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> He was frustrated that, when he was first fired, people thought it was an obvious conclusion for telling jokes while having a day job. > “Like, ‘What do you

> He was frustrated that, when he was first fired, people thought it was an obvious conclusion for telling jokes while having a day job. > “Like, ‘What do you mean? You’re off hours, you’re having fun with, like, creative expression, of course you should get fired for that,’ ” he said. “But I hate that that’s become normal. And I want to be an example of like, no, your employer doesn’t own you.” This is a terrifying state of affairs. Similar to the whole "all code you write, on or off hours, belongs to us" some tech companies try to pull.

diggan 3y ago
> This is a terrifying state of affairs. Similar to the whole "all code you write, on or off hours, belongs to us" some tech companies try to pull. Just like Tesla was recently caught having their employees in Sweden sign contracts like that, including terms that prohibited employees from talking about anything going on at Tesla, even after the left the company, for life... > Among other things, employees agree to never, ever tell anyone anything about the company. Employees also have to pay a fine if they quit Tesla and take a competing job within six months. https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/sverige/tystnadsplikt-livet-ut-for-svenska-tesla-anstallda/ https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/sverige/tystnadsplikt-livet... Seems like it's a US tactic that now is trying to be spread into other parts of the world. Terrifying indeed.
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  > prohibited employees from talking about anything going on at Tesla, even after the left the company, for life... Good luck monitoring that enforcing that Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment and if memory serves right, no contract can change people’s federal rights or change any laws Edit: had a derp moment and totally commented without remembering the “Sweden” key word here. Ignore me, I’m wrong for many reasons
  - diggan 3y ago
    > Tesla was recently caught having their employees in Sweden sign contracts like that >> pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment Pretty sure the 1st amendment you're talking about doesn't apply in Sweden :)
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      I read Sweden yet somehow it didn’t register at all when thinking about my reply. Derp.
  - kolanos 3y ago
    The first amendment restricts the government, not the people. If the people want to enter into such an arrangement, that is their right. This is just an NDA without an end.
    - sandworm101 3y ago
      >> NDA without an end There are some legal limits on this. Things like the rule against perpetuities limit any sort of forever construct. The interesting question is whether someone bound by such a contact in life can perhaps speak after death: A book written privately in life but published publicly after death. That might be a case where general legal principals would win out over a corporate NDA.
  - wharvle 3y ago
    > Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment and if memory serves right, no contract can change people’s federal rights or change any laws The contract does not attempt to modify the protection of your free speech rights from government interference, so no. (“But a government apparatus would enforce the contract, and corporations are chartered by the government, and anyway what good is a system that protects rights from the government if lots of people end up losing them to powerful organizations anyway?” Yes, yep, mmm-hmm. Welcome to left-libertarianism.) (And, as the other poster noted, this is Sweden anyway, so the US constitution and bill of rights is irrelevant anyway)
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    >> Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment I'm pretty sure it does not. Tesla is not the government and Musk is not, yet, president. There is precious little in the US constitution governing employer-employee relations. In fact, by not allowing such agreements, any government arguably violates the contracts clause. The US constitution frees people, which includes granting them freedom to sign stupid contracts.
    - hprotagonist 3y ago
      > Musk is not, yet, president will never be.
      - votepaunchy 3y ago
        And why not? Congress can choose to discard electors from states excluding candidates (as may happen next year). “In the 19th century, several state legislatures elected senators in their late twenties despite the Constitutional minimum age of 30, such as Henry Clay, who was sworn into office at age 29, and John Henry Eaton, the youngest U.S. senator in history, who took his oath of office when he was 28 years, 4 months and 29 days old.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_members_of_the_United_States_Congress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_members_of_...
        phalangion 3y ago
        Because you must be a natural-born citizen of the US.
        diggan 3y ago
