Hacker News Reader

Comment by tachion | Hacker News Reader

My partner, a developer, got fired (well, the job offer was retracted after a very well performed internship) for kindly questioning two points of the contract: one about unlimited unpaid overtime, and second one about losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE (including things not related to company's business and/or technology in own spare time, holidays and so on).

I told her it is actually better this way, to have an early eject from bad company, than to sink in, get involved and invested just to realise its a bad place to be, but despite that, she took a bad hit. Such things sucks a lot.

(London)

View on HN

As an applicant you should try to ask your prospective employer as many questions as possible. It becomes a really good way to filter out bad companies and managers - Of course, it's easier to do if you're a senior employee and have highly sought-out skills.

A lot of times, you can spot a bad company/manager just from reading the job advert but sometimes you don't know until you actually come in and start asking questions. Good companies that have nothing to hide will generally gladly answer all your questions or at least explain to you the legal reasons about why they can't answer specific questions.

If a company kicks you out because you're asking too many questions, it's a REALLY good thing for you! (you saved yourself years of misery) This type of behaviour is actually a filter which employers use to weed out confident applicants - These kinds of employers want feeble, subservient employees who don't question the rules - They don't want the kinds of employees who will demand holidays or ask for raises.

She could have assumed it was just lazy contract writing but living by Hanlon's razor doesn't always cut your way. Some companies are evil and judging by the way they've acted to a reasonable-sounding query, this might be one of those.

I thin you were right. This is a dodged bullet.

IANAL, but, for the _California_ readers, I'm fairly certain a contract with a clause like 'losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE' will NEVER hold up in California court, assuming said projects are done with the employee's own time + materials.

...Which is also a strong reason why you should always avoid using/making/doing anything personal on your employer's laptop/equipment.

Neither would it hold up anywhere in continental Europe but I've heard some inconclusive things about UK in this regard. Well that's common law for you. As much as lawmaker is incompetent he is no competition to a brain dead judge.

Still the behaviour of the company after she raised concern clearly shows she is better off not working there.

Yeah, but it's easier (and much, much cheaper) to say "This'll never hold up in court!" than it is to actually prove that it won't hold up in court, which is what most of these companies are ultimately counting on.

> one about unlimited unpaid overtime

Am I misunderstanding something, or isn't this the definition of a salaried position?

> second one about losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE (including things not related to company's business and/or technology in own spare time, holidays and so on).

This also seems extremely standard (at least it's in every employment contract from the big tech companies), and probably exists more so to protect the company from extreme circumstances than anything else (although I am not a lawyer).

> Am I misunderstanding something, or isn't this the definition of a salaried position?

I dont know where are you coming from, but one person being able to demand unlimited amount of unpaid work from another person is called slavery, not salaried position, in my book.

> This also seems extremely standard (at least it's in every employment contract from the big tech companies), and probably exists more so to protect the company from extreme circumstances than anything else (although I am not a lawyer).

Perhaps it is standard, but I think one should NOT sign contracts that are requiring or enforcing something to what one dont want to agree, as simple as that. We're quite involved in open source projects, activities around teaching women how to program, we're thinking about creating a foundation tied to these activities... All this would be impossible or much, much, much complicated with such contract signed, and also simply stupid, if done with full awareness of what is that she'd sign.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com