Have you ever accepted a signing bonus? Did it have a requirement to be paid back if you quit before a certain date? If these bonuses have no requirement that the recipient "not quit before XYZ date", then I agree they're improper. I strongly suspect they have such a requirement.
If you interview with us for 4 hours and get a job offer with a $12K signing bonus and a requirement that it's paid back pro-rated if you leave within 12 months, are you being paid that $12K for the 4 hours of interviewing, out of the goodness of our heart, or $1K/month for each of the next 12 months of work?
The issue is the executives keep the bonus even if fired in bankruptcy. Further, because the money has technically already been paid out, the bankruptcy court can’t claw it back. It’s therefore not pay for work done.
At best executives get leverage in their job search and a fallback option should their job search fail to find better options. So, it’s not even an effective means to maintain someone actually talented.
