11 ms·

That classic "well, nobody else has had a problem, so you must be the problem" response. I remember at one of my first jobs, myself and another programmer were

• paulcole 10y ago
  Just curious, what did the lawyer you consulted with say about it?
• owlninja 10y ago
  Is this common in contracts??
  • StavrosK 10y ago
    Yes, extremely.
  • zoner 10y ago
    I have it too. It would have been impossible to change, I was given a template contract and I do have side projects outside of my work. On the day I leave the job because my side project is making enough money, I would not be very nervous about it. How would they know? I also have something like "should not work in similar area within The UK". Again, how would they know? This conflicts with data protection act, therefore invalid.
    • shshhdhs 10y ago
      Wouldn't they be able to find that out from LinkedIn or social, for perhaps the majority of tech people? Not saying that you use social media, but it's possible they find out.
      • zoner 10y ago
        Why advertising something like I have been working on this project for the last 5 years would benefit me in any way? They could guess that I didn't create it in the last two weeks, but then good luck proving it in court. I have much better relationship with my employer now, If I hadn't I would quit tomorrow.
        • angus-prune 10y ago
          In almost every case you're correct. If its a hobby project, or it allows you to make a normal living you're likely to be fine. The danger comes when you end up founding the next facebook and there is some real money involved. Then you might have the Winklevii suing you based on the clause in the contract. They could get expert testimony about the amount of time it took to create, find old stack exchange questions let alone get court ordered access to git etc. They may not end up winning, but you could settle just to avoid the cost. On the other hand, this definitely counts as "nice problem to have" and probably isn't worth actually worrying about.
      • teh_klev 10y ago
        I think if you've got any sense then you'd leave your LinkedIn profile unchanged until the exclusion period in your contract runs out. The "non-compete" clauses in mine have always been around 2-6 months, they were never enforced. I binned LinkedIn so it's not a problem for previous employers to spy on me, and my social media content never mentions anything about work things. For other social media then just keep your nose clean and stick to posting content and discussing stuff that doesn't mention work. But that said unless you stole your previous employer's crown jewels (customer lists, source code, IP etc) then these clauses would get thrown out if you were taken to court. Imagine a Volkswagen car dealership trying to limit, contractually, the employment opportunities of their mechanics or sales people from moving down the road to the Ford dealership for better hours/pay/commission. They'd be laughed out of the court room I think.
  • y7 10y ago
    Yes. Usually, I manage to get out of it (simply by asking and explaining).
  • dom0 10y ago
    It's a standard clause, but depending on jurisdiction it's at least partially invalid anyway.
    • lostboys67 10y ago
      it normally has to be "related" to your employers business for it to be valid
    • fapjacks 10y ago
      California labor code explicitly contains exceptions to the work you do, which basically says that any work you do on your own equipment, during your own time, that is not related to the work you do during the day[0], cannot be usurped by the company using those broad, awful IP clauses. Anyway, this California labor code exception is why Silicon Valley exists in California and nowhere else. [0] And often, I'm told, companies have the upper hand here, because they can often show that almost anything is related to their particular activities.
  • openmosix 10y ago
    Yup, very common. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
• mistermann 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
• bluetwo 10y ago
  There is a concept in law that it is the responsibility of the party making the contract to be specific. For instance, if I hire you to paint my barn red and specify the shade of red, it had better be that red or you failed to meet the terms of the contract. On the other hand, if I simply specify "red" then any shade of red would fulfill the contract. The lack of detail was my fault. Depending on how specific they were, you may have been able to do it. Or, you could have sent them a letter telling them your intentions and let them either loop in the lawyer, or, at their risk, ignore the issue.
  • willyt 10y ago
    I believe the principal is called Contra proferentem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem
  • NetMonkey 10y ago
    And as I have learned the very hard way, a judge can just decide it doesn't matter and the appeals court probably won't care. Please don't ever rely on how it's supposed to be - always, always put in clarifying statements and examples in any contract. Everything should be extremely clear and readable by layman, otherwise even things that should be obvious can be devastating.
• uiri 10y ago
  Why not draft up something to give to the company disclaiming all rights to your work? If lawyers are too expensive for the company, I'm sure they'll sign it right away! I'm guessing the HR person is just incompetent and the issue should be escalated. What exactly does a company think is going to be the outcome of saying "Oh, BTW, we might sue you for this, we might not and we're not going to give you a straight answer one way or the other" to one of their employees?
  • mhneu 10y ago
    The company knows what the outcome is already: 99% of developers sign. So why should the company change?
    • sqeaky 10y ago
      I suspect that in the long run common contracts like that will become invalidated and a legal quagmire. I have seen several contracts wanting to claim ownership over everything I write. I don't sign them, but it seems most people do and often do so at multiple contracting firms and employers. There are companies that should be having arguments with each over who own what contractors code. Clearly this is not a reasonable situation and clearly it is unreasonable to try to screw a developer out of everything he owns and clearly it is hard to get a job without signing something like this. The runs afoul of anti-competition laws and basic decency. I am sure it will stand in some shitty jurisdictions and completely fail in others, but many already have some kind of work for pay law that transfers IP to the people paying for it by default and that seems pretty reasonable.
    • crdoconnor 10y ago
      >The company knows what the outcome is already: 99% of developers sign. I've rejected job offers like this before and not taken the job even after they offered to cut the clause out. It's actually a pretty good proxy for overall unreasonableness and how much bullshit you'll have to put up with if you work for them.
  • stronglikedan 10y ago
    In a lot (most?) companies, the issue would be escalated all the way to the top with the same results. There's no incentive for them to take action once you've signed their contract. As other's have mentioned in this thread, you should have demanded an exclusion cause before signing.
