Contracts you should never sign • Hacker News Board

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#91

Post by II2II » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

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.

So you're the one who keeps taking the company's pens ...

More seriously though, there are frequently restictions of the use of office equipment (or business equipment in general). Businesses will often overlook it if it is not a problem, say if you need a photocopy of a rental contract. They have the discretion to say no if the privilege is being abused, say if you started printing hundreds of pages a month for personal use. The misuse of pens is rarely seen as an issue since they hold little intrinsic value and are routinely replaced.

Should they be able to claim the rights to something you produced with their equipment? In most cases, no. I'm not going to say in all cases no since there is always going to be someone who pushes the limits beyond reason. (Say a person develops a piece of software with a company computer to sell on the side. Can that be construed as the business indirectly financing the development of the software by providing hardware and/or software tools?)

In general, it is always a good idea to do personal stuff with personal equipment and business stuff with equipment supplied by the business. I'm sure the coworkers who are searching for the missing pens will thank you for doing so.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#92

Post by b112 » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:33 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #82

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…

They don't give a damn, but every time I've asked for changes to contracts, including positions I was actively recruited for by the hiring manager, once even by the owner of the company, I'm told to sign it or no job. In the case of the owner asking me to apply, they literally said "My lawyer says to leave it in, you're not a lawyer, it's staying in." I'm sure some people have negotiated these things but I've tried m…

"My lawyer says to leave it in, you're not a lawyer, it's staying in."

The response there is "Well you aren't a lawyer either, and mine said it needs to go".

As others here have said, crazy clauses can go. One key point, make it clear it is about unduly restricting right to income in the future, without wanting to screw over anyone.

This is why a second response, such as "Well, if you triple the salary ... maybe" makes a point here.

Some contracts literally make it impossible for you to work in the future, in your field. That means 'gimme retirement salary on exit' minimum.

(Such broad clauses are rarely enforceable, you can't prevent a person from working at all, but... )

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#93

Post by crispyambulance » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

RaCaS123 wrote: post #80

codingdave wrote: post #13

> the best thing we as engineers can do is be aware of the types of contracts we're signing I'd argue that the best thing we can do is to not just make generalizations about what is OK to sign or not. Confidentiality agreements and non-competes are fine if they are narrowly focused, fair, and your compensation is sufficient to make it worth the restrictions. Because that is what a contract really is - a balancing act…

(also worth taking into account whether clauses like an absurd non-compete are even enforceable...)

OK, but that's REALLY hard to assess for a normal person on their own.

Moreover, it doesn't prevent unreasonable entities from having their retained lawyers draft scary letters. Most people just sign the boilerplate, hope for the best, and try not to poke sticks into wasp nests if they can avoid it.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#94

Post by coderintherye » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

Ancillary, but I'll add to be careful with contracts around purchasing large building items, specifically in my case referring to SteelMaster buildings.

They will sell you on something saying they will deliver it and a truck is coming through your area soon, etc., then the sales guy will call at dinner time and say oh by they way your delivery is ready to ship out we just need you to sign something real quick and you're good to go. Then after you sign they will point to a clause in the contract that says they are not actually responsible for delivery and they won't deliver and you have to actually come pick it up. It's essentially a scam, and I'm unsure how they stay in business that way (I suppose people who work with them just know that's the deal and go into it knowing that), but it's one of those things that is a hard lesson to learn for having quickly signed something without fully reading it.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#95

Post by j33zusjuice » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

wirthjason wrote: post #87

Do non-competes include money? The ones I’ve seen include your salary for that period of time. It sounds fair. You ban the employee from job prospects but compensate them in pay. Maybe this varies by industry, geography, etc.

No, not always. In my state, they have to compensate you with some minimum amount. I don’t know what that is, but based on my current contract, my guess is that it’s the equivalent of one week of pay.

(I’m fine with it because it’s a small, and not particularly interesting, industry. Plus, I’m in a DevOps role: none of our five or ten competitors are going give me a bag to have me build CI/CD pipelines.)

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#96

Post by notpushkin » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

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.

Why not just buy a laptop and ask your employer to pay its depreciation? It's way easier for both parties I think.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#97

Post by j33zusjuice » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:51 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #27

> Another clause to watch out for […] is the "I agree not to cause any other employees to get hired," which prohibits you from hiring directly or allowing any current employees to get hired by the company to which you went. This clause protects the company from the unlikely event of a manager leaving and taking their team with them. I had a previous employer threaten to sue me for this after a couple friends followed…

I wonder how these hold up, and what the clause “I agree not to cause any other employees to get hired” means in a legal sense. Like, if you and I work at Company A, and you go to Company B and I want to go there because it’s amazing. If you recommend me, is that causal? I have to interview and all that still.

If you leave for a managerial role, can you hire me if I make first contact with your new company? That seems causal, but also easily circumvented.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#98

Post by tjoff » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

wepple wrote: post #85

NikolaNovak wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Big +1 on that. I assume a model where my work laptop screen is being directly mirrored into a room with 100 people watching it 24x7, basically. Entirely impossible, but every organization has some level of monitoring between zero and my theoretical scenario, so I carry a personal device and completely sidestep the entire issue.

And I've setup everything from scratch. There is no software on there that I wouldn't install on my personal machine. If anyone wanted access to it they'd have to ask me for a password noone else knows.

Yes, it is perfectly reasonable and in many cases prudent to not use your companies laptop for home-use. So you may chose not to do it.

That the company would own everything you did on it is still completely unreasonable.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#99

Post by ccleve » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

This is exceptionally poor legal advice.

Non-competes are legit if they are narrowly limited in time and scope. It's perfectly fine for a company to demand that if they hand over their proprietary know-how to you, know-how that has cost them years to acquire, you won't take it to the competitor across the street. And no, an NDA is not enough to protect them. They own this information, not you, and no, you can't take it.

NDAs are legit for obvious reasons.

Work-for-hire clauses are absolutely required. If a company is paying you, they own what you create on company time and company equipment. No, you can't take it and sell it elsewhere. It's perfectly fine for you to resist signing a clause that says they own what you create offsite (so long as it's not related to your day job), but a company cannot continue to operate if employees can take what the company paid for.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#100

Post by tallanvor » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #13

> the best thing we as engineers can do is be aware of the types of contracts we're signing I'd argue that the best thing we can do is to not just make generalizations about what is OK to sign or not. Confidentiality agreements and non-competes are fine if they are narrowly focused, fair, and your compensation is sufficient to make it worth the restrictions. Because that is what a contract really is - a balancing act…

I agree. My contract says that my employer can choose to enforce a non-compete for 12 months after I leave, but if they do, they have to pay me during that time. It creates a strong incentive for them to not abuse the non-compete.