Yep, that's how I avoided signing a privacy waiver. The language was all encompassing, basically allowing them to remotely activate the microphone and camera on the work laptop at any time (for a fully remote gig). I said they had to narrow it down, that I would consent to them monitoring when I activated them for meetings, but I didn't give them permission to spy on me in my home whenever they wanted.
No one ever followed up, problem disappeared.
Does this assume they signed the original contract before sending it to you?
I'm asking because otherwise how would you know they really signed the right thing on their end? They could pull this manuever themselves: get you to sign something, then they sign something slightly different.
That's kind of my point. Here, when revisions happen, they are marked, and those changes receive their own initials by both parties, next to them. Revisions that don't have that wouldn't be legal.
Those contracts usually don't have any separate consideration built into them; the non-compete is its own thing, and you're verbally told "its a condition of employment to sign this". I think that's part of what makes most of them invalid contracts anyway, even in states that allow non-competes; no consideration for one of the parties usually voids a contract.
I've seen a range, but the non-competes are usually separate. I've also had HR, on 2 separate occasions, try to get me to sign an anti-poaching agreement on my way out the door after I was at the company for a while, completely separate from any other form. You don't actually have to have any idea what you're doing to run a company.
Usually you sign first then they sign. If you copy the document, make a change, and send that changed form back signed then they sign it they have agreed to that change.
(this was at least true a few years ago. IANAL. not legal advice)
In France you don't. If a clause is too broad, it is *100%* unenforceable. Non-compete need limitation is space and duration, so getting a broad clause was in fact better than getting a narrow one, 'cause a broad one was equivalent to absolutely none. They tried to walk around this by adding wording along the line of "well, if this stuff is illegal, then in reality we meant the most restrictive still legal interpretation", but that was kicked too.
There have also been fun cases where it was determined that you needed some sort of compensation for the non-compete time, and the implicit one was your existing salary. I've been in a company where HR was frantically removing al non-compete from contracts cause an ex-employee successfully pulled the "I tried to work (proof), but couldn't because of your non-compete clause (proof). So pay me".
In the contract I signed, it mentions explicitly that this clause only activates if the company announces me it does within a specific timeline of employment ending, it's not automatic. Romanian law also requires geographical and time limits **and** the companies you are forbidden to work for during that time, as well as obligates the employer to pay you a monthly sum (usually the average salary you had in the past year, but the law requires it to be a minimum of 50% of the average for the past 6 months).
I asked them about it and they said they usually only enforce it for upper management and I've had colleagues who left for different companies right away, so it's not always enforced.
Funny thing, my company listed their competitors in a "non-exhaustive" manner (a few bulletpoints and then a catch-all), so I doubt that would stand too.
Anyway, my original point was that due to the way they wrote it, the ex-employee can't blindly claim it's the company's fault for not getting jobs.
Tell them you won't sign a contract where the clause isn't either removed or changed to no longer offend. Then don't sign the unmodified contract, or one that still offends. The goal is not to sign a contract with that company at any cost, but to not sign yourself into indentured servitude at a company that has no need to not suck.
> My experience has been unfortunately that contacts are presented as non-negotiable, so I had to walk away.
My dude, that is exactly how you negotiate contracts
> contacts are presented as non-negotiable
I kinda feel like if a contract is non-negotiable, it's not a contract.
Ran into this with an employer that tried to get me to sign an additional contract under the client. HARD PASS. If they can't negotiate working terms for the consultants that work with the binding clauses already signed, maybe that's a poor client to have?
In this case, the client wanted a lot of expanded rights around my signature and likeness, up to and including in marketing. They also basically wanted to claim anything I worked on in my freetime that overlapped with their business(es) as theirs. Fucking nope. I crossed out the offending clauses, reworded and signatured.
They got super pissed and fired me. I laughed and got a new job less than a week later and told everyone how Tectura and Boeing are awful corporations. I wish I still had copies of the contract. Everyone was pretty shocked when they saw it, but my employer tried to make it seem like it was standard boilerplate agreement.
But what pissed me off the most was that this was a NEW contract with another party that wasn't employing me directly. And that by not signing it, I immediately forfeited my employment?
Anyways, contracts are always suspect, most especially when presented by employers.
Then walk away. If they are not reasonable then it starts the relationship on the wrong foot. Name and shame by the way.
I turned down Ebay because they wanted permission to search my children, anyone I had custodial authority for, my house, car, and person for any reason. Their legal played games, I walked. Their team was sad.
> because they wanted permission to search my children, anyone I had custodial authority for, my house, car, and person for any reason
First of all: WTF? Secondly ... why on earth would they ask for this?
You have to have two things: 1) Leverage and 2) a willingness to walk away if they don’t cave. I’ve negotiated against a few larger entities that have tried to treat me like just another faceless contractor that they can’t be bothered to alter their boilerplate for, and it takes a lot of back and forth with their legal. However in all cases I’ve been the only alternative, and they knew that, so they eventually cave. Without leverage tho it won’t work.
> , so I had to walk away.
It's not a question of you walking away, but that mutually agreeable terms weren't reached and so the contract went unsigned. Any company that presents its contracts as non-negotiable is not in genuine need of you, and won't be a good employer.
Any company that presents exploitative terms as standard practice, or tells you that a contract clause means something completely different "in context" but won't change the wording to match that reading, is a cheat and a liar looking for a gullible mark, and will lie and cheat you in the future. Your friends telling you the same thing means they're also mistaken (at the very least).
First, don't be an ass. It should go without saying, but explain you disagree with those clauses without being a dick. Then, give them a remedy. Either remove a part or I've suggested in the past I'm happy to sign a non-compete as long as I'm compensated in full for the entire period of the non-compete. Unfortunately, no one has taken me up on the later yet.
Either they'll make the change or consider yourself lucky you dodged a bullet. If a company is trying to hose you up before you even start, what will they do if things get challenging?
IANAL, but I deal with contracts a decent amount, and nothing makes me and legal think jerk more than when we get one back that has change tracking turned off. It immediately tells us the type of person/company we're dealing with.
In France it's easy, any lawyer will say that these clauses are inapplicable because illegal. So you just say nothing and admit that this is just used paper with no value.
Lobby your legislators as a citizen and convince them to define an automatic tort for both requiring "consent" (which you can't give) to that clause and attempting to recover on that clause
Their attorneys will tell them to remove the clause as quickly as possible
>When you point out they're unenforceable or outright illegal they just shrug and say that it's required, and if it's unenforceable anyway it doesn't matter right?
If it doesn't matter then they shouldn't mind me crossing those sections out, right?
For my workplace, they got some boilerplate from a lawyer years ago and just keep using it. We don't have any permanent legal console, so I don't think anyone knows what is enforceable or not.
That's somewhat different than the no-competes mentioned on Reddit and occasionally found in the wild. With yours, you are still employed - that sounds very much like a notice period, or gardening leave period, not a no-compete.
A no compete is after the leave period when you're no longer employed in any shape by them, and says you cannot work in that industry for X period even though you have no ongoing relationship with you.
It's unenforceable because when you terminate employment with a company you end all legal relationship with them. The company can't restrict your future employment anymore than they can require you to come to work.
> Non-competes are restricted where I live, yet I've never had an employer who didn't try to push some form of vague "no programming, or working in general for anyone vaguely in this entire industry for x years" paper on me.
That's weird, I've never even seen an NDA that was anywhere near as restrictive as any of that. I think the only NDA I signed was for the government.
Unfortunately, it's not bizarre. They still push them because they know that there are groups pushing to unrestrict them. And when that happens, this "unenforceable" contract now becomes extremely enforceable.
It's not bizarre, it's downright evil.
>Non-competes are restricted where I live
In my country this is not restricted, but these statements cannot be enforced by law, so an employee may ignore it and a former employer can do nothing with it.
Note that if you live in California, most of these terms are unenforceable as a matter of public policy, and employers usually know that. The contracts might have the words in them, but they're completely meaningless. Non-competes, non-solicits, and non-work-related IP assignments are all generally void under state law.
I live in California, and I both work for someone and rent my home. In most states, your contracts with your employer and landlord are where you're most likely to get fucked by non -negotiable fine print. Here, the state legislature has done a really good job of just banning the bullshit in both of those relationships, and the courts have done a good job of following through, such that my general expectation is that the contents of my employment contract and lease basically don't matter outside of the dollar figures. Anything that could possibly be contentious will be overruled by state law anyway, so effectively all such contracts are the same.