• pjc50 10y ago
  The ambiguous IP clause is very common in UK programmer employment contracts. I've had two experiences with it. Most recently, I was able to insert a clarifying clause that said "work not related to company's business and not done on company time/equipment doesn't count". Previously, I was working at a startup that didn't have this clause and employed a number of people who were Debian developers in their spare time. They introduced new contracts containing this IP clause. We discussed them and the whole department (dozen or so of us) simply politely refused to sign them. The situation quietly stalemated for months until the company ran out of runway and almost all of us were made redundant. Collective action can work, guys. Few companies can afford to lost a lot of devs at once.
  • janwillemb 10y ago
    Quitting a job is a major, life-changing event for many devs and the question is whether such a clause in the contract is worth the trouble. That said, I disagree strongly with these intellectual property clauses in dev contracts.
    • geofft 10y ago
      Yes. That's why collective action is so important: a company can avoid the loss of a single employee much more than the single employee can afford the loss of a job, but a company can't avoid the loss of even a single department quite as easily, let alone all employees of a certain type. It's insurance for bad management decisions, effectively. It's useful for all the reasons insurance is useful.
      • mhneu 10y ago
        If you are interested in collective action to combat clauses like this, follow Maciej Cejlowski.
        • danielweber 10y ago
          Follow him how?
• bsharitt 10y ago
  I was considering taking a job recently(would have been 100% remote) that had the same kind of vague "everything you do is ours" clause(also had a similarly vague non-compete) in the contract when I received the job offer. I brought it up and mentioned I can't sign this contract because these issues. The most I could get out of the guy was, I can't think of it every getting forced so sign the contract and don't worry about it. If were out of work and really needed a job I probably would have, but I ended up turning down the offer.
  • embwbam 10y ago
    What I usually do in this case is redline the contract and sign it. (Meaning, edit the clauses you don't like in an obvious fashion. Tell them you've done this.) They will often not want to go to the trouble of going back and forth with the contract and will just accept it.
    • tracker1 10y ago
      That's been my experience as well. I won't sign these types of clauses and haven't had issue with lining out offending portions, or adding them in... Some of the docu-sign sites even have tools for this.. others don't.
    • x1798DE 10y ago
      > Tell them you've done this. Pretty sure you don't have to tell them if you return the contract to them modified and they sign it. They weren't going to tell you all the objectionable parts of the contract, so why give them information you're not required to give? (IANAL)
      • NetMonkey 10y ago
        IANAL either, but from experience everything that can be seen as shady is very dangerous if it comes to a court case. It makes you look like the bad guy, and can easily be used by a good lawyer to remove focus from what should really matter. You want everything to be as clear as possible, and with no obvious points that can be called into doubt. Even if you end up winning, you don't want a court case that drags out for multiple years, with devastating legal costs to cover while its going on.
• paul_milovanov 10y ago
  Come on, people. Not "we are working on", but "if I were to start working".
  • jjnoakes 10y ago
    Please don't advocate for making willfully misleading statements to one's employer which might have legal repercussions (IANAL, etc).
    • nitrogen 10y ago
      One's employer is unlikely to be so forthright with their future plans. It should not be misleading to reveal only the minimum information necessary to a potentially hostile actor (speaking culturally, not legally).
      • jjnoakes 10y ago
        > It should not be misleading to reveal only the minimum information necessary to a potentially hostile actor I have no problem with this. But I see a big difference between asking one's employer "If I was already working on a project in my free time and wanted to take it further, what would I do?" and "I haven't started working on anything yet, but if I wanted to, what do I do?", when one has indeed started something already.
    • ghurtado 10y ago
      1. There's nothing willfully misleading about asking a hypothetical question 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.
      • roflchoppa 10y ago
        yeah dude my mom programmed all that stuff in her spare time. <:0
      • jjnoakes 10y ago
• sandworm101 10y ago
  No. This is the classic case of someone needing legal advice but not bothering to contact an expert. These IP clauses are not that bad if you are someone reading contracts daily. They arent asking for the world, certainly not for outside material. (Note the capital C in Customer.) Seek legal advice. Not here. Not your buddy who reads supreme court cases and thinks he knows copyright from tradesecret. Go to someone with a license hanging on the wall. It wont cost any more than a filling by a dentist and probably less than your monthly cellphone bill.
• mgkimsal 10y ago
  If it's too expensive to check ahead of time, it'll probably be considered too expensive to check afterwards too, no? Not if they smell money, I bet. :/
  • huebnerob 10y ago
    That's precisely what's so nefarious about this widely accepted set of terms: your company will be fine with you loosely interpreting your employment contract, up and until you become successful.
• kafkaesq 10y ago
  Along with the classic "not at this time" response. Meaning, as it always does, "We won't answer your questions, ever."
• whyileft 10y ago
  > That classic "well, nobody else has had a problem, so you must be the problem" response. To anyone reading this that gets this response in a negotiation, this is the go to line for any experienced negotiator when you come to them with questions about a contract. Always. Its like negotiation 101. Do not take the response at face value. Its a canned line that doesn't mean anything on its own. The typical response is to say that it makes a good impression on the organization that they have yet to have any contract disputes and then get back to asking about your specific issues. Although, the harsh reality is that for them to change this contract means they need to bring a lawyer into the situation and that costs them money. So realistically you need to be in a situation where you have some kind of leverage in the situation. That is pretty rare when you are alone on the labor side as opposed to the capital side. Sometimes you have to decide between taking a risk of getting screwed or walking away. Unfortunate reality of our economic system as it currently stands. As unions learned a long time ago, labor protections via government regulation is typically more effective than private negotiation. Without that, most people just have to learn to accept they you are going to get taken advantage of and work around it.