ubiquitous at least common in Ireland, hence unsurprising to those who work there.
edit: typo
This is why I'm so wary of "tech press" news like this. Having a vesting schedule for employer contributions is pretty standard for a lot of countries, not just Ireland. So this has been going on for literally decades, all across the world, but it's only when a tech company does it that it is framed as "clawing back pension contributions".
I'm not saying this doesn't suck for employees or shouldn't be legally changed, but why are people OK with this practice for literally decades until a tech unicorn does it?
In the U.S. (I'm not familar with Ireland), vested benefits, whether defined or contributed, cannot be "clawed back". But unvested ones can, that's what "unvested" means.
Please do not assume default = USA.
Why shouldn't this very relevant context be in the title?
I discovered today that stripe is half based in Ireland. It would add valuable context to say which of its two countries this story refers to, since it involves country specific pension setups.
This article is completely misleading.
In Ireland, if you leave your employment before the 2 year mark, you can lose your employers' contributions. Not the ones you have voluntarily put in.
This is pretty standard here (at least as far as tech companies go). It's literally written in the freaking contract.
It sucks, but we all read our contracts when we signed.
The reason I can see an employer doing this is to serve as a retention mechanism. But it obviously doesn't work when people get laid off.
If you got a mortgage when interest rates were low and now the bank comes knocking at your door to get you to pay more that wouldn't be reasonable.
There's always a risk. The problem is a half-ass article that tries to portray a company as being bad for following the agreement we as employees accept to work there.
IMO the best solution (from an employee protection PoV) would be for Ireland to ban these clauses. But I doubt all of the tech companies that actually bring money to this country would be happy with that. It's already a small country with a tiny talent pool. Most companies are just here due to the low corporate tax. If the government starts tightening things with regulation I have no idea why companies would stay here. The country has nothing to offer.
Like Amazon has a 3 year vesting period for 401k matches. If you leave before then, you lose all the matched funds but keep your direct contributions.
Not sure why this is news other than trying ride the “big tech bad” viewpoint.
Edit: just looked it up and it is three years. Brutal. https://www.amazon.jobs/cs/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us
I now consider Stripe to be a gonif company.
The package was more generous than it had to be. The founders took responsibility and were transparent about the business. It was handled reasonably.
I would work at Stripe again.
Depending on employees age, length of employment 16 weeks can be an extremely low amount and the courts could get a higher settlement.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemploymen...
Every company has this as standard, but a lot have waived it for redundancies, so let's not let stripe off the hook.
1. You may put an age related maximum percentage of your income into the pension fund (10% up to 30 years, 5% increase every 5 years thereafter). This is invested by a registered pension fund on your behalf. It is exempt from capital gains tax, deemed disposal on index funds, or other types of taxes that normally apply to investments.
2. Your employer may match an amount up to your contribution. Most employers in the tech sector will offer between matching the first 5% to first 10%. While this is income from your employer, to you, it is not considered for income tax purposes.
3. You are normally not allowed withdraw any of this prior to age 50.
4. _However_, if you leave a job with an employer managed pension within 2 years, you can instead refund your entire contributions and either keep them or invest them in your new pension scheme. This is to avoid people having to manage N number of pension schemes from however many former employers. If you choose to do this however, the tax-free status of the employer contributions vanishes. So they get refunded to your employer, and if your employer wanted to give them direct to you, that would be taxable income. Most employers won't want to bother with the paperwork for this.
5. When you draw down your pension, you may pay income tax on the payouts if your pension payouts exceed the tax-free cutoff.
What happens if you leave in 3 years? Is it a 2-year window that vests or once vested forever vested?
> Stripe cut around 90 jobs from its Dublin office as part of a wider restructuring of its global operations, which saw it reduce its overall workforce by 14 per cent from 8,000 employees down to around 7,000 today.
> The pension clawbacks, which are legally permitted under Irish pension rules, only applied to staff who had been working with the company for less than two years.
There is an argument where Stripe should have gone above and beyond. But maybe Google/apple/ Microsoft who are 100x richer (maybe) than Stripe should have spearheaded that first.
> The pension clawbacks, which are legally permitted under Irish pension rules, only applied to staff who had been working with the company for less than two years.