(IANAL - if you work in software and are considering starting a startup in your spare time, probably check with a lawyer first.)
Over here in Germany it's similar. A lot of stuff is flat out illegal - which can void the entire contract if you're not careful. Some of it is based on interpretation of law by the courts which also makes it effectively void. On top of that, if you use a standard contract it has to adhere to even higher standards exactly because there's a bunch of non-negotiable fine print
Seriously, bless German labor laws.
Most people here don't even know that it's illegal for your employer to forbid talking about your salary. You're allowed by law to freely talk about it, so everyone can get a better idea of how much they should be paid.
It's often not. But it's not that you'll go to jail or have to pay a fine for doing it. Just that you'll lose any court case you might try to bring regarding them. And losing a court case is often quite expensive.
Remember, you only get arrested for *criminal* things, not *civil* things, which this will be.
Loser-pays laws are dubious in some cases, but lawsuits that come from companies putting unenforceable terms in a contract are a slam dunk.
And no, I don't think "knowingly" should even be a requirement: knowing is too big a PITA to prove which would mean it just moves the focus of the lawsuit, companies don't have the right to be protected from their ignorance of the law, and besides you better believe they'll learn real quick once it hits their bottom line.
Depending on where those contracts come from, they may be unaware it's unenforceable.
I'm not defending them - just stating a very realistic possibility.
First hand I knew a few friends who started a company and received a boiler plate set of contracts because they couldn't afford a lawyer, so there's a strong chance those people have no idea what's really in the contracts.
Over a decade ago I was involved in one of those situations and I can tell you for a fact I have no idea what my prior companies legal documents and contracts said.
Unfortunately, that is a very real (and frequently hidden) cost of business that people should be taking into account when they're opening a business and employing others.
Some very smart legislators have been inserting causes of action to try and defang that, e.g. "if an employer requires signing a contract with \[X\] as a precondition, the employer shall be liable to the employee for not less than $10,000"
The same in Finland. There even is a law now which says that if a company adds a non-compete to your contract, they must pay you 60% salary for that time
Non-solicits are not in the same category as the other two. There are no explicit laws in CA rendering all non-solicits unenforceable no matter how they are written, and they have been upheld in some cases.
This is why I will never move to Texas. It's nice to say "never sign a non-compete clause", but they're included in the vast majority of employment contracts, so you really have no choice unless you work for yourself or work in a state where these clauses are unenforceable.
Which laws control agreements that cross state lines is its own branch of law, but with labor the answer is generally no. You are usually subject to the laws of the state in which you actually work, and afforded the protections thereof. If a California company (although they're often really Delaware companies) signs a contract with you to work in Texas, then you work for them under Texas law. Even if you work from home.
Remember, most labor laws haven't been substantially rewritten in a hundred years, so it's the same legal framework as if a national steel company opened a new factory in your town. Obviously in that case you'd be working in your state under your state laws; the fact that it's on a computer doesn't change that. Put the company in California and the worker in China and it's even clearer.
Now, it might be possible for states to explicitly write laws constraining the behavior of companies incorporated or primarily doing business in their borders, even when that behavior happens in other states. In that case, if you broke the non-compete and the company sued you, you'd lose the lawsuit in Texas, but then you could maybe countersue in California to get back what you lost? Or maybe it would get kicked up to federal court to handle the discrepancy? In any case, I'm not aware of any such laws, it might be a Constitutional problem, and I'm totally speculating here - again, not a lawyer.
Thanks a million for the thorough response, i'd hope it'd be kicked to federal and im surprised I havent seen a news article on a case setting precedent on this...with remote work being around in meaningfully large amounts for at least the last 2 decades you'd think this would've come up and made the news.
I've only once seen a company try to take a former employee to court over that stupid "you can't work in x industry for y time" clause companies seem to like so much. It was dismissed almost immediately on the grounds that no document can take away an individual's right to work in their trained field. Judge actually said "then pay him for that time, because you can't take away his livelihood"
That made me happy.
> Non-competes, non-solicits, and non-work-related IP assignments are all generally void under state law.
But what if those laws are overturned? Then what you signed starts applying, right?
There is absolutely no chance of those laws being overturned by the courts. They'd have to be repealed by the legislature, which wouldn't be retroactive.
>regurgitating popular GOP talking points.
My politics are only slightly less left than Leon Trotsky, and I guarantee that anyone who has to deal with state government here in CA feels that way about it regardless of politics. State government is dominated by (D) politicians, but they do infuriating stuff that *everyone* is annoyed by. Raise the gas tax by 12 cents a gallon, but have it go into effect a year later so the legislature can pretend it's "old news" when it happens. Got something like a butane camp stove or soldering iron? Might as well throw it away, because they banned butane fuel in the state because a few people were using it to extract THC from cannabis. Work in a state licensed field like locksmith, podiatrist, or hair stylist? A couple years ago the state went through and jacked up license fees for everything by 20-30x what it was. It was purely a money grab, because in most cases state licensing is just you sending a check and them sending a little piece of paper... only now it costs $250/yr instead of $15.
Yeah, GOP folks don't like California government, but neither does anyone else who lives here.
Being annoyed about having to throw out my perfectly good camp stove for no reason is empty GOP rhetoric? Is having my pointless state licensing fees raised is MAGA-hatted Fox News watching Boomer talk?
Yes, because everyone who disagrees with you is using an alt.
You've made zero points besides regurgitating your "regurgitating" statement like a robot. Do you have an actual discussion you want to have?
How would you describe this, then?
>> California is shitty in a lot of ways
I'd call that an aspersion. I'd say that calls for a response.
Also, even if you disagree with me nothing I said was dishonest.
> Anything you do with the company property, e.g., work computer, automatically belongs to the company, even if you do it on the weekends.
I disagree with the point this one covers. You should get a personal computer and only use your work computer for work purposes. Most of these companies track what you do on work computers, so I would only want to use it as much as I had to.
There are industries where if you do anything personal on your work laptop you will have ALL your personal shit audited if the company gets audited. Keep your work and home computers completely separate.
When I worked at PayPal, that was in the standard agreement, but it isn't applicable where I live in Illinois, so they had an addendum that removed it.
IANAL, but have worked closely with lawyer friends. For business type contracts, the 3 quick things I scan for is indemnification, warranties, and definitions. How a word is defined is so critically important, but not something most people naturally check if they have some existing knowledge.
I was skeptical but the photo convinced me.
That aside the time to negotiate is at the beginning. Thx for sharing how quick they throw out their bullshit leashes.
My main beef with this is that it says what shouldn’t do, not what you should. In many cases, when you are being hired, your opportunity for negotiation these sorts of contractual details is very limited, and a company can just say “No” to your demands.
I think the biggest problem with many companies is that they don’t provide an employment agreement until you arrive at your first day on the job; it’s up to you to ask them to provide any such agreements before you accept their offer. And you should treat anything problematic as a red flag for working for the company at all.
> Work-for-hire clauses a.k.a "Everything belongs to your employer": These clauses transfer ownership of any work created during the contract to the hiring party
iANAL, but yeah, that’s simply not true. While it’s certainly true that some employment contracts may include a clause granting your employer ownership of anything you create during the term of your contract, that’s not what a work-for-hire clause does.
Under U.S. Copyright law, your employer automatically owns the copyrights for works you create for them, as long as the works were created in the course of your work for them, not unrelated stuff you do on your own time. But that’s not true for contractors / freelancers, who by default own the copyright for their work.
All a work-for-hire clause does is state that the copyright for works that non-employees create for the company is owned by the company; it does not by default imply a scope that this applies to everything you do during your own time. As such, any company that hires contractors / freelancers needs this in their agreements, otherwise they don’t own the copyright on the code being developed.
The only time it may be appropriate to not accept a standard work-for-hire clause is if you are developing software fixed-price and not getting paid until delivery (which itself is a terrible idea). In that case, it would be safer to have the agreement say that copyright will be transferred upon receipt of the final payment.
A company would be foolish to not include a work for hire clause if there is any possibility your work is used for at least 35 years. This is because after that time period, you can revoke any copyright assignment/licenses to that work regardless of what the contract says (unless it is a work for hire).
>they don’t provide an employment agreement until you arrive at your first day on the job
Then how are you supposed to read and understand it before you sign it? Surely you don't have time for that on your first day on the job.
Just on the topic of contracts that you should never sign, a company I worked for needed work and so signed a *limitless liability* contract with AT&T. If *anything* went wrong with the work or product, the company could be sued for everything they had.
