Interesting thing I've heard in the past couple of months about not paying back a signing bonus without repercussions. Know 2 people who left early at my MM and they apparently just ignored all calls / emails about paying it back and didn't see anything negative come about from it (hated it so no concerns about burning bridges). No hits to credit score or anything. Is this unique? Guessing any individual instance of 10k isn't worth it to litigate and hire a lawyer or something to have it be settled in civil court for less than that most likely, but surprised these aren't just transferred to a collections agency or something.
FYI doesn't even apply to me as i'm a 3rd year, just wondering what others have experienced.
Not a banker but contacts of mine that have moved around or left industry heard about this stunt and ultimately decided against it. The problem with a civil suit is that IF it is in fact filed, you HAVE to respond or it will go into default judgement in favor of the plaintiff, being the bank. Once the judgement is set, THEN you would presumably begin to see impact on credit, wage garnishing, etc. as is necessary to recoup the funds.
Imagine how much of a PITA it would be if your debt gets sold off to those crooked debt collectors, changing hands every few months as it trickled down.
I managed to negotiate my way out of repaying my singing bonus at a F250 firm. Had a technical skill that they valued and told them that I would answer their calls after I left, if they had any questions, and they agreed to not force me to repay. Also helped that I solid relationship with people and left on a good note
I wouldn't be so sure. I'm not a lawyer, so take my speculation with a grain of salt. While it would make sense to laypersons like you and me for the company to just offset by withholding the paycheck, I think employment law makes this a bad idea. The law is generally set up to protect wage earners. The signing bonus may be in dispute, but the wages earned during the last two weeks are not, and they're separate issues. I think the courts would take a pretty dim view of employers who withhold wages for leverage in other cases. I expect there's a lot of legal nuance to these types of situations, and that generally, most corporations would avoid the risk of running afoul of employment laws over 2 weeks of someone's pay.