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I mean in principle, I agree with all of these points. But in reality if you stick to these rules hard and fast, you'll basically never accept a job offer. That

I mean in principle, I agree with all of these points. But in reality if you stick to these rules hard and fast, you'll basically never accept a job offer. That's clearly an exaggeration, but many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract. Whether it's a small startup that's using a generic contract they've gotten from the internet or their lawyers, up to massive corporations, they're all going to include semblances of some of these points. Probably for different reasons, but the points will still be in there. Startups and small companies might be more flexible to work with you on changing parts, but still the legal headache of changing anything is often far greater for the company than just passing on you and looking for another candidate. Infinity moreso for big companies. My experience is biased towards technical roles (like most on HN), but I've worked for startups, big companies, and as a freelance contractor. It's the same stuff in most contracts. Obviously my experience is not indicative of 100% of companies and I'm sure I'll have people chime in saying they had success getting company X to change some of their contract, but it's overwhelmingly not going to happen. So to treat these points as 'rules' instead of 'points to be aware of' is a bit too hardline of a stance to take in my opinion.

wheybags 4y ago
I've had a "we own everything you make" clause in contracts before, it's just copy pasted boilerplate, and they were fine with removing it when I asked. Noncompetes I've been fine with, because they were always quite niche companies, and the wording was something along the lines of "don't join our direct competitors for a few years", and that seems ok to me. I will grant that it gets more complicated with megacorporations that work on everything though, as their "competitors" are roughly everyone.
- cloogshicer 4y ago
  I think the important thing is that you asked. I've had a very negative experience, where I also asked, and they basically said "sign it or GTFO". So I did the latter, and I'm very glad I did.
  - codingdave 4y ago
    A number of years back, our company was acquired and they sent us employment contracts from our new owners, with that same "sign it or GTFO" message. Many people signed. A few of us just didn't. Nastygrams kept on coming, we kept on ignoring them. Ultimately, we never did end up signing. Which is the other piece of the puzzle - lawyers are really good at knowing when they actually have power and when they do not. Unfortunately, when they don't truly have legal power they resort to bullying. So if you are being bullied to sign a contract, that usually is a red flag to stop, really look at things, and figure out why they are using that tactic. You may be in a better situation than you think.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      I think you might be a bit presumptuous. Why do you believe they don't have legal power? If you are an at-will employee, you can typically be fired for any reason. Not signing the updated employment agreement is, unfortunately, a valid reason. In your case, they did not exercise that right. But I've been at places where they did. For something as petty as not signing an agreement which appeared to eliminate some employee benefits that were contractually obligated. Could the fired employees have sued, and won? Perhaps. But it would be an expensive, risky, time-consuming proposition to find out.
kibwen 4y ago
> many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract Contracts are entirely negotiable. If there's a job you want, but the contract contains an objectionable clause, tell them that you're willing to accept if they strike that clause. If you're at the point in the hiring process where they're showing you the contract, that means that they've sunk resources into you that they don't want to throw away. And the fact that these clauses are boilerplate, as you say, works in your favor, because nobody involved in the hiring process consciously chose to put that clause in and they probably don't really give a damn.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- secondstring 4y ago
  > because nobody involved in the hiring process consciously chose to put that clause in and they probably don't really give a damn. Yes but I think I didn't convey my point enough. Nobody involved in the hiring process cares, and if it's a good company they probably agree with you. But this standard contract is what they paid attorneys good money to comb over with a fine tooth comb for liability, and eventually sign off on. Very very very few companies are going to go pay Expensive Law Co. (TM) $500 per hour to review changes to the contract just because _one_ potential hire who still might not even accept the offer says they won't accept if that's in it. It's way out of most recruiters or engineering managers that you might be interfacing with to make that happen, not to mention making their life way harder. Heck even a startup CTO might balk at having to go spend more on legal. I have had clauses similar to the "we own everything you do 24/day" one and I've pushed back on all of them. Every time, the response is "yes we totally understand but we have no power to change the wording in this contract we use for every single employee" and it just comes down to a gut judgement call on my part on if I feel they will actually screw me over on that point. Again to emphasise, I totally agree logically with author's and your points. But it's simply not realistic to approach job hunting that black and white unless you're comfortable being out of work for months until you find the perfectly-flexible-enough company.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
ModernMech 4y ago
> But in reality if you stick to these rules hard and fast, you'll basically never accept a job offer. That's clearly an exaggeration, but many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract. In the tech industry, yeah, but there are industries that aren't so employee hostile where you can find better contract terms. I'd have to say in my experience, the tech industry is one of the worst when it comes to the malicious application of employment contracts. Apple is especially egregious with forcing interviewees to sign expansive NDAs; the Dilbert cartoon is spot on by making them dress like Apple store employees.
- secondstring 4y ago
  Totally correct - I tried to caveat that in my post by saying I'm skewed hard tech industry. That was the main attention of the article, and my main experience, so I was writing from that viewpoint. I somehow doubt that Vail Resorts has a non-compete for their lift operators to go work on another mountain (although now that I think about it VR is pretty terrible so this might have been a bad example)
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    Maybe not Vail Resorts, but it is indeed happening... The noncompete agreement prohibited Mr. Meier from hiring any of Intermountain’s employees, from janitorial staff to ski lift operators https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-takes-action-against-central-new-york-ski-resorts-unfair https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-... Also, fast-food employees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702468
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  The funny NDA's are the ones where they think they have a 'secret sauce'. Then you get in there and find out they are using some off the shelf API's exactly as intended. You start asking exact questions and they do not understand how you know so much about their product already.
  - 4y ago
pnutjam 4y ago
We need a SAG style union to address issues like this, but that's pie in the sky dreaming.