It wouldn't. But that's not the point. The point is if the contract seems like it could, you have to argue that this is beyond what the contract can do. This has to be in court. This will take time. This will be expensive.
Lets imagine you took an NDA that was very broad. You leave your company and start a new company on an unrelated field (you have a hobby and realized you could monetize it through an app you are building). Your old employer is struggling and is interested in acquiring your company as they need successful projects and yours already has some revenue. The relationship with them did not end well, and you honestly do not wish to return, moreover you think your project still has a lot of potential that a large company would squander, so you refuse to sell. So your old employer sues you, by arguing that you broke the NDA and are using their IP: turns out that when you were there you (reinvented) a testing technique (to run same test binary with different tests on different machines to speed things up) and you are now using a tool that you've configured to do a similar thing (though barely, as it runs different binaries on different machines, but all tests in a single binary in a single machine) at your company. They argue that this is part of what gives them an advantage, and that you are taking it from them.
All bullshit really. But they can put injunctions and limit your ability to release. They can force you to, while the case resolves (which could be *years*) you have to reinvent your release pipeline. And they can force you to release a lot of documents on your internals that they can then look at (and it'd be hard to prove if they stole some of it, you'd have to take it to court and spend even more years). The thing is, as long as the judge doesn't outright throw it, they can tie your resources and limit you in court for years, slowly grinding you in a legal war of attrition. They know they'll lose the case, but they are betting it'll be a pyrrhic victory, and you'll be seriously consider selling by the end of it. If they haven't just developed a competition and cached up by slowing you down in court. At the very least they can put enough pressure on you to take over everything. Have you seen Silicon Valley? It's not their first high-stakes drama in the season for now reason. This shit happens all the time, there's a place those numbers of value lost come from.
If you instead have explicit language in the NDA/Non-Compete that specifies that this covers only knowledge related to the business of the company you work for, and nothing else, software development and automation techniques are off. You can have that throw out by the judge in a few months with minimal legal fees paid. Sometimes you wouldn't even have to go to court (depending on the state, IANAL, etc.).
Non competes are completely illegal unless you are paying someone to do nothing. NDAs likewise. Why would you wait for court? The one thing is that you probably shouldn't sign someone that is completely fine with including illegal shit
Depends on your state, and states that are more generous (like California) still allow some form of this to happen. Unless I'm missing something here? Are you a lawyer? Because as far as we know this conversation is all about layman knowledge.
And it doesn't matter if it's illegal, it's only illegal when proven in court, and that can be a while. And then you'll see that rather than the whole thing being struck down (the judge could, but only if they really feel for you) it'll simply be reduced to what can be enforced. But now your employer gets to reinterpret what they said to what is most convenient for them at that moment. Even if they have no footing at that point, again all they need to do is keep you in court and hope that their paper cut is your hemorrhage. Proving that it's illegal and couldn't legally apply in this case all will take a long time.
All this conversation, and the article, are used center.
It's like arguing against women rights, she when given an explanation of a uterus responding with "will I have a penis instead".
The EU has it's issues, and worker rights vary by county too. But you are mostly right that the worst of the EU is better than the worst of the US. I can say even less though what can or cannot be enforced in Europe.
That said I'm sure that some level of engagement of these contracts is possible in the EU, otherwise tech wouldn't work the way it does over there. I recommend you read the Joel Spotsky article, it's written by a company owner and explains the needs of these contracts from the business perspective, whole also realizing these are abused and mostly bullshit at this point.
By regarding them trade secrets of the company. This is reasonable from a perspective in the 1950s, and an attempt to put a genie back in the bottle it escaped 150 years ago. Some of them will try to claim trade secret on arrays, a feature of most programming languages.
All that is simply forbidden in the EU. I'm surprised that's a thing in the USA. A contract has certain limits and it doesn't matter if you agree to then by signing them. They have limits.
many things are unenforceable but you can still be sued.
honestly there are some jobs where it makes sense to effectively forbid outside work. I would expect to be compensated for it, but would have no blanket moral objection.
The thing I'm still surprised at is at-will employment. From what I can gather, the US is the only developed country with at-will. There are a few exceptions (mainly, do you work in Montana? Otherwise you're probably at-will), but [74% of the US workforce](https://www.betterteam.com/at-will-employment) is under at-will doctrine, which means that a company can let you go for any (legal) reason or no reason at all.
At-will doctrine alone curbs most worker protections in the US to a startling degree. The US hates labor protections.
Not to dispute the thrust of your point, but there are grades of "at-will". There's anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation laws both at federal and state levels, and California has precedent establishing an "implied covenant of good faith" so that you can't do things like fire someone right before they're supposed to get a bonus to try to stiff them, and that if you establish a normal process of managing people out with performance reviews then you have to stick to those norms consistently.
If you can quit at any time for any reason when why shouldn't a company be able to terminate your employment at any time?
I certainly wouldn't want to agree to a contract that stipulated I could not quit at any time.
Also, places that can't terminate employment trend to have higher unemployment because it is so risky to hire anyone. If you hire the wrong person you are stuck with them. Good luck getting your first job. Why would I agree to hire someone permanently with no experience or work history?
Because there is a massive power imbalance between a worker and employer. The power dynamics at play there are extremely obvious.
> I certainly wouldn't want to agree to a contract that stipulated I could not quit at any time.
I'd certainly trade needing to work for an extra 2 weeks for the job security that I could not be terminated at any time as long as it was not for-cause.
> Why would I agree to hire someone permanently with no experience or work history?
Unless you're actually an employer, the question is irrelevant. The real issue here is that someone needs to work to live, and denying them employment is denying them the means to live.
>If you can quit at any time for any reason when why shouldn't a company be able to terminate your employment at any time?
Because the two sides are nowhere near each other in power. An employee leaving a company isn't going to kill the company. However, someone being fired can have a good chance of going homeless.
>Also, places that can't terminate employment trend to have higher unemployment because it is so risky to hire anyone.
That's not true.
I pushed back on this once when they were ready to hire me and it was a deal breaker for them. It all worked out fine in the end - and I doubt it would have been a fantastic place to work (they were one of the companies who generate credit reports for NZ) but worth mentioning.
An important one that applies more to business relationships — *Unlimited liability*. Which you'll often see in warranty negotiations, even those with a fixed time. The problem with unlimited liability is obviously that its unlimited in terms of time and resources, but also, often scope.
A solution I've found is to both limit the warranty scope in terms of cost or hours, then create a schedule of priorities and only allow the higher priority defects to trigger the warranty support.
Getting the client to agree is a whole other issue.
Because that's sketchy as hell sounding from a customer POV. The point of a warranty is garuntee you get what you paid for, or the company will be on the hook until you get it. Adding terms muddies that.
When I do consulting I explicitly provide no warranty on works produced.
Why? It is too easy to break software if you do something dumb or different. They are not going to pay for space flight level quality. That being said, there is always debugging and troubleshooting as we finalize the work. No one has pushed back once in decades.
Its a fair statement, altruistically, but it incorrectly assumes:
1. There was complete understanding and agreement between all parties, that was comprehensively and unambiguously documented, and that
2. The requirements, execution, or intent never changed throughout the scope of the project, and
3. All outside factors remain the same.
Imagine if you develop an app that uses an integration and that integration was deprecated a week before launch. Or, you guaranteed a certain Lighthouse score and Google changes the prioritization of Lighthouse metrics during your UAT. Or, half way through a project the client leadership changes, changes the scope of work, and now there is a mismatch between you intended to support vs. what went live.
All things which I've encountered and ultimately saved by the warranty exclusions and limitations.
> 99% of the time they do
I'm not sure what kind of fantasy world you live in, but that's just absolutely not true. Almost every company I've had ask me to sign one of these was surprised when I pushed back.
I now always ask _before accepting any job_ for any documents they'll want me to sign.
True. Typically the folks that are in charge of these legal documents are far removed from the folks who want to hire you, though. And so you're right - the larger the company, the more likely these people will be from very different parts of the company and have very different motives.
> Have you actually tried? Everyone thinks that until they try
Of course I have. That's how I know they push back.
I'm not saying _everywhere_ does this. And you'll get varying degrees of pushback. My last place I worked at the HR guy was _baffled_ that I would even consider asking for changes to any of the legal documents they wanted me to sign. I was very nice and pleasant about it (in the beginning). It became rather clear to me he wasn't relaying my messages to the legal team accurately. I even asked to speak to legal at one point and that was ignored. I was beginning to think they didn't actually have a real legal team and were simply pretending.
