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Let's acknowledge "nondisparagement" clauses for what they are: one party's intent to intimidate another. They are a coercive tactic not unlike those deployed b
by shawnee_ 9y ago
Let's acknowledge "nondisparagement" clauses for what they are: one party's intent to intimidate another. They are a coercive tactic not unlike those deployed by dictatorships or cults: designed to invoke fearfulness and repression of facts or truth.
The courts are very reluctant to hear any of it from contract-smacking plaintiffs going after people they claim "disparaged" them. The whole basis of our judicial system in the US was designed around citizens' rights to criticize overbearing institutions (like the monarchy of Great Britain when a lot of people decided to ship out) freely and without fear of repression by the institutions being criticized. Hence the extensive First Amendment protections that came soon thereafter.
Google, that great beacon of transparency, was accused in a lawsuit of using a broad confidentiality measure that prevents employees from ever talking about their work at Google—or, hilariously, from so much as writing a novel about a Silicon Valley tech company without company approval.
This is disconcerting. The bigger a company gets, the more it needs to rely upon a set of public values rather than fine-print legalese. Employees should be encouraged to challenge the upholding of values at every front... even publicly, if necessary, if that company diverges from what it says it's all about.
- FussyZeus 9y agoNDA's have a solid use for preventing exposure of sensitive IP or technical infrastructure knowledge. Outside of that, they should be banned completely. In general we ought to be demanding a lot more transparency from both our public and privately owned institutions, especially once they've grown to the size of Google, Facebook, etc.
- bluGill 9y agoNDAs - to the extent they have a solid use - should be written up in law (including case law) such that you don't have to sign them. It should be obvious that I don't go to my companies competitor with our source code (and copyright law prohibits that already). Can I go to our competitor and recreate from scratch our algorithms in their product, what about modify their algorithms that do the same things as ours - at some point you have to draw a line of yes/no.
- scoggs 9y agoA little off topic, I know, but Google must be freaking out about 'The Circle' with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson: http://www.businessinsider.com/trailer-for-the-circle-starring-emma-watson-and-tom-hanks-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/trailer-for-the-circle-starri...
- Analemma_ 9y agoNot really. I went and saw that movie, it was hilariously dopey. It was about on the level of an anti-drug PSA, but for "working at a technology company". I bet in the coming years it will become a tradition among Google employees to get drunk and watch it while snarking at the screen MST3K-style.