There’s a whole “pillar7” subreddit about United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) if you’re interested in reading about their employment practices. They were forcing people into the office five days a week during peak COVID. It sounds like it’s a mess over there.
I personally know some lower income people who have been negatively impacted by the people promise.
Number 3 sounds like nothing out of the ordinary? Any bonus you get from an employer, granted or otherwise, has to be taxed at some point. This just sounds like a weird signing bonus.
Yeah, at one point, an ex-employer gave me a relatively substantial loan (low-mid 5 digits). They were willing to give it to me interest-free, but the accountant said they had to charge me at least prime rate, otherwise that interest would have been taxable. Which was all fine by me, I was going through a divorce that tanked my credit (now ex let a car get repossessed that was in both our names), so no-one was giving me that kind of loan unsecured, let alone at prime rate.
UWM, United Wholesale Mortgage. Their location near me (Detroit suburbs) has closed, but not after getting an awful reputation that's somehow worse than Quicken or Rocket Mortgage.
I've never worked there, I've only had the pleasure of knowing some former employees that were way happier at RKT, and the observation that the most toxic manager I have ever worked under [0] apparently had a pretty good run there after he got booted from our org [1]. What was more striking was, I had a very short stint at an org that tried to 'Emulate' their management style and it was the fastest I ever left a job.
[0] - The kind of guy who's previous wives both left him so hard they didn't even try for custody, so he was having a 'thing' with a different department's manager while her husband was dying of cancer. The creepiest moment was when she brought her kid to the office and the <10 year old kid was dressed up in the same outfit as this 40-50 something dude.
[1] - He eventually got too bold and turned on his 'lieutenant' (who also for a time would dress just like him). Once that dev lead finished the HR 'Training' that they were subjected to, he stopped the behavior of preventing the dev groups from communicating with each other. That cross communication led to a bit of a quiet internal revolt across the whole Dev org.
Sounds like a typical retention/signing bonus, except structured so that you get the bonus up front and pay the tax later. The main question I would have is whether people who took it understood what they signed up for (i.e. were they misled somehow?). It's a bit weird for it to be mandatory but if you don't want to be on the hook for it, you could just keep the money in a savings account until the term expires.
> The main question I would have is whether people who took it understood what they signed up for (i.e. were they misled somehow?)
It gets complicated, by that I mean it's for many roles, not just 'IT', also I've never heard how it's actually been 'pitched' so IDK how much people may or may not have been misled. (That said, the mortgage industry even to consumers, regardless of who we are talking about, is rife with complaints about misleading claims, resulting in stuff like RESPA/TLIA->TRID)
> It's a bit weird for it to be mandatory but if you don't want to be on the hook for it, you could just keep the money in a savings account until the term expires.
Yeah, that's the smartest thing to do. But let's also be clear this isn't just an 'IT' thing for the company, some of the roles that have far lower hourly wages get the same 'agreement' and it places very different psychological pressures on folks.
And on top of that, the way it is 'distributed' and handled places unhealthy pressures on the forced recipient.
Mostly around the length (AFAIK longer than even startup or amazon RSUs) and the initial accessibility. You shouldn't try to prey on your own employees desperation or potential lack of knowledge.
This bonus, per the thread, has to be accepted for a candidate to get a job offer and has unclear implications for when a worker may leave.
In this case it is closest to a 'signing bonus' or stipend as some professional school trainees get in the final years of their training before they begin a job.
This situation has no widely-known parallel in the normal corporate world for office labor.
1. It's actually a loan.
2. If you leave or are terminated at any point for the period, you have to pay back the ENTIRE loan amount.
3. Because it's a loan, if you -do- survive employment through the term, guess what, you now have to pay tax on the 'forgiven loan'.
4. If you don't take it, you don't get hired.