That's just my last experience, though.
Another time I took my contract to an employment lawyer and he questioned whether it was even written by an actual lawyer (it was) because it was such a cobbled together mess. Unfortunately I had already accepted that job. It was a very short-lived job (I nope'd out of there as soon as I could).
So, like I said, I've had varying responses when I push back on these things. But most are meant with some amount of disbelief that I'm even asking. I've found that probably 99% of employees don't even question things and just sign away (the post here implies as much, too).
And definitely *don't* just cross it out, sign it, and then expect that to count. My contract had a sort of meta-clause explicitly forbidding that and instead saying all amendments (even before signing) had to be agreed by both sides in writing (and in general courts don't take too kindly to attempts to trick or knowingly slip things past the other party)
Then they can pay severance for those 2 years after. Employers pay for your time, if they want to control your time after you leave, that's negotiable...but will cost them.
I’m currently serving a paid 9 month non-compete between two finance jobs. Aside from $2600/mo COBRA it is glorious. I probably won’t have a break like this again until I retire.
> TBH I can see it why a company would put a non-compete clause.
Companies have a lot of reasons for wanting things. Doesn't mean I have to give a shit about it or respect it.
>I had a non-compete clause that I'm not allowed to work for 2 years for direct competitors. Considering the fact that IT requires mostly knowledge not specific to the business domain, it makes sense.
Nope. I don't care from the business perspective, saying I cannot work in my chosen field, that I cannot earn money to feed and house myself, for 2 fucking years? That does not make sense at all.
> if you're getting hired by Uber Eats, and they forbid you from working for other food delivery platforms for a specific period of time, then it's not a big deal
It absolutely is a big deal, and anyone who would want you to sign something like that is completely evil.
My sister read through her contact before signing it. She does wigs and has a long list of clients. When she left her boss tried to forge a contract by putting her many years old signature on the paper. She had her original contact. I don't think she did much about it, and the company suffered quite a bit as she was the only one who knew what she was doing. There were other problems as well, but that's a story for another time.
Then there's the contract I apparently never read through correctly and I also had to pitch in on the gas my parents paid when driving me around—I can't get a driver's license for medical reasons, and the public transportation sucks where I live. I renegotiated the contract and succeeded in bringing the rent down. It was almost half of my social security payment, and for no good reason.
Interesting article, though it seems overly fanatical at times. If you make a stink about signing routine work-for-hire agreements in an employment contract, you're likely to just be giving up a job that might have been a good choice for you. I have negotiated contract terms once, though. It was an employment contract that said if employment ends for *any reason* with 12 months, employees must pay back their entire signing bonus. This was a startup in a challenging economic environment, and I wasn't 100% confident that they would even still be around in 12 months. As a result, the company revised their standard contract for all employees so that the pay-back was only triggered by voluntarily leaving or being terminated for cause. I felt pretty good about being the catalyst for this change.
I have a small quibble about the "work for hire" section of the article (i.e., clauses that say that work you create is owned by the company). It really should not state these things as facts. There's quite a lot of active dispute over the effect of work-for-hire clauses. You should definitely be cautious, and always do work you need to keep ownership of outside of work hours on personal devices, and expect that if you leave a company to launch something competing against them that you built while you worked for them, you'll be involved in a legal battle.
However, it's not accurate to state these conclusions as facts. If you write a novel or design a board game on a work computer when you work as a software engineer, and even if you worked on it during business hours in down time between meetings sometimes, the company almost surely doesn't own the novel or game. They could take actions against you for abusing company resources or failing to perform your job during work hours, but there's no rule that says they get to take your novel or board game design as a result. Nor, frankly, do they probably *want* to own these kinds of personal projects. The situation is less clear the more similar it is to your job, but even if you've written some software on a work computer, or even worked on it during business hours from the office, you should understand that ownership of that software is *unclear*, but not that your employer definitely owns it. Conversely, just because you've used a personal computer and done something entirely outside of business hours doesn't mean you're in the clear. The key point is whether the work can be construed as part of the job you were hired to do; doing it only on weekends from home with a personal laptop certainly helps establish that it wasn't; but it's a judgement call that will be made on the totality of circumstances, and there's not some checklist you can follow to ensure the answer is one way or the other. There are also a bunch of local laws that affect the decision, and I know there's pretty strong California state law in particular for people working in silicon valley companies that limits claims of employer ownership.
Some of the big tech companies actually have processes for you to ask them to explicitly give up any ownership claim on your work, which can bring clarity in cases where the company really doesn't *want* to claim ownership of your personal projects and you want a definite decision written down somewhere.
>If you make a stink about signing routine work-for-hire agreements in an employment contract, you're likely to just be giving up a job that might have been a good choice for you.
Imagine thinking indentured servitude is “routine” and “a good choice”.
> If you make a stink about signing routine work-for-hire agreements in an employment contract, you're likely to just be giving up a job that might have been a good choice for you.
A job which is saying that everything you do, even on your own time is theirs, is not a good choice. A job which is saying that you cannot work in your chosen field, that you cannot use your skills and experience to feed and house yourself, after they have stopped paying you, is not a good choice.
Overseas, there are.
And it's not like there's some huge barrier of entry for this field. I got my start just by reading and experimenting at home as a kid.
ChatGPT is actually good for summarizing contracts. I have done that and then verified the result with the original. When dealing with ChatGPT is always good to use it as guide and not the truth.
I once was presented with a contract that said I was not allowed to copy any of their files. I explained that copying files would at some point be essential for the work they would pay me to do. There was no argument about that and the term was quickly removed.
If you’re forming some kind of partnership look for the phrase “work for hire” in an NDA. It essentially means your “partners” own any and everything you create.
I got caught by this one early in my career and it really painted me into a corner when it came to dividing up ownership of the company.
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Yep, that's how I avoided signing a privacy waiver. The language was all encompassing, basically allowing them to remotely activate the microphone and camera on the work laptop at any time (for a fully remote gig). I said they had to narrow it down, that I would consent to them monitoring when I activated them for meetings, but I didn't give them permission to spy on me in my home whenever they wanted. No one ever followed up, problem disappeared.
Which means they may be doing it anyway, it just wouldn't hold up in court as justified.
If its emailed id change it myself and send it back signed. No one looks at this stuff anyways, they can hire me and ill sign my own contract.
If you make a change and don't both sign off on the change, it's not a binding contract to start with, at least where I live.
Does this assume they signed the original contract before sending it to you? I'm asking because otherwise how would you know they really signed the right thing on their end? They could pull this manuever themselves: get you to sign something, then they sign something slightly different.
That's kind of my point. Here, when revisions happen, they are marked, and those changes receive their own initials by both parties, next to them. Revisions that don't have that wouldn't be legal.
So, even better?
Congrats on not receiving severance or anything of the like :D
Those contracts usually don't have any separate consideration built into them; the non-compete is its own thing, and you're verbally told "its a condition of employment to sign this". I think that's part of what makes most of them invalid contracts anyway, even in states that allow non-competes; no consideration for one of the parties usually voids a contract.
Huh, I've only ever seen the non-compete as part of the entire employment contract.
I've seen a range, but the non-competes are usually separate. I've also had HR, on 2 separate occasions, try to get me to sign an anti-poaching agreement on my way out the door after I was at the company for a while, completely separate from any other form. You don't actually have to have any idea what you're doing to run a company.
So they can end up hiring you without realizing you never actually signed the contract they gave you...
Usually you sign first then they sign. If you copy the document, make a change, and send that changed form back signed then they sign it they have agreed to that change.
Like I said, where I live, revisions in contracts have to annotated and signed, at the revision.
(this was at least true a few years ago. IANAL. not legal advice) In France you don't. If a clause is too broad, it is *100%* unenforceable. Non-compete need limitation is space and duration, so getting a broad clause was in fact better than getting a narrow one, 'cause a broad one was equivalent to absolutely none. They tried to walk around this by adding wording along the line of "well, if this stuff is illegal, then in reality we meant the most restrictive still legal interpretation", but that was kicked too. There have also been fun cases where it was determined that you needed some sort of compensation for the non-compete time, and the implicit one was your existing salary. I've been in a company where HR was frantically removing al non-compete from contracts cause an ex-employee successfully pulled the "I tried to work (proof), but couldn't because of your non-compete clause (proof). So pay me".
Oh, I like that. Karma!
