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The Sex Tape Litmus Test

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Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#71

Post by cbsmith »

dsr_ wrote: post #3

The primary function of a legal department is to provide advice that prevents legally actionable mistakes. This advice does not have to be sane, or efficient, or indeed have any consideration towards the interests of the company other than "prevents legally actionable mistakes". A few days ago HN saw an article about setting goals and perverse incentives. This is a simple example. Hypothetically, someone was reviewin…

That is an impression of legal departments informed by what tends to be poor staffing of such departments and/or poor management scapegoating the legal department.

I used to have a very poor opinion of legal departments until I had the opportunity to work with legal departments staffed seemingly exclusively with people who were at least as sharp as the folks in engineering. Turns out, good legal departments are as interested in solving problems as good engineering departments.

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#72

Post by cbsmith »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #2

I think that any funny clauses in the contracts should be abolished and the worker/employer relations should only be regulated by law. This makes me pro-regulation and anti-market, but unfortunately I see exactly zero ways in which market can make contracts better. What are you expected to do in this situation - quit?

> I think that any funny clauses in the contracts should be abolished and the worker/employer relations should only be regulated by law.

That tends to work well in a one-size-fits-all well established world, but tends to work particularly poorly in new and emerging industries.

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#73

Post by redcircle »

pfedor wrote: post #70
redcircle wrote: post #28

California has a nice law that says that the employee owns IP created on his own time, unrelated to work, etc. This is a reason I moved to CA: the state I was in lacked such a law, and all the tech companies had contracts that failed the sex tape test. I suspect that for a place to flourish like Silicon Valley, it needs a law that protects self bootstrapping startups.

There is such a law but you should not assume it means what you think it means. Talk to a legal professional if it's important to you. One IP lawyer I interacted with maintained that the rulings in actual court practice are very unfavorable to the moonlighting employees. To the point that CA labor code 2870 might as well not exist (although of course he didn't say that in so many words.) "Actual or demonstrably antic…

I hear you. While living at my prior location, I was always integrating plausible deniability into my business plans and their initial implementations, besides keeping my work super secret. Now I don't worry about the secrecy, and feel more relaxed about deniability. (Not that I've been doing anything seriously since I moved here --- I like my team, and I would like to accomplish big things with them.)

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#74

Post by ansgri »

lostlogin wrote: post #44
pretoriusB wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, "pro free market" is usually (and silently) taken to mean "whatever benefit me as an employeer and screw the workers". As in: "if I want to have people working 20 hours per day, with no overtime for less than minimum wage, I should be FREE to do so, and people are FREE not to work for me". That's the kind of "FREE" the free market stands for usually. Of course, when all employers follow the same idea, or when p…

A fellow cynic! I see FREE MARKET and straight away re-read the paragraph to see who is getting screwed. I'm rarely disappointed.

As kylebrown noted the distinction between 'free from' and 'free to', your interpretation suggests that the free market is the freedom to screw everyone you could manage to. I like this description, but the question is: is it net negative for people / production / indvidual?

-- a fellow cynic.

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#75

Post by pretoriusB »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #22
pretoriusB wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pass a law forbidding anybody from talking about what they did at work that day including to their family or friends? Yes. Pass a law forbidding anybody from talking about what they did at work, including to their family or friends, if they are warned by the company that their work is confidential. Then let a jury decide if they violated that. If you work at a McDonalds, they need not tell you to keep confidential…

So presumably your employer decides which parts of your work are and are not confidential. They then provide this information to you in writing and the implication is that by working for them you agree to abide by these rules. In other words basically the definition of a contract. The only difference I can see in this case is that your approach would actually make it a criminal offence (presumably involving a possibl…

>The only difference I can see in this case

Well, there's a big difference: they don't get to dictate anything about your personal projects, stuff you make at home, your sex tape and such. Only about stuff done at the workplace and pertaining to the work.

Which is what the whole article was about, wasn't it?

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#76

Post by InclinedPlane »

mistercow wrote: post #11
wyuenho wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective bargaining rights was developed to counter exactly this power imbalance with minimum government involvement. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any programmer unions.

