Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

andychase.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 271 posts

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#101

Post by blister »

ryandrake wrote: post #94
ransom1538 wrote: post #72

I get the whole 'this isn't fair argument.' But these contracts impact peoples livelihood so I will attempt to help. First, don't respond to HR with a complex set of legal questions. They wont know the answer and will push back -- corporate attorneys will charge astronomical amounts and these questions could even get the board involved -- which the CEO usually doesn't want to do. My suggestions: 1) The strike: Print…

I've actually tried that cute "Strike out clauses from your employment agreement you don't like and sign THAT document" tactic with several past employers, and each of them pulled me aside my first or second day of work and gave me a stern and clear "Sign it unmodified or GTFO" talk. In my experience nothing in an employment contract is in any way negotiable. I don't even bother anymore--it's futile.

Either they're bluffing completely or you're extremely junior.

We often spend $10k-$30k on each new hire. If you make it through that pipeline and they try to strong-arm you on the first day... they're going to have a rough time.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#102

Post by dqv »

theli0nheart wrote: post #96
dqv wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So gigster can do something really awful and I can't seek damages? The implication made here is that the writer believes that gigster is going to "do something awful". The over all tone of the writing is offensive rather than defensive . In other words, the email is not written like he wants questions answered, but rather that he'd like to jump to conclusions. The responses to his inquiries leave much to be desired…

What he wrote was a statement of fact, not of opinion. Gigster can in fact do something really awful and there is no recourse. In any contract negotiation, sometimes you need to be clear what the problem is. If you, as a party to a contract, indeed feel like there is zero chance that other party will do anything to injure you, will keep to their promises, and has your best interests at heart, what is the point of the…

There is an appropriate way to be clear on what the problem is and an inappropriate way to be clear on what the problem is. My initial point is that he did not raise his objections in an appropriate way.

I completely understand why he objected and I would have objected as well, but I would have done so in a more appropriate way.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#103

Post by ekidd »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #89
ekidd wrote: post #42

I've worked as a consultant for years. I occasionally employ a lawyer to review contracts with my clients. As a general rule of thumb, I'll only work for a client under one of three circumstances: 1. The client's standard contract is reasonable. This is rare. 2. The client's standard contract is unreasonable, but they're willing to cross-out or rewrite the objectionable bits before signing. This is very common. 3. It…

"It's OK to do a couple of those jobs when you're starting out" I don't think it's OK at all. Some people will, for various valid reasons, need to work for sites like this for a long time or indefinitely. Even for those who only have to rely upon sites like this for a short time this kind of exposure to risk is not ok. It shouldn't be allowed. Contracts that totally indemnify a company in a situation like this should…

> Contracts that totally indemnify a company in a situation like this shouldn't be enforceable.

I definitely agree that as more people find themselves freelancing, we need to establish better legal protections for freelancers.

Lots of indemnity clauses are just ridiculous. Here's how to get over-broad indemnity clauses removed:

"Hey, I noticed you had some unusually strong indemnity clauses in your contract, which would require my company to cover your costs in situations X, Y and Z, which are outside of our control. As a general rule, we're not in the insurance business—we leave that to Lloyd's of London (laugh). But if this is important to you, I can look into purchasing a special insurance rider to cover these issues. This will delay the start date a bit and will obviously have an effect on the costs; I can get you a quote if you're interested. If not, we could replace this with ."

If they're not willing to either (a) pay extra for the insurance they want, or (b) swap out the indemnity clause for something more neutral, then you walk. The only way to work for good clients is to discipline yourself to walk away from the bad ones. (Also, charge more, require a payment up front, and always quote daily or weekly rates, never hourly. This will improve the quality of your clients dramatically.)

Anybody who insists on broad indemnity clauses should be paying enterprise rates and the contracts should be reviewed by lawyers for both sides.

Another good approach is to pay to have your own standard contract drafted (without anything obnoxious in it), and send it to the client.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#104

Post by matthewcford »

> "does not contain any third-party software, including without limitation, “open source,” “copy left,” “public” or other similar code or anything derived from or based on any of the foregoing"

This contract has probably been written by a lawyer who doesn't understands software development.

