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Contracts you should never sign

vadimkravcenko.com

241–250 of 284 posts

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#241
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you even function in the US? Just one time to get an apartment they had me sign an agreement stating I was not in the military, had never been in the military & would not join so long as I lived there. Keep in mind, I was subject to conscription at the time. The whole thing is laughably unenforceable as well. They're trying to end run around federal law protecting members of the uniformed services. You can…

That’s a good example, but most contracts have language such as “if any clause of this contract is found to be invalid, the rest remains in force”. So yea, in a case like that that part of the contract would be struck, but it isn’t a get out of jail free card for the entire contract.

Right, but in an employment contract you want that severability. If the company tries to enforce the non compete clause and it’s invalid, you don’t want that to invalidate their obligations with respect to your pension.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#242
You can also decline and often thats ok.

Whenever I had meetings with Google and went to their offices they had this sign-in process which is essentially a NDA while you are there. I always declined it.

It caused consternation in only that they were not used to anyone doing that.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#243

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…

I’d be a little more worried about HN’s terms and conditions if I had to pay to use the site. There’s a world of difference between someone (or a company) who is providing a free service attempting to shield themselves from expensive litigation and generally insisting the free service be as hassle-free for them to run as possible and a a company charging me money for a product or service and putting these kinds of one-sided terms in a EULA.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#244
My worst job hunting experience was going through a slimy recruiter and eventually receiving an offer from a company I was initially excited to work at until I read the absolutely bizarre and overbearing contract and tried for two weeks to tell them to just take all the weird, nonsensical stuff out and I would sign and eventually they pulled the offer.

iirc one of the clauses stated that I would make myself available to the employer to perform work for them on an as needed basis in the three months after quitting the job but the amount of work over that three months would never exceed 2 weeks in total blah blah blah.

Another one was something like agreeing make myself available to participate in legal disputes etc.

I asked them about examples of when these clauses had been enforced and what did that look like in practice etc? They remarked the first one was mostly done after hours etc. I just couldn't fathom why the heck any old regular engineer would sign off on a clause like that, but was told that "everyone signs it and we're not changing it".

Knowing I had the legal right to get any employment contract reviewed by a lawyer, I did exactly that. Good move indeed. The clauses were bad enough they tripped my BS meter, but the lawyer pointed out further BS in some of the vagueness of the wording. I think one example was the clause stating you had to make yourself available to the employer for work on an as needed basis after leaving the job had a sentence indicating that if you needed to travel you would bear the cost and/or there was something about a rate or amount of money that just was totally unspecified. She also rightly pointed out if you had another full time job you had just signed a contract for, you couldn't execute both contracts without being in violation of at least one of them and if the split with ths whacko employer was not amicable then they could absolutely have you over a barrel.

I got my lawyer to tell them to remove those things, and that's when they pulled the offer. It was a bit of a shock and quite upsetting to me at the time. During that phone conversation with the recruiter where he told me they were pulling the offer he revealed that a previous employee had stolen the source code and tried to set up a competing product and wound up in a legal dispute with the company, so the fact that I was "already getting lawyers involved" was a "red flag" to them. If you're paying careful attention you'll notice the absolutely circular logic of that absurd reasoning!!!! Anyway that at least explained sme of the weird, nonsensical, heavily defensive clauses, though not all of it.

Anyway I dodged an absolute bullet on that one.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

One question/comment here, I don't think they can force you to sign a new one in most states without giving you something in return. I know someone who refused to sign a new contract because they didn't give him anything in return, and there was nothing they could do about it, or at least there was nothing they did do about it.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#246
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

One question/comment here, I don't think they can force you to sign a new one in most states without giving you something in return. I know someone who refused to sign a new contract because they didn't give him anything in return, and there was nothing they could do about it, or at least there was nothing they did do about it.

Hah interesting. My lawyer didn't mention that so maybe my state was an exception. Or, our employers can fire us anytime for any reason so maybe he figured it would be impractical to litigate.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#247

> 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…

Luckily Google does not, to my knowledge, try to have non-competes in their contracts, and they would not be enforceable in California, otherwise the problem with companies their size would be that they "compete" in an awfully large number of business areas.

Going from Google to Tesla? Sorry, they're a competitor in driving cars. Spotify? They compete in streaming music. Microsoft? They compete in search. Apple? They compete in cellphones. Telegram Inc? Google does instant messaging. Garmin? Google does maps. NCR? Every heard of Google Wallet?

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#249
Dilbert strip that is there - had that happen. I dropped out of recruitment because they wanted to me to sign NDA. Well they were also not having top salary but I would go through.

Re: Contracts you should never sign

#250
would like to see a version of this called "contracts you should sign" -- like, what does a golden parachute clause look like? how do these executives keep walking away with so much money while floor employees are given 11 weeks, and it's out of generosity of management.
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