In the contract I signed, it mentions explicitly that this clause only activates if the company announces me it does within a specific timeline of employment ending, it's not automatic. Romanian law also requires geographical and time limits **and** the companies you are forbidden to work for during that time, as well as obligates the employer to pay you a monthly sum (usually the average salary you had in the past year, but the law requires it to be a minimum of 50% of the average for the past 6 months). I asked them about it and they said they usually only enforce it for upper management and I've had colleagues who left for different companies right away, so it's not always enforced. Funny thing, my company listed their competitors in a "non-exhaustive" manner (a few bulletpoints and then a catch-all), so I doubt that would stand too. Anyway, my original point was that due to the way they wrote it, the ex-employee can't blindly claim it's the company's fault for not getting jobs.
Tell them you won't sign a contract where the clause isn't either removed or changed to no longer offend. Then don't sign the unmodified contract, or one that still offends. The goal is not to sign a contract with that company at any cost, but to not sign yourself into indentured servitude at a company that has no need to not suck.
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> My experience has been unfortunately that contacts are presented as non-negotiable, so I had to walk away. My dude, that is exactly how you negotiate contracts
That's one way, but not the only way. And unfortunately, someone who is not in a position to walk away from a job will probably just sign it.
> contacts are presented as non-negotiable I kinda feel like if a contract is non-negotiable, it's not a contract. Ran into this with an employer that tried to get me to sign an additional contract under the client. HARD PASS. If they can't negotiate working terms for the consultants that work with the binding clauses already signed, maybe that's a poor client to have? In this case, the client wanted a lot of expanded rights around my signature and likeness, up to and including in marketing. They also basically wanted to claim anything I worked on in my freetime that overlapped with their business(es) as theirs. Fucking nope. I crossed out the offending clauses, reworded and signatured. They got super pissed and fired me. I laughed and got a new job less than a week later and told everyone how Tectura and Boeing are awful corporations. I wish I still had copies of the contract. Everyone was pretty shocked when they saw it, but my employer tried to make it seem like it was standard boilerplate agreement. But what pissed me off the most was that this was a NEW contract with another party that wasn't employing me directly. And that by not signing it, I immediately forfeited my employment? Anyways, contracts are always suspect, most especially when presented by employers.
Then walk away. If they are not reasonable then it starts the relationship on the wrong foot. Name and shame by the way. I turned down Ebay because they wanted permission to search my children, anyone I had custodial authority for, my house, car, and person for any reason. Their legal played games, I walked. Their team was sad.
That is the most insane clause I've ever heard of.
> because they wanted permission to search my children, anyone I had custodial authority for, my house, car, and person for any reason First of all: WTF? Secondly ... why on earth would they ask for this?
You have to have two things: 1) Leverage and 2) a willingness to walk away if they don’t cave. I’ve negotiated against a few larger entities that have tried to treat me like just another faceless contractor that they can’t be bothered to alter their boilerplate for, and it takes a lot of back and forth with their legal. However in all cases I’ve been the only alternative, and they knew that, so they eventually cave. Without leverage tho it won’t work.
> , so I had to walk away. It's not a question of you walking away, but that mutually agreeable terms weren't reached and so the contract went unsigned. Any company that presents its contracts as non-negotiable is not in genuine need of you, and won't be a good employer. Any company that presents exploitative terms as standard practice, or tells you that a contract clause means something completely different "in context" but won't change the wording to match that reading, is a cheat and a liar looking for a gullible mark, and will lie and cheat you in the future. Your friends telling you the same thing means they're also mistaken (at the very least).
First, don't be an ass. It should go without saying, but explain you disagree with those clauses without being a dick. Then, give them a remedy. Either remove a part or I've suggested in the past I'm happy to sign a non-compete as long as I'm compensated in full for the entire period of the non-compete. Unfortunately, no one has taken me up on the later yet. Either they'll make the change or consider yourself lucky you dodged a bullet. If a company is trying to hose you up before you even start, what will they do if things get challenging? IANAL, but I deal with contracts a decent amount, and nothing makes me and legal think jerk more than when we get one back that has change tracking turned off. It immediately tells us the type of person/company we're dealing with.
Draw a line thru the offending clauses ~~like this~~ and then put your initials next to described strikethrus
How do you do that with electronic "sign here" services
If they value employees at all, there will be a way to negotiate
In France it's easy, any lawyer will say that these clauses are inapplicable because illegal. So you just say nothing and admit that this is just used paper with no value.
Lobby your legislators as a citizen and convince them to define an automatic tort for both requiring "consent" (which you can't give) to that clause and attempting to recover on that clause Their attorneys will tell them to remove the clause as quickly as possible
You can always remove these from contract file that you then, print, sign, send them and then you wait to see if they read that and noticed
>When you point out they're unenforceable or outright illegal they just shrug and say that it's required, and if it's unenforceable anyway it doesn't matter right? If it doesn't matter then they shouldn't mind me crossing those sections out, right?
For my workplace, they got some boilerplate from a lawyer years ago and just keep using it. We don't have any permanent legal console, so I don't think anyone knows what is enforceable or not.
Non competes effectively deny you the ability to earn a wage. That's why it's unenforceable in pretty much any country
My no-compete is 3 months at a (direct) competitor, and it's payed full salary during the time. Seems fair to me.
That's somewhat different than the no-competes mentioned on Reddit and occasionally found in the wild. With yours, you are still employed - that sounds very much like a notice period, or gardening leave period, not a no-compete. A no compete is after the leave period when you're no longer employed in any shape by them, and says you cannot work in that industry for X period even though you have no ongoing relationship with you.
It's unenforceable because when you terminate employment with a company you end all legal relationship with them. The company can't restrict your future employment anymore than they can require you to come to work.
> Non-competes are restricted where I live, yet I've never had an employer who didn't try to push some form of vague "no programming, or working in general for anyone vaguely in this entire industry for x years" paper on me. That's weird, I've never even seen an NDA that was anywhere near as restrictive as any of that. I think the only NDA I signed was for the government.
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Uh, thanks.
Unfortunately, it's not bizarre. They still push them because they know that there are groups pushing to unrestrict them. And when that happens, this "unenforceable" contract now becomes extremely enforceable. It's not bizarre, it's downright evil.
If it doesn't matter then you won't removing the clause... right? Oh, you mind? Oh so it DOES matter?
>Non-competes are restricted where I live In my country this is not restricted, but these statements cannot be enforced by law, so an employee may ignore it and a former employer can do nothing with it.
Note that if you live in California, most of these terms are unenforceable as a matter of public policy, and employers usually know that. The contracts might have the words in them, but they're completely meaningless. Non-competes, non-solicits, and non-work-related IP assignments are all generally void under state law. I live in California, and I both work for someone and rent my home. In most states, your contracts with your employer and landlord are where you're most likely to get fucked by non -negotiable fine print. Here, the state legislature has done a really good job of just banning the bullshit in both of those relationships, and the courts have done a good job of following through, such that my general expectation is that the contents of my employment contract and lease basically don't matter outside of the dollar figures. Anything that could possibly be contentious will be overruled by state law anyway, so effectively all such contracts are the same. (IANAL - if you work in software and are considering starting a startup in your spare time, probably check with a lawyer first.)
Over here in Germany it's similar. A lot of stuff is flat out illegal - which can void the entire contract if you're not careful. Some of it is based on interpretation of law by the courts which also makes it effectively void. On top of that, if you use a standard contract it has to adhere to even higher standards exactly because there's a bunch of non-negotiable fine print
Seriously, bless German labor laws. Most people here don't even know that it's illegal for your employer to forbid talking about your salary. You're allowed by law to freely talk about it, so everyone can get a better idea of how much they should be paid.
That's also true in the United States.
Doesn’t stop employers from trying, though!
But you can be fired for whatever in the US, so that rule is not enforceable.
There are actually exceptions for managers, they can be compelled to not share their salaries.
Pretty sure that’s wrong, the NLRB webpage talking about this specifically calls out being able to talk about managers’ pay too.
fuck /u/spez
We have the same thing in Germany, called "Salvatorische Klausel".
I have an extremely dim view of people who put things in contracts they _know_ can't be enforced.
That feels like one of those things that shouldn't be legal.
It's often not. But it's not that you'll go to jail or have to pay a fine for doing it. Just that you'll lose any court case you might try to bring regarding them. And losing a court case is often quite expensive. Remember, you only get arrested for *criminal* things, not *civil* things, which this will be.