I run digital agency and we've lost projects in the past that couldn't get past legal departments because they did not want us to use any open source software (or transfer the copyright to open source work)

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#105

Post by nraynaud »

koolba wrote: post #98
nraynaud wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in France the minimal penalty rate is set by law, and it's mandatory to put it on every bill, with the payment terms now. It's part of a crackdown on big companies crushing the smaller ones with unreasonable payment times.

What's the min penalty? The usual one I add is something along the lines of: " Late payments shall accrue interest that is compounded 1.5% per month or the maximum amount allowed by law, whichever is less... "

So, the minimal interest rate is 2.79% (it looks like it's 3 times some kind of legal stuff). Interestingly enough, there is no VAT on it, but it's computed on the VAT price.

The debt collection fee is 40€, It seems to be fixed in law, and not a minimum.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#106

Post by matthewcford »

pjc50 wrote: post #83
gurgus wrote: post #11

That classic "well, nobody else has had a problem, so you must be the problem" response. I remember at one of my first jobs, myself and another programmer were working on a side project (outside of work hours, not using company resources in any way) that were considering monetising. Our contracts stated that the company we worked for owned all of our code produced in and out of working hours. We got to the business e…

The ambiguous IP clause is very common in UK programmer employment contracts. I've had two experiences with it. Most recently, I was able to insert a clarifying clause that said "work not related to company's business and not done on company time/equipment doesn't count". Previously, I was working at a startup that didn't have this clause and employed a number of people who were Debian developers in their spare time.…

> "work not related to company's business and not done on company time/equipment doesn't count"

We would have similar terms but sometimes people work at home not on company equipment or within normal working hours, so it's normal for this term to be a bit broader, but in general most companies would agree that you can keep the rights to work not related to company business (if you ask and they are reasonable).

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#108

Post by mhneu »

geofft wrote: post #97
janwillemb wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quitting a job is a major, life-changing event for many devs and the question is whether such a clause in the contract is worth the trouble. That said, I disagree strongly with these intellectual property clauses in dev contracts.

Yes. That's why collective action is so important: a company can avoid the loss of a single employee much more than the single employee can afford the loss of a job, but a company can't avoid the loss of even a single department quite as easily, let alone all employees of a certain type. It's insurance for bad management decisions, effectively. It's useful for all the reasons insurance is useful.

If you are interested in collective action to combat clauses like this, follow Maciej Cejlowski.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#109

Post by mhneu »

uiri wrote: post #46
gurgus wrote: post #11

That classic "well, nobody else has had a problem, so you must be the problem" response. I remember at one of my first jobs, myself and another programmer were working on a side project (outside of work hours, not using company resources in any way) that were considering monetising. Our contracts stated that the company we worked for owned all of our code produced in and out of working hours. We got to the business e…

Why not draft up something to give to the company disclaiming all rights to your work? If lawyers are too expensive for the company, I'm sure they'll sign it right away! I'm guessing the HR person is just incompetent and the issue should be escalated. What exactly does a company think is going to be the outcome of saying "Oh, BTW, we might sue you for this, we might not and we're not going to give you a straight answ…

The company knows what the outcome is already: 99% of developers sign.

So why should the company change?

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#110

Post by ryandrake »

blister wrote: post #101
ryandrake wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually tried that cute "Strike out clauses from your employment agreement you don't like and sign THAT document" tactic with several past employers, and each of them pulled me aside my first or second day of work and gave me a stern and clear "Sign it unmodified or GTFO" talk. In my experience nothing in an employment contract is in any way negotiable. I don't even bother anymore--it's futile.

Either they're bluffing completely or you're extremely junior. We often spend $10k-$30k on each new hire. If you make it through that pipeline and they try to strong-arm you on the first day... they're going to have a rough time.

I don't think they were bluffing but I was not going to roll the dice and find out. Not a junior level guy either. I think these places that actually let you negotiate your employment contract must be relatively few, very small companies, with one HR person and lawyer and a lot less formality.

EDIT: Also, to be cynical: $30k is nothing for many companies, and likely less than the benefit of having IP rights to everything an employee makes in their spare time.

Post reply on HN