        As far as I understand, there isn't really a consensus on what "natural-born citizen" actually means in the context of the US constitution. I'm sure some huge team of lawyers could argue that Musk somehow is "natural-born citizen".
        3y ago
  - gosub100 3y ago
    the constitution is a set of laws for lawmakers. It doesn't govern what people or companies do. Try reading one sometime. You might see one start with "Congress shall make no law..". > Good luck monitoring that enforcing that Unenforceable rules still have plenty of value in something called a "chilling effect" which people - even fully aware of an unforceable law - will still alter their behavior out of fear that they could somehow become entangled in it anyway. They preempt decision-making for many people.
  - striking 3y ago
    Even in the US (which Sweden is not a part of, to be clear) the First Amendment only prevents the US government from abridging your freedom of expression, and only in most cases.
  - leksak 3y ago
    One of the Swedish employees had a wife that posted about the strike on Twitter and the employee was summarily brought before HR. But monitoring for life doesn't seem feasible. But they don't really have to. Just making people believe they can be penalized at any time can change their behavior.
shadowgovt 3y ago
But look at it from the organization's side. WHYY will lose listener-ship over his standup, whether or not that's fair. They'll be held accountable to the actions of the people they employ, whether or not that's fair. Take the ability to control who they associate with out of the hands of a media company and you doom them to being burned by the court of public opinion. Reputation is all a news outlet has. (It is, perhaps, worth noting that the arbiter didn't disagree with this line of reasoning. Return to employment was conditional on Jad deleting the offending material, so he's not to the place he wants to be regarding the eating of his cake and the having of his cake. It may still be the case that his two desired activities are incompatible with each other).
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  I think they'll gain more audience now - through this reinstated reporter - than they out to lose. They'll lose close minded people and gain a lot of open minded ones. The open minded tend to have a healthier mental state, have higher income, and attract more ad revenue. And I don't think it's likely that the firing was motivated by the fear of bad financial results, but ideologically driven.
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    But to make that work out they first had to fire him! 4d chess ...
    - rmbyrro 3y ago
      It was all planned!
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    This is WHYY we're talking about, not a small-time small-town public media station. They already have all the listeners of that category that they're going to have.
    - neon_electro 3y ago
ghaff 3y ago
The two cases seem pretty dissimilar. One is primarily companies not wanting to take any risk that IP could walk out the door through off hours work. The other is that for sufficiently visible and controversial off hours activities, it’s hard to divorce the person 100% from their employer and that’s a PR problem and a distraction many employers are quick to remedy. When I was an industry analyst, anything I said related to the industry even on a personal blog or Twitter account was (somewhat reasonably) taken as my professional opinion not really separable from what I wrote as part of my job.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  > sufficiently visible and controversial off hours activities The point is that it doesn’t have to be controversial at all. They can fire you for whatever reason they want. He didn’t cross any lines because there was never any line to begin with. His healthcare is at the mercy of a dictatorship.
- loup-vaillant 3y ago
  Both cases seem to be mostly a US thing. Here in France, whatever I do outside my job is my own business: I write code on my own time, it's mine. I publish articles on my web site, they do not represent my company. I've heard a story about someone from Europe travelling to the US to work for IBM. He was in the process of choosing a house, and was told that it was too modest. That is, "not the kind of house expected of an IBM engineer". Clearly in the US the line between your job and personal life is so blurry it's often hard to even see. From my perspective this looks like a problem in and of itself, but it gets magnified tenfold when coupled with "at will" employment and work-tied health insurance: it means your employer owns you, 24/7. Isn't slavery supposed to be abolished? Then there are the obvious Free Speech implications. The US has supposedly freer speech than Europe, but how free is your speech really is if your employer can fire you and terminate your health insurance the instant your boss stumbles upon something you said he didn't like?
  - beardedwizard 3y ago
    > That is, "not the kind of house expected of an IBM engineer". Clearly in the US the line between your job and personal life is so blurry it's often hard to even see. Hmm really? Citation needed.

