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Contracts you should never sign

vadimkravcenko.com

191–200 of 284 posts

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#191
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.

Another wrinkle on "company property" you have to watch out for:

When I was in grad school, a professor in my department left to take a job at another university.

The beancounters demanded the return of the department-issued computer he'd had...in 1985.

Of course, that was many, many computers ago, and what almost certainly happened was that he'd transferred the machine to a grad student or whatever when he got a new one, and they'd just lost the record of the transfer (or never entered it in the first place). Still, he had to go through a week or so of back and forth before they were convinced that a) it was unreasonable to expect him to account for a computer from decades ago and b) even if he did still have the 1985 computer, it wouldn't be worth anything like their book value any more. They actually wanted to charge him the original 1985 price for the "missing" computer!

I guess the moral there is to keep your own careful log of what happens to any company property that's been issued to you.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#192
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

I don't even politely reply. At my last job, HR sent me a "contract" offering $1 in exchange for agreeing not to work in the industry for 1 year. I archived their email and never spoke to them again :)

It would really depend on the job, of course. I didn't really care about that one, and didn't see myself ever wanting to work with that founder again, so I didn't make any effort to be "nice" in any way. If I ever left my current job, I would make sure to stay on the best of terms. I would be annoyed if they paid me $1 to not work for a year, but I also know they would never ask for that.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your having honor is not conditional on others having honor.

There is no honor is dying on an ER stretcher. For anyone in the US who needs regular healthcare beyond what's provided by Medicaid, the labor market is a war for (literal) survival. If the ownership class didn't want to return to an extremely adversarial relationship with labor, then they shouldn't have gutted the social safety net. And no, I'm not going to show my hand in an imperfect information game... it would b…

Honor is what separates men from animals. Each of us gets to choose which we are.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#194
I mean, real talk: every time I ever objected to something like that, they always said something like: "oh, we don't care what you do in your off time. You can always e.g. ask for an exemption for specific open source work later", and "its very unusual for us to change this, we've never had anyone ask for this kind of thing in the past".

If I had followed this advice, I would have missed out on one of the best jobs I ever had. So, just YMMV.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are still right about EULAs. The terms and style of negotiation are "we do what we want and change things when we feel like it, and you check accept or stop using the software," and guess what that implies about using the software - they do what they want and change stuff when they feel like it and you accept it or stop using the software. Contrast that to the open source pattern of making the license a header i…

I agree that, from the user perspective, I'd prefer if all of the software terms and EULAs I sign online were more favorable to me. But I think it's a major overstatement to say you'll save yourself a headache by not agreeing to one-sided terms. They are literally everywhere. This very website we're posting on right includes these terms in its terms of service: We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change…

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Re: Contracts you should never sign

#196
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. My employment attorney recently reviewed a "non compete non solicitation" doc for an engagement and said, "it's copied from LegalZoom and is so badly written it will be unenforcible in the jurisdiction and here is why." They earned their $300 for reviewing my employment docs (for reasons beyond this specific issue). When in doubt, seek counsel and follow their guidance.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When my dentist retired his practice they actually sold the client list specifically, so I am not sure this is legally true. Morally I agree.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#198
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…

Yeah...when I left a job in 2021, HR presented me with a bunch of new agreements that they wanted me to sign. I explained to them that it just didn't work that way.

With enough compensation it could work. I'd sign "we'll give you $5M to not work for 1 year." Stream casual games on Twitch for a year :)

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#199
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…

> 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.

This never happens. For software developers, most "proprietary know-how" is awful in-house inner platforms that work like shit but you're forced to use it because otherwise some senior vice president would have to admit he made a bad decision 9 years ago. The companies who try hardest to protect their trade secrets are exactly those companies with the dumbest secrets. There's absolutely no risk to the company that their employees will take their competitive advantage to some competitor "across the street".

What actually happens is that the company uses this as a prison fence to keep their employees from being able to leave when they treat them like shit.

> If a company is paying you, they own what you create on company time and company equipment

You're misrepresenting what those clauses say. Those clauses actually say "literally anything you ever do from the time of signing this document until the time you quit, we own, if we want it." If you draw an idea for a new fusion reactor on the back of a napkin late one night in a bar, your company now owns all rights to that design, and you are never allowed to do anything with it, ever. Yes, that's what they say. Yes, they're bullshit. That's why everyone hates them.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When my dentist retired his practice they actually sold the client list specifically, so I am not sure this is legally true. Morally I agree.

What exactly is this "client list" that they sold? Names and contact information?
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