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My 2007 UK contract contained a non-compete clause. Actually, this was in the confidentiality and IP assignment agreement, which was separate from the main emp

My 2007 UK contract contained a non-compete clause. Actually, this was in the confidentiality and IP assignment agreement, which was separate from the main employment contract, and as it happened I only ever signed the latter. But you are right about "worse legalese": in 2017 I came back as a temp, and was asked to sign an agreement containing an clause asserting I was authorized to receive materials subject to ITAR. I pointed out that only Americans (citizens or permanent residents) are so authorized, and that as I was not American I could therefore not sign it. I proposed striking the offending assertion and was told that I could not start until I signed the unmodified agreement. Apparently every other UK TVC had signed this without objection. Eventually, though contacts inside Google, I managed to get them to see sense and issue a version of the document I could sign, but this took several weeks. Mind-bogglingly, when I returned as a temp this year my start was again delayed for several weeks for exactly the same reason.

jkaplowitz 8y ago
Fascinating. I guess they figured they had to have markedly different language for the UK anyway, so maybe they would take whatever they could get away with. I should clarify that the US legalese did.have a 1-year post-employment non-sovereigntist, as is the US tech industry standard, and that even the California courts would probably find a duty not to compete during employment. But there was no post-employment non-compete. The ITAR thing sounds like a bureaucracy that simply doesn't know how to reliably fix a wording bug in this area. I'm sure Google's FTE legalese has changed a bunch since 2007, though. Amusingly, back in 2006, they still included interns in the company retirement plan, including matching contributions; while I appreciated it, that's definitely outside the norm, and they've since dropped that. My guess is that they initially drafted the retirement plan legalese without thinking to exclude interns, and then followed their own rules until they got enough interns to make it worthwhile to revise those rules.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  Wtf autocorrect - non-sovereigntist should have been non-solicit. I've been discussing Quebec politics too much in other parts of the Internet, clearly...

jkaplowitz 8y ago

Fascinating. I guess they figured they had to have markedly different language for the UK anyway, so maybe they would take whatever they could get away with. I should clarify that the US legalese did.have a 1-year post-employment non-sovereigntist, as is the US tech industry standard, and that even the California courts would probably find a duty not to compete during employment. But there was no post-employment non-compete. The ITAR thing sounds like a bureaucracy that simply doesn't know how to reliably fix a wording bug in this area. I'm sure Google's FTE legalese has changed a bunch since 2007, though. Amusingly, back in 2006, they still included interns in the company retirement plan, including matching contributions; while I appreciated it, that's definitely outside the norm, and they've since dropped that. My guess is that they initially drafted the retirement plan legalese without thinking to exclude interns, and then followed their own rules until they got enough interns to make it worthwhile to revise those rules.

jkaplowitz 8y ago
Wtf autocorrect - non-sovereigntist should have been non-solicit. I've been discussing Quebec politics too much in other parts of the Internet, clearly...