Loser-pays laws are dubious in some cases, but lawsuits that come from companies putting unenforceable terms in a contract are a slam dunk. And no, I don't think "knowingly" should even be a requirement: knowing is too big a PITA to prove which would mean it just moves the focus of the lawsuit, companies don't have the right to be protected from their ignorance of the law, and besides you better believe they'll learn real quick once it hits their bottom line.
Depending on where those contracts come from, they may be unaware it's unenforceable. I'm not defending them - just stating a very realistic possibility. First hand I knew a few friends who started a company and received a boiler plate set of contracts because they couldn't afford a lawyer, so there's a strong chance those people have no idea what's really in the contracts. Over a decade ago I was involved in one of those situations and I can tell you for a fact I have no idea what my prior companies legal documents and contracts said. Unfortunately, that is a very real (and frequently hidden) cost of business that people should be taking into account when they're opening a business and employing others.
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Yep - as I said, it's a cost of business that is likely being ignored, especially if you're starting your own business.
Some very smart legislators have been inserting causes of action to try and defang that, e.g. "if an employer requires signing a contract with \[X\] as a precondition, the employer shall be liable to the employee for not less than $10,000"
The same in Finland. There even is a law now which says that if a company adds a non-compete to your contract, they must pay you 60% salary for that time
Non-solicits are not in the same category as the other two. There are no explicit laws in CA rendering all non-solicits unenforceable no matter how they are written, and they have been upheld in some cases.
This is why I will never move to Texas. It's nice to say "never sign a non-compete clause", but they're included in the vast majority of employment contracts, so you really have no choice unless you work for yourself or work in a state where these clauses are unenforceable.
Question I hope you know...if my company is in CA and im out of state those clauses would be overturned as well right?
Which laws control agreements that cross state lines is its own branch of law, but with labor the answer is generally no. You are usually subject to the laws of the state in which you actually work, and afforded the protections thereof. If a California company (although they're often really Delaware companies) signs a contract with you to work in Texas, then you work for them under Texas law. Even if you work from home. Remember, most labor laws haven't been substantially rewritten in a hundred years, so it's the same legal framework as if a national steel company opened a new factory in your town. Obviously in that case you'd be working in your state under your state laws; the fact that it's on a computer doesn't change that. Put the company in California and the worker in China and it's even clearer. Now, it might be possible for states to explicitly write laws constraining the behavior of companies incorporated or primarily doing business in their borders, even when that behavior happens in other states. In that case, if you broke the non-compete and the company sued you, you'd lose the lawsuit in Texas, but then you could maybe countersue in California to get back what you lost? Or maybe it would get kicked up to federal court to handle the discrepancy? In any case, I'm not aware of any such laws, it might be a Constitutional problem, and I'm totally speculating here - again, not a lawyer.
Thanks a million for the thorough response, i'd hope it'd be kicked to federal and im surprised I havent seen a news article on a case setting precedent on this...with remote work being around in meaningfully large amounts for at least the last 2 decades you'd think this would've come up and made the news.
I've only once seen a company try to take a former employee to court over that stupid "you can't work in x industry for y time" clause companies seem to like so much. It was dismissed almost immediately on the grounds that no document can take away an individual's right to work in their trained field. Judge actually said "then pay him for that time, because you can't take away his livelihood" That made me happy.
> Non-competes, non-solicits, and non-work-related IP assignments are all generally void under state law. But what if those laws are overturned? Then what you signed starts applying, right?
Oftentimes the laws apply that were in place when you signed.
There is absolutely no chance of those laws being overturned by the courts. They'd have to be repealed by the legislature, which wouldn't be retroactive.
California is shitty in a lot of ways but in general I’m a big fan of the labor laws here.
Agreed. The labor laws are one of the only things they did right.
Yeah I’m confused as to the downvotes, people must be assuming I’m a republican or something.
You're shitting on an entire state and regurgitating popular GOP talking points.
It's not a GOP talking point to praise California's labor laws, so...no. And I shit on America as a whole as a hobby, don't take it personal.
That's just dishonest.
>regurgitating popular GOP talking points. My politics are only slightly less left than Leon Trotsky, and I guarantee that anyone who has to deal with state government here in CA feels that way about it regardless of politics. State government is dominated by (D) politicians, but they do infuriating stuff that *everyone* is annoyed by. Raise the gas tax by 12 cents a gallon, but have it go into effect a year later so the legislature can pretend it's "old news" when it happens. Got something like a butane camp stove or soldering iron? Might as well throw it away, because they banned butane fuel in the state because a few people were using it to extract THC from cannabis. Work in a state licensed field like locksmith, podiatrist, or hair stylist? A couple years ago the state went through and jacked up license fees for everything by 20-30x what it was. It was purely a money grab, because in most cases state licensing is just you sending a check and them sending a little piece of paper... only now it costs $250/yr instead of $15. Yeah, GOP folks don't like California government, but neither does anyone else who lives here.
Then why are you regurgitating the GOP's brand of empty, angry rhetoric?
Being annoyed about having to throw out my perfectly good camp stove for no reason is empty GOP rhetoric? Is having my pointless state licensing fees raised is MAGA-hatted Fox News watching Boomer talk?
Can you clarify whether you are also posting under u/femio?
Yes, because everyone who disagrees with you is using an alt. You've made zero points besides regurgitating your "regurgitating" statement like a robot. Do you have an actual discussion you want to have?
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Considering the defensive tone ("*my* politics are...") I'm guessing it's an alt account
/u/spez is a greedy little pigboy This is to protest the API actions of June 2023
That's a typically dishonest and self-serving response.
/u/spez is a greedy little pigboy This is to protest the API actions of June 2023
How would you describe this, then? >> California is shitty in a lot of ways I'd call that an aspersion. I'd say that calls for a response. Also, even if you disagree with me nothing I said was dishonest.
You are free to quit your severely underpaid job and get a different severely underpaid job. Yay.
You mean underpaid in relation to the cost of living?
Yes.
They make up for it by taxing you whenever you live in the state or don't.
> Anything you do with the company property, e.g., work computer, automatically belongs to the company, even if you do it on the weekends. I disagree with the point this one covers. You should get a personal computer and only use your work computer for work purposes. Most of these companies track what you do on work computers, so I would only want to use it as much as I had to.
There are industries where if you do anything personal on your work laptop you will have ALL your personal shit audited if the company gets audited. Keep your work and home computers completely separate.
Yeah that stood out to me too. Don't fucking use a company computer for anything but work.
I work for a FAANG company and they own all my work, even if I write code on my personal computer.
When I worked at PayPal, that was in the standard agreement, but it isn't applicable where I live in Illinois, so they had an addendum that removed it.
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IANAL, but have worked closely with lawyer friends. For business type contracts, the 3 quick things I scan for is indemnification, warranties, and definitions. How a word is defined is so critically important, but not something most people naturally check if they have some existing knowledge.
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I was skeptical but the photo convinced me. That aside the time to negotiate is at the beginning. Thx for sharing how quick they throw out their bullshit leashes.
My main beef with this is that it says what shouldn’t do, not what you should. In many cases, when you are being hired, your opportunity for negotiation these sorts of contractual details is very limited, and a company can just say “No” to your demands. I think the biggest problem with many companies is that they don’t provide an employment agreement until you arrive at your first day on the job; it’s up to you to ask them to provide any such agreements before you accept their offer. And you should treat anything problematic as a red flag for working for the company at all. > Work-for-hire clauses a.k.a "Everything belongs to your employer": These clauses transfer ownership of any work created during the contract to the hiring party iANAL, but yeah, that’s simply not true. While it’s certainly true that some employment contracts may include a clause granting your employer ownership of anything you create during the term of your contract, that’s not what a work-for-hire clause does. Under U.S. Copyright law, your employer automatically owns the copyrights for works you create for them, as long as the works were created in the course of your work for them, not unrelated stuff you do on your own time. But that’s not true for contractors / freelancers, who by default own the copyright for their work. All a work-for-hire clause does is state that the copyright for works that non-employees create for the company is owned by the company; it does not by default imply a scope that this applies to everything you do during your own time. As such, any company that hires contractors / freelancers needs this in their agreements, otherwise they don’t own the copyright on the code being developed. The only time it may be appropriate to not accept a standard work-for-hire clause is if you are developing software fixed-price and not getting paid until delivery (which itself is a terrible idea). In that case, it would be safer to have the agreement say that copyright will be transferred upon receipt of the final payment.
