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An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

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Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#161

Post by Mithaldu »

dqv wrote: post #154
Mithaldu wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company can do awful things. This is not a simple fact. It is a truth . > He made things into a me vs you situation No. They did. By not including the mirror of that clause indemnifying him against them, the contract was the first to state "you could do awful things", so they have no standing whatsoever to complain about anything.

How many times do I have to repeat myself on this point? I'm not refuting that the company could do awful things. I'm explaining that if you're an ass hole to the person who can change it and make sure it stays changed for everyone in the future, it's not going to happen.

If you restricted yourself to saying it is tactically unsound, and drop every other thing you're trying to say, i'd be able to join that position.

Also note: If the company opens with an attack, and when called upon it doesn't apologize and fix, then that points to maaaaaaany other problems in the company and getting it fixed is a minor priority. It is in fact only a proxy towards figuring out if the company as it is, is deserving of any kind of trust.

e: I'd also like to point you towards this: http://stimmyabby.tumblr.com/post/115216522824/sometimes-peo...

""

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

""

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#162

Post by throwaway49857 »

throwaway212017 wrote: post #93
willstepp wrote: post #18

I interviewed to be a Gigster about a year and a half ago, and was accepted, but the more I considered it and saw how gigs were distributed (at that time mostly via Slack messages) I got a bad feeling, like I was a dog in a pack, fighting over meat scraps. It was then I realized the gig economy is not all sunshine and roses. All that to say, this doesn't surprise me, that Gigster doesn't have its workers best interes…

It hasn't changed. Gigster PMs seem to be in charge of staffing projects, but the strategy for connecting developers with projects is vague. They seem to look for either people they have worked with before, or people who are active on Slack (so if you are, for example, an Android dev, the advice is to be active on the Android Slack channel). PMs as a group hoard information on projects: devs have almost no visibility…

I'm another current gigster, using a throwaway because I want to avoid retaliation. I'm posting this because Im really frustrated and about to leave gigster.

I just want to confirm everything you wrote there. Gigs dried up around october, meaning devs/designers that didnt have tons of PM contacts simply havent had any gigs for the past few months. This was raised multiple times, and HQ always promises to do something -but nothing ever comes of it, there's absolutely no info on how much work is in the pipeline, no transparency, nothing.

Then, as you say, everyone outside of HQ and pms has no way to apply for gigs. PMs guard this furiously and this leads to some pretty nasty interactions, completely unprofessional ones - pms being rude, brusque, dismissing, or keeping info from a dev.

One time I signed on a gig and only then did the pm tell me that I was going to be doing on-call duty. This wasnt factored in the payout, so I would make essentially 20$/h over the course of the gig. I tried to raise this issue with the Delight Team (internal customer service) but apart from taking 2 weeks to even get back to me - nothing was done, I was just removed from the gig.

Also, ditto on late payouts. A lot of people have had issues like this, payouts not going out for weeks. It's been a work in progress since early last year and HQ kept on promising stuff "yeah, we fixed this, itll be good now". At least theyve fixed their contractor-facing site, which was experiencing problems all throughout 2016.

Finally, the cherry on top - gigster, like other shops that hire contractors, is required to send a 1099 to the contractor and to the IRS by January 31st. As you can imagine, they've kinda failed here too. A lot of people didn't get their 1099s and a lot of people are reporting errors on their 1099s. It looks like they outsourced this out and whoever did it messed up transferring data from contractors' W9 into the 1099.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#163

Post by st3v3r »

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.

They might be bluffing. But considering you've just left your old job, most people are not willing to take that chance.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#164

Post by crdoconnor »

mhneu wrote: post #109
uiri wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

I've rejected job offers like this before and not taken the job even after they offered to cut the clause out.

It's actually a pretty good proxy for overall unreasonableness and how much bullshit you'll have to put up with if you work for them.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#165

Post by NetMonkey »

bluetwo wrote: post #43
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…

There is a concept in law that it is the responsibility of the party making the contract to be specific. For instance, if I hire you to paint my barn red and specify the shade of red, it had better be that red or you failed to meet the terms of the contract. On the other hand, if I simply specify "red" then any shade of red would fulfill the contract. The lack of detail was my fault. Depending on how specific they we…

And as I have learned the very hard way, a judge can just decide it doesn't matter and the appeals court probably won't care.

