> If employment is terminated for any reason or no reason at all by either employee or employer within the first year, incentives must be returned.<p>If you want a guarantee, I'd recommend only paying once the guarantee is met. It's much easier than trying to get people to return money they've already assumed was theirs.<p>I've done tech recruiting for many startups and I typically charge 0 upfront, then 10% of base salary on the employee's start date and 10% after 6mo of full-time employment. In Hurry's case, maybe pay $7.5k on date of hire and $7.5k after 12 months.<p>I have plenty of folks in my network that would be a great fit and the $15k incentive (for my half) is respectable, but I wouldn't want to work under the terms as proposed unfortunately. A small tweak to the payment structure and this would be an excellent program that I'd jump at.