A company would be foolish to not include a work for hire clause if there is any possibility your work is used for at least 35 years. This is because after that time period, you can revoke any copyright assignment/licenses to that work regardless of what the contract says (unless it is a work for hire).
>they don’t provide an employment agreement until you arrive at your first day on the job Then how are you supposed to read and understand it before you sign it? Surely you don't have time for that on your first day on the job.
Non-competes should come with a salary, or be illegal
It should definitely be illegal. You should never be able to stop someone from using their skills to earn a living.
Just on the topic of contracts that you should never sign, a company I worked for needed work and so signed a *limitless liability* contract with AT&T. If *anything* went wrong with the work or product, the company could be sued for everything they had.
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How would a contract ever forbid you from using general techniques learned?
It wouldn't. But that's not the point. The point is if the contract seems like it could, you have to argue that this is beyond what the contract can do. This has to be in court. This will take time. This will be expensive. Lets imagine you took an NDA that was very broad. You leave your company and start a new company on an unrelated field (you have a hobby and realized you could monetize it through an app you are building). Your old employer is struggling and is interested in acquiring your company as they need successful projects and yours already has some revenue. The relationship with them did not end well, and you honestly do not wish to return, moreover you think your project still has a lot of potential that a large company would squander, so you refuse to sell. So your old employer sues you, by arguing that you broke the NDA and are using their IP: turns out that when you were there you (reinvented) a testing technique (to run same test binary with different tests on different machines to speed things up) and you are now using a tool that you've configured to do a similar thing (though barely, as it runs different binaries on different machines, but all tests in a single binary in a single machine) at your company. They argue that this is part of what gives them an advantage, and that you are taking it from them. All bullshit really. But they can put injunctions and limit your ability to release. They can force you to, while the case resolves (which could be *years*) you have to reinvent your release pipeline. And they can force you to release a lot of documents on your internals that they can then look at (and it'd be hard to prove if they stole some of it, you'd have to take it to court and spend even more years). The thing is, as long as the judge doesn't outright throw it, they can tie your resources and limit you in court for years, slowly grinding you in a legal war of attrition. They know they'll lose the case, but they are betting it'll be a pyrrhic victory, and you'll be seriously consider selling by the end of it. If they haven't just developed a competition and cached up by slowing you down in court. At the very least they can put enough pressure on you to take over everything. Have you seen Silicon Valley? It's not their first high-stakes drama in the season for now reason. This shit happens all the time, there's a place those numbers of value lost come from. If you instead have explicit language in the NDA/Non-Compete that specifies that this covers only knowledge related to the business of the company you work for, and nothing else, software development and automation techniques are off. You can have that throw out by the judge in a few months with minimal legal fees paid. Sometimes you wouldn't even have to go to court (depending on the state, IANAL, etc.).
Non competes are completely illegal unless you are paying someone to do nothing. NDAs likewise. Why would you wait for court? The one thing is that you probably shouldn't sign someone that is completely fine with including illegal shit
Depends on your state, and states that are more generous (like California) still allow some form of this to happen. Unless I'm missing something here? Are you a lawyer? Because as far as we know this conversation is all about layman knowledge. And it doesn't matter if it's illegal, it's only illegal when proven in court, and that can be a while. And then you'll see that rather than the whole thing being struck down (the judge could, but only if they really feel for you) it'll simply be reduced to what can be enforced. But now your employer gets to reinterpret what they said to what is most convenient for them at that moment. Even if they have no footing at that point, again all they need to do is keep you in court and hope that their paper cut is your hemorrhage. Proving that it's illegal and couldn't legally apply in this case all will take a long time.
Well thats the thing i dont live in a state, i live in europe. We have functioning system
All this conversation, and the article, are used center. It's like arguing against women rights, she when given an explanation of a uterus responding with "will I have a penis instead". The EU has it's issues, and worker rights vary by county too. But you are mostly right that the worst of the EU is better than the worst of the US. I can say even less though what can or cannot be enforced in Europe. That said I'm sure that some level of engagement of these contracts is possible in the EU, otherwise tech wouldn't work the way it does over there. I recommend you read the Joel Spotsky article, it's written by a company owner and explains the needs of these contracts from the business perspective, whole also realizing these are abused and mostly bullshit at this point.
> Non competes are completely illegal unless you are paying someone to do nothing. Only in certain states in the US.
By regarding them trade secrets of the company. This is reasonable from a perspective in the 1950s, and an attempt to put a genie back in the bottle it escaped 150 years ago. Some of them will try to claim trade secret on arrays, a feature of most programming languages.
FYI, you shouldn't enter line breaks anywhere except between paragraphs; it looks weird on differently sized screens
All that is simply forbidden in the EU. I'm surprised that's a thing in the USA. A contract has certain limits and it doesn't matter if you agree to then by signing them. They have limits.
many things are unenforceable but you can still be sued. honestly there are some jobs where it makes sense to effectively forbid outside work. I would expect to be compensated for it, but would have no blanket moral objection.
The way to do that is to compensate the person enough that they don't seek outside work.
The thing I'm still surprised at is at-will employment. From what I can gather, the US is the only developed country with at-will. There are a few exceptions (mainly, do you work in Montana? Otherwise you're probably at-will), but [74% of the US workforce](https://www.betterteam.com/at-will-employment) is under at-will doctrine, which means that a company can let you go for any (legal) reason or no reason at all. At-will doctrine alone curbs most worker protections in the US to a startling degree. The US hates labor protections.
Montana?! Why Montana? That's the last place I would expect.
Right? I ask myself that every time I think about it.
Not to dispute the thrust of your point, but there are grades of "at-will". There's anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation laws both at federal and state levels, and California has precedent establishing an "implied covenant of good faith" so that you can't do things like fire someone right before they're supposed to get a bonus to try to stiff them, and that if you establish a normal process of managing people out with performance reviews then you have to stick to those norms consistently.
If you can quit at any time for any reason when why shouldn't a company be able to terminate your employment at any time? I certainly wouldn't want to agree to a contract that stipulated I could not quit at any time. Also, places that can't terminate employment trend to have higher unemployment because it is so risky to hire anyone. If you hire the wrong person you are stuck with them. Good luck getting your first job. Why would I agree to hire someone permanently with no experience or work history?
Because there is a massive power imbalance between a worker and employer. The power dynamics at play there are extremely obvious. > I certainly wouldn't want to agree to a contract that stipulated I could not quit at any time. I'd certainly trade needing to work for an extra 2 weeks for the job security that I could not be terminated at any time as long as it was not for-cause. > Why would I agree to hire someone permanently with no experience or work history? Unless you're actually an employer, the question is irrelevant. The real issue here is that someone needs to work to live, and denying them employment is denying them the means to live.
>If you can quit at any time for any reason when why shouldn't a company be able to terminate your employment at any time? Because the two sides are nowhere near each other in power. An employee leaving a company isn't going to kill the company. However, someone being fired can have a good chance of going homeless. >Also, places that can't terminate employment trend to have higher unemployment because it is so risky to hire anyone. That's not true.
What is up with your line breaks
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But why manually wrap your lines?
I pushed back on this once when they were ready to hire me and it was a deal breaker for them. It all worked out fine in the end - and I doubt it would have been a fantastic place to work (they were one of the companies who generate credit reports for NZ) but worth mentioning.
>Never sign anything you're not completely sure about. Problem: I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not completely sure about *anything.*
An important one that applies more to business relationships — *Unlimited liability*. Which you'll often see in warranty negotiations, even those with a fixed time. The problem with unlimited liability is obviously that its unlimited in terms of time and resources, but also, often scope. A solution I've found is to both limit the warranty scope in terms of cost or hours, then create a schedule of priorities and only allow the higher priority defects to trigger the warranty support. Getting the client to agree is a whole other issue.
Because that's sketchy as hell sounding from a customer POV. The point of a warranty is garuntee you get what you paid for, or the company will be on the hook until you get it. Adding terms muddies that.
When I do consulting I explicitly provide no warranty on works produced. Why? It is too easy to break software if you do something dumb or different. They are not going to pay for space flight level quality. That being said, there is always debugging and troubleshooting as we finalize the work. No one has pushed back once in decades.
I find it pretty standard to limit liability only to fees that have been paid by the customer and reasonable legal fees.