wheybags 4y ago

I've had a "we own everything you make" clause in contracts before, it's just copy pasted boilerplate, and they were fine with removing it when I asked. Noncompetes I've been fine with, because they were always quite niche companies, and the wording was something along the lines of "don't join our direct competitors for a few years", and that seems ok to me. I will grant that it gets more complicated with megacorporations that work on everything though, as their "competitors" are roughly everyone.

cloogshicer 4y ago
I think the important thing is that you asked. I've had a very negative experience, where I also asked, and they basically said "sign it or GTFO". So I did the latter, and I'm very glad I did.
- codingdave 4y ago
  A number of years back, our company was acquired and they sent us employment contracts from our new owners, with that same "sign it or GTFO" message. Many people signed. A few of us just didn't. Nastygrams kept on coming, we kept on ignoring them. Ultimately, we never did end up signing. Which is the other piece of the puzzle - lawyers are really good at knowing when they actually have power and when they do not. Unfortunately, when they don't truly have legal power they resort to bullying. So if you are being bullied to sign a contract, that usually is a red flag to stop, really look at things, and figure out why they are using that tactic. You may be in a better situation than you think.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    I think you might be a bit presumptuous. Why do you believe they don't have legal power? If you are an at-will employee, you can typically be fired for any reason. Not signing the updated employment agreement is, unfortunately, a valid reason. In your case, they did not exercise that right. But I've been at places where they did. For something as petty as not signing an agreement which appeared to eliminate some employee benefits that were contractually obligated. Could the fired employees have sued, and won? Perhaps. But it would be an expensive, risky, time-consuming proposition to find out.

kibwen 4y ago

> many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract Contracts are entirely negotiable. If there's a job you want, but the contract contains an objectionable clause, tell them that you're willing to accept if they strike that clause. If you're at the point in the hiring process where they're showing you the contract, that means that they've sunk resources into you that they don't want to throw away. And the fact that these clauses are boilerplate, as you say, works in your favor, because nobody involved in the hiring process consciously chose to put that clause in and they probably don't really give a damn.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
secondstring 4y ago
> because nobody involved in the hiring process consciously chose to put that clause in and they probably don't really give a damn. Yes but I think I didn't convey my point enough. Nobody involved in the hiring process cares, and if it's a good company they probably agree with you. But this standard contract is what they paid attorneys good money to comb over with a fine tooth comb for liability, and eventually sign off on. Very very very few companies are going to go pay Expensive Law Co. (TM) $500 per hour to review changes to the contract just because _one_ potential hire who still might not even accept the offer says they won't accept if that's in it. It's way out of most recruiters or engineering managers that you might be interfacing with to make that happen, not to mention making their life way harder. Heck even a startup CTO might balk at having to go spend more on legal. I have had clauses similar to the "we own everything you do 24/day" one and I've pushed back on all of them. Every time, the response is "yes we totally understand but we have no power to change the wording in this contract we use for every single employee" and it just comes down to a gut judgement call on my part on if I feel they will actually screw me over on that point. Again to emphasise, I totally agree logically with author's and your points. But it's simply not realistic to approach job hunting that black and white unless you're comfortable being out of work for months until you find the perfectly-flexible-enough company.
- Aeolun 4y ago

ModernMech 4y ago

> But in reality if you stick to these rules hard and fast, you'll basically never accept a job offer. That's clearly an exaggeration, but many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract. In the tech industry, yeah, but there are industries that aren't so employee hostile where you can find better contract terms. I'd have to say in my experience, the tech industry is one of the worst when it comes to the malicious application of employment contracts. Apple is especially egregious with forcing interviewees to sign expansive NDAs; the Dilbert cartoon is spot on by making them dress like Apple store employees.

secondstring 4y ago
Totally correct - I tried to caveat that in my post by saying I'm skewed hard tech industry. That was the main attention of the article, and my main experience, so I was writing from that viewpoint. I somehow doubt that Vail Resorts has a non-compete for their lift operators to go work on another mountain (although now that I think about it VR is pretty terrible so this might have been a bad example)
- listenallyall 4y ago
  Maybe not Vail Resorts, but it is indeed happening... The noncompete agreement prohibited Mr. Meier from hiring any of Intermountain’s employees, from janitorial staff to ski lift operators https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-takes-action-against-central-new-york-ski-resorts-unfair https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-... Also, fast-food employees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702468
sumtechguy 4y ago
The funny NDA's are the ones where they think they have a 'secret sauce'. Then you get in there and find out they are using some off the shelf API's exactly as intended. You start asking exact questions and they do not understand how you know so much about their product already.
- 4y ago

pnutjam 4y ago

We need a SAG style union to address issues like this, but that's pie in the sky dreaming.