diggan 3y ago

> This is a terrifying state of affairs. Similar to the whole "all code you write, on or off hours, belongs to us" some tech companies try to pull. Just like Tesla was recently caught having their employees in Sweden sign contracts like that, including terms that prohibited employees from talking about anything going on at Tesla, even after the left the company, for life... > Among other things, employees agree to never, ever tell anyone anything about the company. Employees also have to pay a fine if they quit Tesla and take a competing job within six months. https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/sverige/tystnadsplikt-livet-ut-for-svenska-tesla-anstallda/ https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/sverige/tystnadsplikt-livet... Seems like it's a US tactic that now is trying to be spread into other parts of the world. Terrifying indeed.

wutwutwat 3y ago
> prohibited employees from talking about anything going on at Tesla, even after the left the company, for life... Good luck monitoring that enforcing that Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment and if memory serves right, no contract can change people’s federal rights or change any laws Edit: had a derp moment and totally commented without remembering the “Sweden” key word here. Ignore me, I’m wrong for many reasons
- diggan 3y ago
  > Tesla was recently caught having their employees in Sweden sign contracts like that >> pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment Pretty sure the 1st amendment you're talking about doesn't apply in Sweden :)
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    I read Sweden yet somehow it didn’t register at all when thinking about my reply. Derp.
- kolanos 3y ago
  The first amendment restricts the government, not the people. If the people want to enter into such an arrangement, that is their right. This is just an NDA without an end.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    >> NDA without an end There are some legal limits on this. Things like the rule against perpetuities limit any sort of forever construct. The interesting question is whether someone bound by such a contact in life can perhaps speak after death: A book written privately in life but published publicly after death. That might be a case where general legal principals would win out over a corporate NDA.
- wharvle 3y ago
  > Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment and if memory serves right, no contract can change people’s federal rights or change any laws The contract does not attempt to modify the protection of your free speech rights from government interference, so no. (“But a government apparatus would enforce the contract, and corporations are chartered by the government, and anyway what good is a system that protects rights from the government if lots of people end up losing them to powerful organizations anyway?” Yes, yep, mmm-hmm. Welcome to left-libertarianism.) (And, as the other poster noted, this is Sweden anyway, so the US constitution and bill of rights is irrelevant anyway)
- sandworm101 3y ago
  >> Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment I'm pretty sure it does not. Tesla is not the government and Musk is not, yet, president. There is precious little in the US constitution governing employer-employee relations. In fact, by not allowing such agreements, any government arguably violates the contracts clause. The US constitution frees people, which includes granting them freedom to sign stupid contracts.
  - hprotagonist 3y ago
    > Musk is not, yet, president will never be.
    - votepaunchy 3y ago
      And why not? Congress can choose to discard electors from states excluding candidates (as may happen next year). “In the 19th century, several state legislatures elected senators in their late twenties despite the Constitutional minimum age of 30, such as Henry Clay, who was sworn into office at age 29, and John Henry Eaton, the youngest U.S. senator in history, who took his oath of office when he was 28 years, 4 months and 29 days old.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_members_of_the_United_States_Congress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_members_of_...
      - phalangion 3y ago
        Because you must be a natural-born citizen of the US.
        diggan 3y ago
        As far as I understand, there isn't really a consensus on what "natural-born citizen" actually means in the context of the US constitution. I'm sure some huge team of lawyers could argue that Musk somehow is "natural-born citizen".
        3y ago
- gosub100 3y ago
  the constitution is a set of laws for lawmakers. It doesn't govern what people or companies do. Try reading one sometime. You might see one start with "Congress shall make no law..". > Good luck monitoring that enforcing that Unenforceable rules still have plenty of value in something called a "chilling effect" which people - even fully aware of an unforceable law - will still alter their behavior out of fear that they could somehow become entangled in it anyway. They preempt decision-making for many people.
- striking 3y ago
  Even in the US (which Sweden is not a part of, to be clear) the First Amendment only prevents the US government from abridging your freedom of expression, and only in most cases.
- leksak 3y ago
  One of the Swedish employees had a wife that posted about the strike on Twitter and the employee was summarily brought before HR. But monitoring for life doesn't seem feasible. But they don't really have to. Just making people believe they can be penalized at any time can change their behavior.

shadowgovt 3y ago

But look at it from the organization's side. WHYY will lose listener-ship over his standup, whether or not that's fair. They'll be held accountable to the actions of the people they employ, whether or not that's fair. Take the ability to control who they associate with out of the hands of a media company and you doom them to being burned by the court of public opinion. Reputation is all a news outlet has. (It is, perhaps, worth noting that the arbiter didn't disagree with this line of reasoning. Return to employment was conditional on Jad deleting the offending material, so he's not to the place he wants to be regarding the eating of his cake and the having of his cake. It may still be the case that his two desired activities are incompatible with each other).

rmbyrro 3y ago
I think they'll gain more audience now - through this reinstated reporter - than they out to lose. They'll lose close minded people and gain a lot of open minded ones. The open minded tend to have a healthier mental state, have higher income, and attract more ad revenue. And I don't think it's likely that the firing was motivated by the fear of bad financial results, but ideologically driven.
- ithkuil 3y ago
  But to make that work out they first had to fire him! 4d chess ...
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    It was all planned!
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  This is WHYY we're talking about, not a small-time small-town public media station. They already have all the listeners of that category that they're going to have.
  - neon_electro 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago

The two cases seem pretty dissimilar. One is primarily companies not wanting to take any risk that IP could walk out the door through off hours work. The other is that for sufficiently visible and controversial off hours activities, it’s hard to divorce the person 100% from their employer and that’s a PR problem and a distraction many employers are quick to remedy. When I was an industry analyst, anything I said related to the industry even on a personal blog or Twitter account was (somewhat reasonably) taken as my professional opinion not really separable from what I wrote as part of my job.

janalsncm 3y ago
> sufficiently visible and controversial off hours activities The point is that it doesn’t have to be controversial at all. They can fire you for whatever reason they want. He didn’t cross any lines because there was never any line to begin with. His healthcare is at the mercy of a dictatorship.
loup-vaillant 3y ago
Both cases seem to be mostly a US thing. Here in France, whatever I do outside my job is my own business: I write code on my own time, it's mine. I publish articles on my web site, they do not represent my company. I've heard a story about someone from Europe travelling to the US to work for IBM. He was in the process of choosing a house, and was told that it was too modest. That is, "not the kind of house expected of an IBM engineer". Clearly in the US the line between your job and personal life is so blurry it's often hard to even see. From my perspective this looks like a problem in and of itself, but it gets magnified tenfold when coupled with "at will" employment and work-tied health insurance: it means your employer owns you, 24/7. Isn't slavery supposed to be abolished? Then there are the obvious Free Speech implications. The US has supposedly freer speech than Europe, but how free is your speech really is if your employer can fire you and terminate your health insurance the instant your boss stumbles upon something you said he didn't like?
- beardedwizard 3y ago
  > That is, "not the kind of house expected of an IBM engineer". Clearly in the US the line between your job and personal life is so blurry it's often hard to even see. Hmm really? Citation needed.