171–180 of 271 posts
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Come on, people. Not "we are working on", but "if I were to start working".
Please don't advocate for making willfully misleading statements to one's employer which might have legal repercussions (IANAL, etc).
2. You do not have an "absolute transparency" duty to your employer about all aspects of your personal life. Please don't behave as if you do.
Hi. If any developers want a rundown on legal ideas (good explanations of "indemnification", "representations and warranties", etc.), we offer that in our book, Code For Cash . ( https://www.breakingintoconsulting.com ) Peter Krumins said, "The legal stuff is excellent. I was always afraid of that and spent many thousands of dollars on various lawyers to make a good agreement, and there were no good guides about what…
Cofounder here. Really appreciate the discussion and all of the feedback. The spirit of the contract's never been intended to be unreasonably restrictive -- though I totally understand the concern. We wanted to include certain terms since as part of our model, we do own the code written specifically for Gigster projects. We certainly don't want to own code folks write outside of Gigster projects. We've received very…
If this comment had been the last email response in the chain, I think that would have been great. The fact that it wasn't, that an important issue was dismissed when raised in private, speaks far more to me than this public response.
They went from "lol, you're the only one with a problem, get lost!" to "hmmm, this is generating bad publicity.. now we definitely sympathize with your concerns!" real quick.
As far as I'm concerned, I now know all I will ever need to know about Gigster.
Your reputation is something that takes a lifetime to build and only 5 minutes to ruin permanently.
Cofounder here. Really appreciate the discussion and all of the feedback. The spirit of the contract's never been intended to be unreasonably restrictive -- though I totally understand the concern. We wanted to include certain terms since as part of our model, we do own the code written specifically for Gigster projects. We certainly don't want to own code folks write outside of Gigster projects. We've received very…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, it's very unusual for a company to simply state that it won't talk about it at all. I get one of these two patterns: 1. "Oh, okay, we see your point. We'll cross out clauses X and Y." 2. "Oh, thank you, we'll take this very seriously. Now we will have people talk at you for hours about why you can trust us and everyone else here was dumb enough to sign up."
In my career I only had one case of #2. The person called me and said something like "if a partner isn't willing to sign agreement X, then we shouldn't be doing business with them". I said "ok" and hung up. An hour later that guy's bosses boss called me to apologize..
So I hate to disappoint everyone. Such contract really cannot be viewed the way this was summarized through an email. One paragraph has to be interpreted in the context of everything else. Moreover, everyone uses this language. It is funny, but I suspect that most of Silicon Valley just recycles the same 3-4 contracts, that individual lawyers just modify slightly. I have now worked with 60+ tech companies (Looker, Gi…
That is quite possibly the WORST legal advice that I've ever heard with regards to contract law (and you're in very tough competition here)
Unfortunately, these interactions always seem to favor companies over individuals. People in general don't enjoy bickering over legalese so individuals don't want to ruffle feathers by pushing back, while company employees are able to take cover under the umbrella that they're just following policy. Truthfully though, it is most often companies-not prospective employees-that initiate legal discussions by presenting contracts and individuals should feel justified in verbalizing any concerns they have. I think this is possible while still remaining professional and courteous.
The first thing I did was look to Google to see if any other developers in the past had similar concerns as me, which brought me to this Quora post - https://www.quora.com/Is-the-contract-for-Gigster-reasonable... Richard's response was helpful and thorough (if you're reading this, thank you!) and although he had additional issues with the contract, my main concern was with sections 2.1 and 2.2 (assignment of IP to Gigster for work not specific to the customer and the exemption of pre-existing IP from being assigned to Gigster including only that which is explicitly outlined, respectively).
I actually discussed the contract language with my family and got some good advice from both my father and brother. They agreed I was within my right to voice my concerns so long as I did it in a productive way. For example, instead of presenting problems by just stating language I didn't like they told me it would be better to provide solutions in my response by offering amendments that I would feel comfortable with.
To this point I had interacted with three individuals: 1. The person who had reached out to me about joining Gigster 2. The individual that emailed me the DocuSign link containing the contract and 3. The individual that sent me a (possibly automated) response after my application was submitted to their website. Let's call these individuals Peter, Paul, & Mary.
I emailed my concerns to Paul and Mary, not knowing which would be better to handle this sort of thing. I received word back from Mary saying that Paul was more familiar with the contract so she'd let him handle it. After two days I received an email from Peter asking for an update on my onboarding process. I explained that I had emailed Paul about the contract and hadn't received word back but that I'd ping him again. Peter told me he would also follow up through other channels. I never did get a response from Paul personally, but after another two days I received word from Peter that he had spoken with Paul and the Gigster legal team and was wondering if I could hop on the phone.
Peter was very open to my concerns and explained the reasoning behind the contract language. I said that I understood, but that admittedly I still took issue with it. Peter seemed to understand and honestly that was pretty much that. He offered to share a Google Doc with me so I could highlight/tweak language I was uncomfortable with and afterwards the contract was promptly signed by both parties.
I also reached out internally to Peter, Paul, and Mary over slack before making this post so they could have a heads up. Paul explained to me that he was not really involved with the Gigster contract or its hiring policies, just that his role involved setting up the onboarding tools and this automatically attached his email to a lot of the communications; which would explain the lack of responses I saw. Paul told me he was “neither encouraging nor discouraging [me] from posting,” but Peter and Mary responded in support of me posting my experience to HN, which I thought was pretty cool.
For future reference here is a portion of my email to Gigster containing the changes I requested, which were accommodated:
I am a little uncomfortable with some of the language in sections 2.1 & 2.2 and was hoping we could revise:
a. Section 2.1 assigns ownership to Gigster not only of all Deliverables, which makes total sense, but also of all source code "including but not limited to source code developed or created by Contractor that is not specific to Customer and is generally applicable to other Customer projects and deliverables ("Community Code")." This language seems quite broad and what constitutes "Community Code" seems a bit difficult to define; I'd prefer to remove the last part of this sentence so the section instead reads "...or any Confidential Information (as defined below) (collectively, “Inventions”). Contractor hereby makes all.."
b. Section 2.2 exempts any of my pre-existing IP from being assigned ownership to Gigster, but then seems to require all such pre-existing IP be disclosed in writing. This seems difficult and probably unnecessary so I'd like to remove "in each case ((a) and (b)) that are expressly set forth in writing to Gigster prior to delivery of the Deliverables to Gigster." and just end the sentence after "any intellectual property rights therein."
Hi. If any developers want a rundown on legal ideas (good explanations of "indemnification", "representations and warranties", etc.), we offer that in our book, Code For Cash . ( https://www.breakingintoconsulting.com ) Peter Krumins said, "The legal stuff is excellent. I was always afraid of that and spent many thousands of dollars on various lawyers to make a good agreement, and there were no good guides about what…
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What happens if you don't obtain permission? Do you get fired, or do they claim ownership?
Ex Amazon: You are in breach of contract which is grounds for termination. I doubt that would happen in practice though, unless you were creating an open source competitor to something they do or somesuch.
Having to worry about it is horrible enough, since this will actually keep many developers from pursuing their passions in their free time.
It doesn't matter how many "thousands of successful milestones and payments without issues with the terms," there is a vital flaw (in their favor) with said contract.
Contracts are easily done on a case-by-case basis, and dubious clauses are routinely renegotiated.
All of this is irrelevant however when even the lawyers won't answer a simple contract law question. I won both of the suits mentioned above by proving their position to be indefensible.
Which I believe you have done. Keep your integrity, your current and future clients will recognize it.