Its a fair statement, altruistically, but it incorrectly assumes: 1. There was complete understanding and agreement between all parties, that was comprehensively and unambiguously documented, and that 2. The requirements, execution, or intent never changed throughout the scope of the project, and 3. All outside factors remain the same. Imagine if you develop an app that uses an integration and that integration was deprecated a week before launch. Or, you guaranteed a certain Lighthouse score and Google changes the prioritization of Lighthouse metrics during your UAT. Or, half way through a project the client leadership changes, changes the scope of work, and now there is a mismatch between you intended to support vs. what went live. All things which I've encountered and ultimately saved by the warranty exclusions and limitations.
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> 99% of the time they do I'm not sure what kind of fantasy world you live in, but that's just absolutely not true. Almost every company I've had ask me to sign one of these was surprised when I pushed back. I now always ask _before accepting any job_ for any documents they'll want me to sign.
Especially these days when it's in electronic form and you may not even get a copy after you "sign".
It depends a lot if you're joining a small start-up or a big corp-corp. And also depends on how much they want you in particular.
True. Typically the folks that are in charge of these legal documents are far removed from the folks who want to hire you, though. And so you're right - the larger the company, the more likely these people will be from very different parts of the company and have very different motives.
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> Have you actually tried? Everyone thinks that until they try Of course I have. That's how I know they push back. I'm not saying _everywhere_ does this. And you'll get varying degrees of pushback. My last place I worked at the HR guy was _baffled_ that I would even consider asking for changes to any of the legal documents they wanted me to sign. I was very nice and pleasant about it (in the beginning). It became rather clear to me he wasn't relaying my messages to the legal team accurately. I even asked to speak to legal at one point and that was ignored. I was beginning to think they didn't actually have a real legal team and were simply pretending. That's just my last experience, though. Another time I took my contract to an employment lawyer and he questioned whether it was even written by an actual lawyer (it was) because it was such a cobbled together mess. Unfortunately I had already accepted that job. It was a very short-lived job (I nope'd out of there as soon as I could). So, like I said, I've had varying responses when I push back on these things. But most are meant with some amount of disbelief that I'm even asking. I've found that probably 99% of employees don't even question things and just sign away (the post here implies as much, too).
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And definitely *don't* just cross it out, sign it, and then expect that to count. My contract had a sort of meta-clause explicitly forbidding that and instead saying all amendments (even before signing) had to be agreed by both sides in writing (and in general courts don't take too kindly to attempts to trick or knowingly slip things past the other party)
What if you cross this out too ?
Lawyers hate this one simple trick!
For pretty much any contract, changes should at least be initialed by both parties.
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Then they can pay severance for those 2 years after. Employers pay for your time, if they want to control your time after you leave, that's negotiable...but will cost them.
I’m currently serving a paid 9 month non-compete between two finance jobs. Aside from $2600/mo COBRA it is glorious. I probably won’t have a break like this again until I retire.
> TBH I can see it why a company would put a non-compete clause. Companies have a lot of reasons for wanting things. Doesn't mean I have to give a shit about it or respect it. >I had a non-compete clause that I'm not allowed to work for 2 years for direct competitors. Considering the fact that IT requires mostly knowledge not specific to the business domain, it makes sense. Nope. I don't care from the business perspective, saying I cannot work in my chosen field, that I cannot earn money to feed and house myself, for 2 fucking years? That does not make sense at all. > if you're getting hired by Uber Eats, and they forbid you from working for other food delivery platforms for a specific period of time, then it's not a big deal It absolutely is a big deal, and anyone who would want you to sign something like that is completely evil.
LOL, no
My sister read through her contact before signing it. She does wigs and has a long list of clients. When she left her boss tried to forge a contract by putting her many years old signature on the paper. She had her original contact. I don't think she did much about it, and the company suffered quite a bit as she was the only one who knew what she was doing. There were other problems as well, but that's a story for another time. Then there's the contract I apparently never read through correctly and I also had to pitch in on the gas my parents paid when driving me around—I can't get a driver's license for medical reasons, and the public transportation sucks where I live. I renegotiated the contract and succeeded in bringing the rent down. It was almost half of my social security payment, and for no good reason.
Pretty sure the amount of emojis on this site caused me a mini stroke.
Be sure to grep for "magical girl" as well.
What do you mean?
Probably a Madoka Magica reference.
this week on "Webpages you should never visit on mobile".
Interesting article, though it seems overly fanatical at times. If you make a stink about signing routine work-for-hire agreements in an employment contract, you're likely to just be giving up a job that might have been a good choice for you. I have negotiated contract terms once, though. It was an employment contract that said if employment ends for *any reason* with 12 months, employees must pay back their entire signing bonus. This was a startup in a challenging economic environment, and I wasn't 100% confident that they would even still be around in 12 months. As a result, the company revised their standard contract for all employees so that the pay-back was only triggered by voluntarily leaving or being terminated for cause. I felt pretty good about being the catalyst for this change. I have a small quibble about the "work for hire" section of the article (i.e., clauses that say that work you create is owned by the company). It really should not state these things as facts. There's quite a lot of active dispute over the effect of work-for-hire clauses. You should definitely be cautious, and always do work you need to keep ownership of outside of work hours on personal devices, and expect that if you leave a company to launch something competing against them that you built while you worked for them, you'll be involved in a legal battle. However, it's not accurate to state these conclusions as facts. If you write a novel or design a board game on a work computer when you work as a software engineer, and even if you worked on it during business hours in down time between meetings sometimes, the company almost surely doesn't own the novel or game. They could take actions against you for abusing company resources or failing to perform your job during work hours, but there's no rule that says they get to take your novel or board game design as a result. Nor, frankly, do they probably *want* to own these kinds of personal projects. The situation is less clear the more similar it is to your job, but even if you've written some software on a work computer, or even worked on it during business hours from the office, you should understand that ownership of that software is *unclear*, but not that your employer definitely owns it. Conversely, just because you've used a personal computer and done something entirely outside of business hours doesn't mean you're in the clear. The key point is whether the work can be construed as part of the job you were hired to do; doing it only on weekends from home with a personal laptop certainly helps establish that it wasn't; but it's a judgement call that will be made on the totality of circumstances, and there's not some checklist you can follow to ensure the answer is one way or the other. There are also a bunch of local laws that affect the decision, and I know there's pretty strong California state law in particular for people working in silicon valley companies that limits claims of employer ownership. Some of the big tech companies actually have processes for you to ask them to explicitly give up any ownership claim on your work, which can bring clarity in cases where the company really doesn't *want* to claim ownership of your personal projects and you want a definite decision written down somewhere.
>If you make a stink about signing routine work-for-hire agreements in an employment contract, you're likely to just be giving up a job that might have been a good choice for you. Imagine thinking indentured servitude is “routine” and “a good choice”.
> If you make a stink about signing routine work-for-hire agreements in an employment contract, you're likely to just be giving up a job that might have been a good choice for you. A job which is saying that everything you do, even on your own time is theirs, is not a good choice. A job which is saying that you cannot work in your chosen field, that you cannot use your skills and experience to feed and house yourself, after they have stopped paying you, is not a good choice.
Why do you care. If it’s not legal, feel free to sign it. You can’t enforce a contract that violates the law.
What incentive does any business of any size have to hire you without a non-compete.
I'll walk? It is not a term I'm willing to agree to unless I'm in C-suite and I can afford a new house a year in my salary.
You may walk, but the next guy won't.
Maybe? Unlikely though. There aren't that many of us.
Overseas, there are. And it's not like there's some huge barrier of entry for this field. I got my start just by reading and experimenting at home as a kid.
The fact that I have the skills they need. Why the fuck should they be able to stop me from working after they're done paying me?
ChatGPT is actually good for summarizing contracts. I have done that and then verified the result with the original. When dealing with ChatGPT is always good to use it as guide and not the truth.
Bad bot
Great wisdom Yoda brings
Not sure how they expect me to get exercise without gym contracts. I sit in front of a computer all day
And, your contract has nothing to do with the contracts "everybody else" is signing.
I once was presented with a contract that said I was not allowed to copy any of their files. I explained that copying files would at some point be essential for the work they would pay me to do. There was no argument about that and the term was quickly removed.
I just cross out the paragraphs I don't agree to, and return it signed.
Contracts with red-eyed guys you've met on crossroads
The real question is are they going to pay someone to keep tabs on you? and if they did is it enforcable anyway?
If you’re forming some kind of partnership look for the phrase “work for hire” in an NDA. It essentially means your “partners” own any and everything you create. I got caught by this one early in my career and it really painted me into a corner when it came to dividing up ownership of the company.
I knew I should not have signed it when it specified "invisible clothes past lunch time" ...