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Contracts you should never sign

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Contracts you should never sign

#61

Post by adrianmsmith »

meowfly wrote: post #5

The only time I've been burned by my contract is from relocation expenses. I went to a company to take a job and not long into it a reorg moved me to a different team. I left the company and they demanded I pay back my relocation expenses. When I protested that they changed my role to something not what I was expecting, I was told that according to my contract it doesn't matter. The temporary housing I was put in was…

Even signing bonuses sometimes have to be repaid if you leave the company too quickly.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#62

Post by kaashif »

amelius wrote: post #28
oytis wrote: post #26

> Anything you do with the company property, e.g., work computer, automatically belongs to the company, even if you do it on the weekends. That doesn't sound unacceptable to me. It's not that I'm that strict about e.g. reading personal emails etc. on my work computer, but if it's some side hustle, be it for money or for fun, I think it's honest to take your personal machine for that.

Computers are just office equipment, just like pens. If I gave you a pen and you wrote some story with it, then could I claim the rights to that story? I think not.

I don't know whether you could or couldn't. But if I entered into such a contract, I'd obviously use a different pen, it's not that hard.

Is anyone really running their side businesses from their work laptops? That seems crazy to me.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#63

Post by NikolaNovak »

tjoff wrote: post #46
oytis wrote: post #26

> Anything you do with the company property, e.g., work computer, automatically belongs to the company, even if you do it on the weekends. That doesn't sound unacceptable to me. It's not that I'm that strict about e.g. reading personal emails etc. on my work computer, but if it's some side hustle, be it for money or for fun, I think it's honest to take your personal machine for that.

So now I have to lug around two of everything (laptop, phone etc) just because I might want to do something unrelated to work? It is completely unreasonable as a blanket statement.

Three.

My employer's laptop, my current client's laptop (I'm in a consulting branch of a large corporation), and my personal laptop. Pre-Covid I lugged them on airplanes every week.

I enjoy HN for many reasons, one of which is to encounter approaches and perspectives that I would not ever even remotely consider. I would not use my employer's laptop for personal, let alone a side-gig purpose, with a 10 foot pole. It's not mine, I have no control of it, I have no visibility into what is being monitored nor how it is used, where the data goes, what I should install on it, etc. Employer has full legal right to request it back this evening, do whatever forensic examinations they want, and have interesting questions or claims on anything they find.

Yes laptop is a tool, but it's such a complex multipurpose massively powerful dangerous tool, that even if we try to make a claim "Pen and Laptop are legally the same as a employer-provided-tool", I find the surface area of a Pen minuscule compared to the surface area of a laptop and everything I can do with it / put on it.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#64

Post by etothepii »

rubyfan wrote: post #48
amelius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are just office equipment, just like pens. If I gave you a pen and you wrote some story with it, then could I claim the rights to that story? I think not.

If you explicitly included a contract that stated how the pen was to be used and the ramifications before my acceptance of your pen then yes. Companies do include policies about how their equipment is to be used and for what and they do include how they think about ownership usually in your employment agreement or principles of employment policies. To write those off because “hey it’s only a generic piece of equipmen…

This is usually a tax thing.

We have a policy that states, "company equipment can not be used for personal use". As without this company equipment can not be tax deductible. However, in the UK at least, it is a matter of economic policy whether a company makes any effort to in-force.

Thus I hit on what a I thought was a neat solution. Which was to deem it a sackable offence to expend any resource whatsoever including time or materials to identify if company property had been so used.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#65

Post by amelius »

rubyfan wrote: post #48
amelius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are just office equipment, just like pens. If I gave you a pen and you wrote some story with it, then could I claim the rights to that story? I think not.

If you explicitly included a contract that stated how the pen was to be used and the ramifications before my acceptance of your pen then yes. Companies do include policies about how their equipment is to be used and for what and they do include how they think about ownership usually in your employment agreement or principles of employment policies. To write those off because “hey it’s only a generic piece of equipmen…

It's not that simple. The law recognizes that when signing a contract there is a power-imbalance between employer and employee. It would be different if the contract was written by the employee and signed by the employer.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#66

Post by petilon »

A big one is missing in this article: The clawback provision.

In 2011, when Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion (that’s a B), some former employees and executives were outraged when they found that their equity was worth $0 because of a clawback in their equity documents.

