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Contracts you should never sign

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Contracts you should never sign

#111

Post by swader999 »

chadash wrote: post #101
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…

> non-competes are fine if they are narrowly focused, fair, and your compensation is sufficient to make it worth the restrictions Yes! This is a particularly true for most software engineers. I have a friend who is a doctor whose contract says that if quits, he can't practice medicine within a 30-mile radius for 12 months. His only option would be to move to a different area, take a job with a horrible commute for a…

A lot of doctor and vet contracts are like that because they are likely to get a large local client following just by joining a practise that the practise has spent years cultivating.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#112

Post by danjoredd »

pocket_cheese wrote: post #109

Non competes are becoming less and less enforceable in the US. I left my old company and wanted to start a competing business in a different vertical in the e-commerce space. What actually stopped me was the privacy and inventions and non disclosure agreements. Pretty much it prevented me from using any know how I learned while at my last company and disallowed me from using any of the same suppliers and marketplaces…

In Texas, non-competes are so restricted that employers can barely enforce them. I know people who signed non-competes, went to work for a competitor, and when they were sued the judge threw the case out because the non-compete clause was unenforceable according to Texas Law. It simply said "I agree not to start my own IT business or work for a competing IT business in three years of my departure" without specifying a range of distance that is enforceable.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#113

Post by francisofascii »

chadash wrote: post #101
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…

> non-competes are fine if they are narrowly focused, fair, and your compensation is sufficient to make it worth the restrictions Yes! This is a particularly true for most software engineers. I have a friend who is a doctor whose contract says that if quits, he can't practice medicine within a 30-mile radius for 12 months. His only option would be to move to a different area, take a job with a horrible commute for a…

I know a PT who signed on of those. Then left, worked outside the agreed radius (but still in the same metro area) , and was still sued. He eventually settled.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#114

Post by NikolaNovak »

tjoff wrote: post #98
wepple wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unreasona…

Not to negate your point, but a related pondering : I would assume that the Venn diagram of companies that make claim on property created on their laptops ; vs companies that let you install fresh OS and software from image and repository of your choice and access work network / store proprietary data ; is practically zero.

(If you did not install fresh OS from image of your choice, then you did not install software from scratch and should not be confident what's in your work laptop and what it's doing / monitoring)

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#115

Post by BeFlatXIII »

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…

That last paragraph of yours is key the your whole post. It’s a good illustration of how a large enough difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#116

Post by twobitshifter »

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.

Really you should use a dumb terminal and keep corporate and personal materials on separate machines.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#117

Post by BeFlatXIII »

ccleve wrote: post #99

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…

Restricting the collective progress of humanity so that investors can make back their money.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#118

Post by glenstein »

Karunamon wrote: post #73
glenstein wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I 100% agree and this is, to me, one of the most important things that separates comments that are constructive from ones that are unfocused and all over the map. A lot of my own comment history is me making that same criticism. But in this case, I think they are identifying an implication of "not making generalities" which I find to be perfectly appropriate. It reminds me of the robolending scandal, and how…

Such a point could be made directly and respectfully, and without the sneering sarcasm. Engaging with such content rather than rejecting that behavior out of hand rewards it and demonstrates both to the poster and to any onlookers that lowering the level of discussion is welcome here.

Asking people not to misread a comment is an exhortation to improve quality of discussion. Endorsing a misreading because you dislike the comment being misread does not improve quality of discussion. You're equivocating between (1) misinterpret and (2) "reject out of hand" in order to make that endorsement work.

You can object to style without having to signal to the community that misinterpreting comments is an accepted practice.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#119

Post by dilyevsky »

smeej wrote: post #21

Also verify that anything you're signing when you leave matches what you signed when you were hired. I recently left a company where, when I was hired, I had agreed in "Appendix C" not to recruit any of their employees away from them for a period of 12 months after separation. When I actually separated after more than two years, the "Appendix C" they wanted me to sign and presented as the one I had agreed to at hire…

Easiest way to do this is to not sign anything unless it involves extra pay. I’ve politely refused HR’s request to re-sign bunch of documents before when leaving - I didn’t feel like digging through them or paying a lawyer and they had zero leverage

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#120

Post by Karunamon »

glenstein wrote: post #118
Karunamon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a point could be made directly and respectfully, and without the sneering sarcasm. Engaging with such content rather than rejecting that behavior out of hand rewards it and demonstrates both to the poster and to any onlookers that lowering the level of discussion is welcome here.

Asking people not to misread a comment is an exhortation to improve quality of discussion. Endorsing a misreading because you dislike the comment being misread does not improve quality of discussion. You're equivocating between (1) misinterpret and (2) "reject out of hand" in order to make that endorsement work. You can object to style without having to signal to the community that misinterpreting comments is an acce…

It is not a misread to point out that the comment was loaded with sarcasm and would have been better without it, neither is it one to point out that engaging with that content causes its proliferation.
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