3 ms·
This is all well and good, until you end your employment at a firm that is extremely vengeful, and as a deterrent to other employees, does in fact decide to tak
by valdiorn 7y ago
This is all well and good, until you end your employment at a firm that is extremely vengeful, and as a deterrent to other employees, does in fact decide to take you to court and make your life miserable for several months. Because, remember; you don't have to be guilty to be dragged into court.
Having worked for one such company, who made a spectacle out of punishing disloyal former employees way past the point of what the legal system is built for (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18499712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18499712 ), and then holding staff meetings to announce how they've just destroyed that employees life (he wasn't the first, and while he actually did break the law, it's very Arguable the Quadrature guys did not), I took the safe choice sitting out my non compete period and took a nice long holiday.
I'll repeat the most important part of this story;
You don't have to be guilty to be dragged into court.
- fzeroracer 7y agoI made a similar argument in a previous HN thread [1] and people were absolutely incredulous over this idea that not only do companies try to own everything you do but that you don't have to be guilty to be sued by a vengeful employer. I'll repeat here what I said there. A lot of engineers cannot work on projects in their free time due to being locked into horrible contracts that assert copyright and ownership over anything they do in their free time. Which has a chilling effect on engineers who would otherwise contribute to FOSS. Even if those provisions are illegal, it still costs a lot of money to strike them down in court and the court system is generally always stacked in favor of the corporation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21771325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21771325