“The only mention that the company had the right to buy if he left in less than five years came in a single sentence toward the end of the document that referred him to yet another document, which he never bothered to read.”

https://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/standards-ownership-cant...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianahembree/2018/01/10/startup...

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#67

Post by grey-area »

secondstring wrote: post #39
kibwen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract Contracts are entirely negotiable. If there's a job you want, but the contract contains an objectionable clause, tell them that you're willing to accept if they strike that clause. If you're at the point in the hiring process where they're showing you the contract, that means that they've sunk resources into you that they don't want to throw away. And…

> because nobody involved in the hiring process consciously chose to put that clause in and they probably don't really give a damn. Yes but I think I didn't convey my point enough. Nobody involved in the hiring process cares, and if it's a good company they probably agree with you. But this standard contract is what they paid attorneys good money to comb over with a fine tooth comb for liability, and eventually sign…

They’ll tell you that this is unchangeable, it’s the default, etc the first few times, but if you persist, they’ll usually just strike out a clause like this if they actually want to come to an agreement. They may not even bother telling legal (depends on company size).

Really it depends whether you’re negotiating from a position of strength and and can walk away, if you are changes like this become possible, if you are not changes are more difficult.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#68

Post by Ensorceled »

BurningFrog wrote: post #60
phphphphp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can believe that they're careless and used the wrong copy of a document but I'm not sure I understand why you're signing an agreement like that on exit: you've signed it on hiring so that regardless of the outcome of your employment, you're bound to the anti-poach. The only reason I can think that they'd ask you to sign the agreement again on exit is that they wanted to bind you into something new -- what explanati…

I guess it's a reminder, so you can't claim you forgot about it. Some wrinkle of "the law" probably works that way?

> I guess it's a reminder

I would happily sign a 1 page document that said, "I acknowledge that I have been reminded of my obligations under the document signed April 1, 2004 and been provided with paper copies of said agreement."

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#69

Post by adrianmsmith »

weberer wrote: post #8
vabank wrote: post #3

What's wrong with gym contracts?

Its only a problem with certain large chains, but they are often set up so that they automatically charge you every month and it is very hard to cancel. If a gym doesn't accept cash and demands you pay by credit card, that's a huge red flag. Also check reviews of the gym before you sign up. And of course, actually read the contract before signing. They can waive certain clauses if you confront them. And if they don't…

A mate of mine was paying, say, $50/month for his gym, and had been doing so for a few years.

When he cancelled he was informed he’d actually been on a reduced rate based on an expected 10 year subscription, and as he hadn’t stayed 10 years, the price had actually been $60/month, so he now to pay a one-time fee of $10/month for every month he’d been with them, in order to be able to cancel.

Or, if he couldn’t afford that or didn’t want to pay, of course he could withdraw his cancellation and keep on paying his $50/month fee.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#70

Post by varispeed »

secondstring wrote: post #39
kibwen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract Contracts are entirely negotiable. If there's a job you want, but the contract contains an objectionable clause, tell them that you're willing to accept if they strike that clause. If you're at the point in the hiring process where they're showing you the contract, that means that they've sunk resources into you that they don't want to throw away. And…

> because nobody involved in the hiring process consciously chose to put that clause in and they probably don't really give a damn. Yes but I think I didn't convey my point enough. Nobody involved in the hiring process cares, and if it's a good company they probably agree with you. But this standard contract is what they paid attorneys good money to comb over with a fine tooth comb for liability, and eventually sign…

I think you are exaggerating.

> Very very very few companies are going to go pay Expensive Law Co. (TM) $500 per hour to review changes to the contrac

If they are already hiring "Expensive Law Co." then most likely they have them contracted anyway. Even with big corporations, there was never an issue with this. They were always happy to send my changes to their legal team for review and also allowed me as much time as I needed to review and consult my own legal team (if I had one). It is in their and my interest that the contract describes the relationship in a way we both want and it is fair for both sides.

> "yes we totally understand but we have no power to change the wording in this contract we use for every single employee"

Had that too. Just be persistent and firm. "I can't sign the contract with these clauses in." 100% of the time they would eventually change their mind. It may be bad for them that the clauses will be gone, and they need to show their employer they put up a fight and also it would be much worse to lose resource that otherwise was ticking all the boxes.

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