151–160 of 378 posts
> I think I get to keep last year’s Christmas gift of an iPad, and the previous year’s bottle of wine has long been drunk A way to reduce burn rate could have included slightly less lavish gifts.
And what value does it have that the contract has a stamp "Confidential" on all pages? Would talking about it here be forbidden?
> Though such clauses don’t technically violate the First Amendment Not technically, not in spirit, not in any way related to the 1st amendment. Have so few people actually bothered to learn even a little about the 1st amendment? You can read the entire first amendment several times and then ponder it a little in just a few minutes, because it's very short. In fact, I'll paste the entire text: Congress shall make no…
But it is interesting to think of how the Constitution can become meaningless if the government is willing to create laws to allow others to take away your Constitutional rights.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between "not trashing people" and not saying anything under threat of lawsuit. Pretty well anything can be interpreted as disparaging. You could say something as simple as "they fired me, I don't think it was fair." and find yourself liable.
The reality is that bringing a lawsuit against a former employee is a huge expense and as others have mentioned - unlikely to even get anywhere. So unless you want to cherry pick extremely unlikely situations, this separation agreement clause is a no-op and probably worth signing.
Sue them for breaching your First Amendment rights through employment termination coercion.
Define "disparagement".
If anything ever goes to court, from case law it seems to be all based on whether or not an action is "disparaging". So, define what constitutes disparagement in advance, and if that is acceptable to you, go ahead and sign.
Personally, I'd sign nothing for 2 weeks pay, and then make sure everyone knows that was the offered severance. Seems disparaging enough to me. ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Will wasn't writing about "agreements", he was explicitly making the point that for him it is indeed not worth $3k to agree to lower his ethical standards. He was writing about the non-disparagement clause, not the contract. Maybe you didnt't read it carefully, like you didnt read your PS3 EULA, because most software EULAs, including the ones from Sony, do not have non-disparagement clauses. Employment contracts have…
Maybe you didnt't read it carefully You're accusing me of not reading something carefully when you're not considering the context of the quote to which I was responding -- which was specifically talking about the previous poster's advice to PROGRAMMERS? and are widely considered unenforcable Unless I was planning to really go after my ex-employer as some kind of vendetta, I wouldn't worry about a Non-disparagement ag…
> Though such clauses don’t technically violate the First Amendment Not technically, not in spirit, not in any way related to the 1st amendment. Have so few people actually bothered to learn even a little about the 1st amendment? You can read the entire first amendment several times and then ponder it a little in just a few minutes, because it's very short. In fact, I'll paste the entire text: Congress shall make no…
I also think this narrow view has made you jump to a much stronger conclusion than is warranted. At least one scholar has considered whether the First Amendment could be interpreted to require that contracts of silence be unenforceable. http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/cornell-law-review...
In this case you happen to be mostly right, but don't assume you can understand the contours of First Amendment law just by looking at the text. There is a vast apparatus that has been built around the First Amendment, little of which is deducible from the constitutional text alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, the whole EA Spouse thing happened quite a while ago.
And I haven't purchased an EA product since.