What's odd to me is that in many cases people who purport to be "pro free market" are also anti-union. As far as I can see, unions are the free market.

Unions have very little to do with free markets, and they typically do not actually benefit everyone in labor (they benefit some folks who are already in the union). Because of the way our labor laws work unions, in the instances where they are prevalent, tend to end up being a monopoly on labor for a given industry. This creates distortions in the market just as great as monopolies of capital. Also, unions tend to erode meritocratic systems of compensation and advancement and replace them with systems based on seniority and union membership, which tends to disadvantage the business, customers, and most workers except those few at the top of the seniority ladder.

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#77

Post by mistercow »

wmil wrote: post #62
mistercow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's odd to me is that in many cases people who purport to be "pro free market" are also anti-union. As far as I can see, unions are the free market.

Unions in the US always have specific views that employees often don't share. Everything is about retirement, preservation of existing employees, and supporting other unions. The problem is that most tech workers want incompetent workers fired, since they make other workers lives more difficult. The field also moves fast enough that credentialization is not particularly helpful. In fact, it can be harmful. Unions wou…

Sure, but my point is that a die hard free market advocate should either disagree with what you just said, or swallow that hard pill and say that the problems with unions are just a necessary evil. Instead, many seem to be vehemently anti-union while still holding to a "the free market will solve everything" point of view.

I'm not saying that unions are perfect. I'm saying that it's inconsistent to admit that they can be problematic while still holding that the free market is the ideal.

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#78

Post by pyre »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #76
mistercow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's odd to me is that in many cases people who purport to be "pro free market" are also anti-union. As far as I can see, unions are the free market.

Unions have very little to do with free markets, and they typically do not actually benefit everyone in labor (they benefit some folks who are already in the union). Because of the way our labor laws work unions, in the instances where they are prevalent, tend to end up being a monopoly on labor for a given industry. This creates distortions in the market just as great as monopolies of capital. Also, unions tend to e…

  > unions tend to erode meritocratic systems of
  > compensation and advancement
If such meritocratic systems exist, the awards are only dependent on the merits of your corporate politicking skills.

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#79

Post by jiggy2011 »

pretoriusB wrote: post #75
jiggy2011 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So presumably your employer decides which parts of your work are and are not confidential. They then provide this information to you in writing and the implication is that by working for them you agree to abide by these rules. In other words basically the definition of a contract. The only difference I can see in this case is that your approach would actually make it a criminal offence (presumably involving a possibl…

> The only difference I can see in this case Well, there's a big difference: they don't get to dictate anything about your personal projects, stuff you make at home, your sex tape and such. Only about stuff done at the workplace and pertaining to the work. Which is what the whole article was about, wasn't it?

I was replying to the original claim further up the thread that it would be preferable to abolish employment contracts and use only a standard set of legislation to resolve everything.

This is different from simply arguing that certain clauses should not be enforceable.

Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test

#80

Post by InclinedPlane »

pyre wrote: post #78
InclinedPlane wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions have very little to do with free markets, and they typically do not actually benefit everyone in labor (they benefit some folks who are already in the union). Because of the way our labor laws work unions, in the instances where they are prevalent, tend to end up being a monopoly on labor for a given industry. This creates distortions in the market just as great as monopolies of capital. Also, unions tend to e…

> unions tend to erode meritocratic systems of > compensation and advancement If such meritocratic systems exist, the awards are only dependent on the merits of your corporate politicking skills.

Let's say you are a tech worker in silicon valley. Your wages and the sorts of jobs you have access to are dependent on the sorts of companies in existence, their needs, and your skillset. If you have a highly sought after skillset then you will be courted by multiple companies who will try to woo you with jobs that you find desirable and competitive compensation packages. Let's say instead you are a dock worker in long beach. In that case your compensation and career opportunities are far more dependent on your union membership and seniority.

Certainly playing corporate politics can also have an effect, depending on the company, but that's also true in union shops as well.

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