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Contracts you should never sign

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Contracts you should never sign

#181

Post by matheusmoreira »

johndhi wrote: post #162
toss1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! It has gotten to the point where I take any contract put in front of me as a statement of how the other party does business. If they contract is all one-sided to their benefit and/or has crazy escape hatches for them and/or penalties for my side, it's best to just walk away, even if it costs a lot. I've tried to negotiate such clauses into something reasonable, and it is just a waste of time. They've told yo…

What? Every click wrap agreement online is very one sided. You think you're saving yourself trouble by not using any online software?

The thing about online service agreements is they have pretty much zero leverage against you. So what if you violate their little terms of service? Worst they can do is ban your account. Their "take it or leave it" bullshit holds no water.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#182

Post by kderbyma »

alkonaut wrote: post #180

I think I have clauses saying I can't work for competitors and that everything I do belongs to the company (not only on company time, company equipment, or on order from the company ). I have pointed out that the contract means that if I write a bestseller novel while employed, my employer owns it, which is obviously nonsense. In reality, I never bothered arguing about these. I trust they aren't enforceable and I don…

oh I tore into the owner of a company with those clauses and ripped him a new one for about 10 minutes....disgusting practice. I refused his offer and told him he should be thankful he has anyone desperate enough to work for him. He apologized to save face...but didn't seem to care.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#183

Post by matheusmoreira »

swader999 wrote: post #111
chadash wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's still an anticompetitive clause. The patients don't belong to the practice.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#184

Post by DennisP »

crispyambulance wrote: post #93
RaCaS123 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

But at software engineer salaries, it's not that expensive to get legal advice for this. I did it once, when a company I'd worked at for over a decade was bought out, and insisted everyone sign onerous contracts including broad IP assignment. I read the contracts carefully, marked them up with specific questions, and spent $300 on a half-hour consult with a lawyer, who said it was pretty much all enforceable in my state. (So I left the company, which worked out fine.)

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#185

Post by matheusmoreira »

hfifjdghu wrote: post #144
riskable wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an easy way to solve this problem without non-competes: Treat your employees better . Usually by paying them more . The entire concept of going to work for someone else is that it's supposed to save you a lot of trouble having to sell your services on your own/run your own business. If it has become so much more profitable for doctors to leave and start their own practice then they should be doing that becaus…

This perspective completely evades the actual argument which was that practices behave this way because they're extending access to their client base which is a resource they cultivated themselves and which will almost certainly yield a following the the new applicant.

Complete bullshit. The patients are not "theirs", they are not resources to be traded. The doctor is the one extending services to the practice. They're the ones who benefit from having high quality professionals attending to patients. The practice did not cultivate anything, the doctors practicing there did. Doctor-patient relationships are personal and it is 100% unethical to interfere in them with anticompetitive contracts.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#186

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#187

Post by feoren »

johndhi wrote: post #159

Eh. I'm a lawyer and don't agree with a ton here. Work for hire of copyright and IP is standard. That's what it means to work for a company: you aren't working for yourself, you're working for them. You should look closely to make sure you can do a side hustle but other than that this is a little foolish. I also disagree that contract negotiation means all that much. Certain lawyers are assholes but other people at t…

> you aren't working for yourself, you're working for them

So the company owns the poop I excrete into the toilet at 2:00 AM on a Saturday night? The company owns the Crayon drawings I make with my child in the evenings? The company owns the poetry I came up with in a fever dream after some weird drugs? You say "you're working for them" like it implies some indentured servitude, where I'm living in the company town and they get to say how I live my life. I'm doing some scoped job for them in pre-defined hours for a pre-defined purpose, and for everything else in my life, they can get fucked. Honestly, your inhumane attitude is why people hate lawyers.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#188

Post by EntropyIsAHoax »

Delphiza wrote: post #156

OP refers to a post from Joel Spolsky, but there is a better one that he wrote that I'll include the text below. It was one of those posts that stuck in my head because it makes sense. There may be an overriding reason why an employer is likely to tell you to take the contract as-is or walk, no matter how much they want you to join. You may think that you are super-valuable engineer, and maybe even the hiring manager…

[dead]

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#189

Post by TylerE »

thwayunion wrote: post #146
claytonjy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have successfully negotiated my way out of non-competes and other onerous employment contract terms. Only at small- or medium-sized startups, though, not big tech. In general the bigger the company, the less willing legal is to play ball. I suspect going for rather senior roles helps, too.

Non-competes are dog-eat-dog "fuck you" territory for me. I don't even bother negotiating. I happily sign non-competes, but will never sign a non-compete that's actually enforceable . If their lawyers want to lie to me about what's legal in my state, I'm happy to let them engage in unfair and deceptive behavior right up until there are actual damages. More importantly, I would also happily fight them in court if it c…

Very, very, bad idea. Never sign something you disagree with because you believe it to be unenforceable.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#190

Post by Delphiza »

gnopgnip wrote: post #178
Delphiza wrote: post #156

OP refers to a post from Joel Spolsky, but there is a better one that he wrote that I'll include the text below. It was one of those posts that stuck in my head because it makes sense. There may be an overriding reason why an employer is likely to tell you to take the contract as-is or walk, no matter how much they want you to join. You may think that you are super-valuable engineer, and maybe even the hiring manager…

How are noncompetes the same when they are illegal in CA

They are probably not illegal to put into a contract, even if they are illegal to enforce. I don't know about CA specifically, but we have similar statutory rights UK, which is why employees largely ignore them by signing the contract with the non-compete clause in.

The point still remains. There is sufficient contractual legalese that is backed up by threatening lawyers letters that stop some or most of the staff leaving and going elsewhere. That is enough for the deal to go through.

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