Vasco Pedro, CEO and Co-founder of Unbabel.

I feel that while it is very important to have honest discussions regarding employee expectations, in this particular case Andreas is being particularly disingenuous and stating facts that are plainly false. As the CEO of Unbabel, I find it hard to let wrong factual information be posted about Unbabel. There is a great deal of subjectivity in these matters and we are sensitive to the fact that being fired is not an easy thing, which is why I will try to stick to the facts. Despite the unwarranted distraction all this caused, we wish to put this matter behind us and wish Andreas well in his future endeavors.

The offer letter he received, which was in English, stated clearly the “at will” nature of the contract. The relevant clause is below.

- "While we hope that your employment with the Company will be mutually satisfactory, employment with the Company is for no specific period of time. As a result, either you or the Company is free to terminate your employment relationship at any time for any reason, with or without cause. This is the full and complete agreement between us on this term. Although your job duties, title, compensation and benefits, as well as the Company’s personnel policies and procedures, may change from time-to-time, the “at-will” nature of your employment may not be changed except by an express writing signed and dated by both you and the President of the Company."

This was also explained thoroughly upon signing of the actual contract, which was a standard contract of full time employment within the Portuguese law, which includes 3 months trial period, by default. At the time we did not have our contract translated to English, which is why we took great pains to make sure everything was clear, but shortly after all the contracts were translated to English.

Furthermore, as I stated before, when he was let go we gave him more severance than was required, we paid him one extra month of salary and added another $1000 on top of it to compensate for unforeseen expenses. We have tried to the best of our ability to not make sure that Andreas had enough to get back to Sweden, if that was what he wished.

As Andreas admits, the company loaned him money to pay rent, helped him find a house, and treated him with respect, courtesy and welcomed him to the team. Andreas worked with 4 different co-workers and got negative feedback from all of them. There was a fundamental problem of communication with Andreas and there appeared to be a systematic misunderstanding of goals, as well as constant exacerbation of minor problems.

Communication is two-way channel, so obviously this was not necessarily the fault of the individual, and a high growth startup is certainly an environment that is suitable for misunderstandings, since we rely on a lot of assumptions, which is why over communication is extremely important. In any case it felt to us that there wasn’t a good fit between Andreas and the team. We hired 8 employees around the same period, and 7 of them continue to be productive, happy and valuable members of the team. Of the 8 employees, 5 are not Portuguese, creating a very diverse group.

Andreas himself was very happy until the day he was fired, which shows that he was unaware of the consequences of his behaviour, or even of the issues that existed already, which is both potentially a core reason for the problems of communication and why the decision was unexpected.

This particular situation will certainly make us improve our hiring and screening processes in order to improve the fit and I thank the HN community for pointing out ideas we can try, like remote working and better defined trial periods. It is also important that we improve employee communication and give more concise feedback to employees.

Unbabel is committed to being an international company, with employees from many countries. We pay well above Portuguese average and our goal is to hire the best individuals from anywhere in the world to be part of something meaningful.

We are working hard to solve a hard problem in human communication and take very seriously the fact that we need exceptional people in our team in order to to achieve our vision. We are fortunate to have an amazing team and will continue to strive for maintaining high standards and good culture fit.

Andreas acquired an unfortunate view of Portugal while he was here. We tried hard to make his experience a wonderful one and Portugal is without a doubt an amazing place to live. We have a great climate, it is very safe, most people speak English, it is a modern place and it is very easy to get 100MB internet speed in your home. It is close to the US and Portugal has always had a hacker mentally, since the days of the discoveries and Vasco da Gama, much due to the need to find solutions to being surrounded by Spain, which at the time was a problem. These and many other things is why Algarve (south of Portugal) was rated the best place in the world to retire by Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/best-places...).

If you are curious about Unbabel’s hiring practices and what is like to work at Unbabel, I would be happy to answer personally.