So, I understand why they were hesitant to respond and didn't want to comment on it.
I didn't say that. I said that I disagree with the way he framed his questions.
The implication made here is that the writer believes that gigster is going to "do something awful".
The over all tone of the writing is offensive rather than defensive. In other words, the email is not written like he wants questions answered, but rather that he'd like to jump to conclusions.
The responses to his inquiries leave much to be desired as well.
I completely understand why he objected and I would have objected as well, but I would have done so in a more appropriate way.
It's also why when people address me or my employer the way he did, I just don't engage at all.
(2) Again, as I said before, I don't agree with those terms. That doesn't mean I'd be an ass hole about it. To my benefit, I'd politely negotiate and have a much higher likelihood of negotiating the contract to my liking.
(3) If someone posed the same concerns to me in a polite and professional manner, I would go out of my way to correct the contract (hey boss person, this contract might be bad for developers!). On the other hand, if someone is an ass hole, they're going to an "ass hole" response.
Try it. Try being polite in a situation where you'd like to be an ass hole. You're going to be surprised at the end result.
Edit: wording
That's a completely bullshit attack and putting words into his mouth. Gigster has the potentional to possibly to do something awful in the future due to being a company made of different people, with there being no guarantee that the people you're talking to one day are still there the next. And trust is only possible between mutual human beings, not between one human and an amorphous ever-changing conglomerate of humans.
He made things into a me vs you situation when. Had he formed his objections, those two individuals responding to his inquiries probably would have made an actual effort to resolve the issues.
This is not a simple fact. It is a truth.
> He made things into a me vs you situation
No. They did. By not including the mirror of that clause indemnifying him against them, the contract was the first to state "you could do awful things", so they have no standing whatsoever to complain about anything.
Also note: If the company opens with an attack, and when called upon it doesn't apologize and fix, then that points to maaaaaaany other problems in the company and getting it fixed is a minor priority. It is in fact only a proxy towards figuring out if the company as it is, is deserving of any kind of trust.
e: I'd also like to point you towards this: http://stimmyabby.tumblr.com/post/115216522824/sometimes-peo...
""
Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
""
My response to you: "You're being overly aggressive with your attacks. That's not nice. You could have asked a question if you had one, but you're not even asking me a question, this is just an aggressive rethorical question. It's clear that you don't even want clarification. That's not nice and it's not an appropriate way to negotiate a contract"
Would that make any sense to you?
In what other context does it make sense to talk about the right to sue someone other than "doing something awful"? These are not the rules for the office's Secret Santa, this is a legal contract which details what would happen precisely if either party "does something awful"
People don't sue each other because they think they are doing wonderful things, they sue them when they think they've done "something awful".
If I were to sign that "contract", I would certainly send the other party a written "signing statement" that interprets all possibly ambiguous clauses in my favor, and mentions that I received no valuable consideration for signing it. If you can't tell me what the contract means, I'll tell you what I thought it meant, and that will be what you can enforce. If you won't pay a lawyer to answer my questions before the fact, you can certainly pay one to determine the implications of my letter for you after the fact.
If I were a judge (and I'm not even a lawyer, but I can still role-play), refusing to even answer questions about the contract demonstrates a lack of equity, and I'd take that as potential grounds to dismiss any claims against the person who asked them, that may have been based upon the document they signed, which they were completely unable to negotiate, and likely received no valuable consideration for. If someone asks, "does this mean you can claim ownership over X?", you don't answer definitively, and then you later claim in court that you own X, that's bullshit, pure and simple. If the other party did not understand that to be the case at the time they signed, it is unenforceable.
If I were the defendant, I think I would also try to paint that refusal as an unwillingness to pay for some professional legal counsel at an appropriate time, rather than asking a judge to clean up their mess long after the fact. Everyone hates it when they get snubbed by someone, and then that person later comes asking for a favor. Referring legal questions to legal counsel is simply a cost of doing business. If you can't pay that cost, and try to shift it to the public legal system, how do you justify the rest of your business?
Them hiring you counts as consideration.
I have been an "at will" employee for too long to believe that acquiring that status with anyone is worth anything at all. I was once "hired" by TekSystems in Madison, Wisconsin, to work at American Family Insurance. I filled out all the paperwork, got the coffee mug and pen, and was ready to go. Then, the Sunday evening before going to work, I got a call.... Don't bother showing up tomorrow.
So the next day, instead of starting a new job, I called up my American Family Insurance agent and cancelled my policies. That wasn't even the first time that I was "hired" by a company and then never actually got any work assignments or pay from them.
"Hiring" doesn't mean jack squat. It just means that the company has decided that it may, in the future, offer you a work assignment without requiring additional contract negotiations, pay you for it, and then report your tax info on a W-2 instead of a 1099. The essential relationship is the exchange of labor for pay. Anything I can do as an employee, I can also do as an independent contractor, and any "employment benefit" can be exchanged for an adjustment in the contract rate. So what is the "hiring" part worth? $0.
It is the height of arrogance to think that being able to say "I am an employee at Company X" is worth more than one square of low-grade single-ply toilet paper. And it is the height of stupidity to claim that you have to be an employee to exchange labor for cash.
If the entire legal profession chooses to hold a different opinion, and enforces it upon one another via their cartel, that is their prerogative. It will not affect my opinions upon what I would consider to be fair or just. Sharing my opinion may well put you on the losing side of a lawsuit, but I don't judge my value as a person according to my victories and defeats in court, and neither should anyone else.
My advice would simply be to not do business with Gigster--not as an employee, and not as a customer. They have at least one asshole in their upper management, and it only takes one to ruin a company. And further, I would advise re-examining one's previous opinions on collective bargaining organizations. If software professionals had a real labor cartel, it could blacklist companies that try stuff like this.
Your statement on consideration, for instance, is incorrect. As is the leading statement in the post I replied to. Neither of those were constructed as statements of opinion.
In any event, I hope that readers recognize that there is a lot of misinformation in this thread and seek out proper experienced counsel to provide accurate answers to their questions.
The courts system may seek out justice whenever it is possible to do so, but in my anecdotal experience, and in my exposure from [likely biased] sources, it declines to make the attempt, and seeks out simple expedience instead.
In cases where a jury may be employed to decide the outcome, the public opinion on how justice should work is relevant. If you are ever offered a potentially abusive contract, by all means consult a lawyer if you intend to proceed with it. But if you're ever on a jury hearing a contract dispute case, for the love of justice, please refuse to enforce a fundamentally unfair contract, where the party that drafted it refused to negotiate--or even explain--any of its terms.
That's how you select people who either don't bother reading contracts or too afraid to question a company policy in fear of not getting a job.
Both behaviors are not what you would expect from a good and self-respecting developer.
Contracts are negotiations, if you are unwilling to negotiate your side of the contract YOU are the handful... and probably worth not working with.
Can developers negotiate the terms of this contract? I was concerned about some of the terms and how they'd affect my other projects."