Please don't ever rely on how it's supposed to be - always, always put in clarifying statements and examples in any contract. Everything should be extremely clear and readable by layman, otherwise even things that should be obvious can be devastating.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#166

Post by mildbow »

levlandau wrote: post #145

Cofounder here. Really appreciate the discussion and all of the feedback. The spirit of the contract's never been intended to be unreasonably restrictive -- though I totally understand the concern. We wanted to include certain terms since as part of our model, we do own the code written specifically for Gigster projects. We certainly don't want to own code folks write outside of Gigster projects. We've received very…

I have no horse in the race, but this response feels a lot like you handling the situation vs actually caring about being unfair to developers.

Once you do get the new version of the contract, I suggest you read it from a random developers point to view. Maybe even have a "Show HN". Aim for reasonably unrestrictive? Because of this blunder, you now have more to prove! You wont have much of a marketplace if developers don't feel valued.

Why is a FAQ about your contract required? Isn't the contract the canonical agreement? Are you, in case of legal trouble, going to refer to both the FAQ and/or the contract? Seems a bit weird to me.

ps: I've found "standard" contracts are what everyone says when talking about their own contracts.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#167

Post by throwaway49857 »

willstepp wrote: post #18

I interviewed to be a Gigster about a year and a half ago, and was accepted, but the more I considered it and saw how gigs were distributed (at that time mostly via Slack messages) I got a bad feeling, like I was a dog in a pack, fighting over meat scraps. It was then I realized the gig economy is not all sunshine and roses. All that to say, this doesn't surprise me, that Gigster doesn't have its workers best interes…

Just remembered - Gigster did a big press thing about the Gigster Fund - was meant to give contractors a piece of the pie (I think in equity), but there's no available written info on this internally and HQ declines to answer any concrete questions, just states that it's a work in progress (see a pattern here?) and that it's awesome.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#168

Post by moflome »

levlandau wrote: post #145

Cofounder here. Really appreciate the discussion and all of the feedback. The spirit of the contract's never been intended to be unreasonably restrictive -- though I totally understand the concern. We wanted to include certain terms since as part of our model, we do own the code written specifically for Gigster projects. We certainly don't want to own code folks write outside of Gigster projects. We've received very…

Hi, Debo gave me a similar response... used my own SOW contract at the time but haven't applied to work with Gigster since you instituted the new terms.

What you're missing is are two clauses regarding clear indemnification of the contractor, especially as it relates to pre-existing code, and two, clarifying IP ownership on that same pre-existing code. Gigster seems to pre-suppose that any pre-existing IP the contractor uses in the course of completing the contract is somehow assigned as property of Gigster upon execution of the contract. This is crazy.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#169

Post by J-Kuhn »

zoner wrote: post #41
owlninja wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this common in contracts??

I have it too. It would have been impossible to change, I was given a template contract and I do have side projects outside of my work. On the day I leave the job because my side project is making enough money, I would not be very nervous about it. How would they know? I also have something like "should not work in similar area within The UK". Again, how would they know? This conflicts with data protection act, there…

A acquaintance once worked for two different companies for several years as watchman. He was fired on the spot when they found out. How did they notice?

One company bought the other.

Re: An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

#170

Post by goldfishcaura »

So I hate to disappoint everyone. Such contract really cannot be viewed the way this was summarized through an email. One paragraph has to be interpreted in the context of everything else.

Moreover, everyone uses this language. It is funny, but I suspect that most of Silicon Valley just recycles the same 3-4 contracts, that individual lawyers just modify slightly.

I have now worked with 60+ tech companies (Looker, Gigster, Strava, etc) - with 15 of them I had to look over the verbiage on my own.

With a first couple, I was just as suspicious. But after discussing with lawyers, I learned that there are two major issues:

1) not everything put in the contract is enforceable. In fact, just because all lawyers recycle the same contract, does not make it more enforceable. It is a simple leverage in bullying that lawyers depend on, should something occur

2) individual paragraphs have to be interpreted in the context of the entire engagement. In other words, did you have have access to Client's data on other projects. Yes, then you bet, your IP rights should be waived as they pertain to those projects.

Bottom line, relax and focus on good faith.

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