Hacker News Reader

Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

Then maybe there can be a system that provides a disclaimer where they waive all ability to sue or otherwise get into a fight with you.

View on HN

If they blab their mouth on social media and it goes viral they've already done the damage before you could serve court papers. Why even bother with the risk?

Because that’s allowing risk adverse mentalities to prevent companies from innovating in their hiring processes to build a more transparent and improved culture of hiring, and a chance to differentiate themselves from competitors with a reputation of good interviewing practices?

Sure.

> Then maybe there can be a system that provides a disclaimer where they waive all ability to sue or otherwise get into a fight with you.

This ain't gonna help though, because it's not particularly useful at preventing the damage that these companies are afraid of, so it's not really going to tilt the existing balance.

I just think companies don’t nearly take anonymous social media backlash as seriously as this discussion alleges they do. Anecdotally, companies barely take customer/client complaints on social media seriously, unless it goes viral- but how would that happen in the case of giving feedback to an applicant? Hard for it to be big news unless actual discriminatory practices emerged- in which the current system already fails to protect against.

Perhaps companies are just behaving too conservatively, and there is room for interviewing platforms to improving the hiring process by giving the helpful feedback that applicants crave.

Not really worth improving the pipeline of candidates you don’t want.

This is the sad truth of it. As a candidate I greatly appreciate feedback but I know there are others who will try to paint their not getting hired as due to bias (classism, racism, sexism, etc) without any evidence. I don't blame those who have been burned and ended the practice. An accusation might as well be a conviction in some situations.

So that we can all work together to improve the hiring process. Seriously. I could get hit by car because I stopped to pick up some trash on the side of the road. But it's still a decent thing to do.

What right does someone have to sue before they’ve been hired, anyways, unless it’s on a discrimination basis (in which this case, it is clearly not)?

Here in Texas, at least, that sort of thing does not seem like something that would ever be a real legal risk. This is a right-to-work state; I figured it’s pretty hard to get sued here.

Hiring bias litigation is common and expensive in other states.

The advice you will get on HR side is because no binding arb. agreement is in place you are exposed to full litigation efforts including attorney fees.

These can involve disparate effect or implicit bias - which can be difficult to defend against.

Are you serious? Imagine the first HN headline that reads "Company X requires you to waive your ability to sue if you apply to them". Come on, man. Apply some tests to your ideas.

That's already how most EULA click-through NDAs are, and no one blinks an eye. People are just numb to legal disclaimers now. One outrage article will not go viral, and will not sink any companies.

And deal with all the blowback for yet another NDA? Plus the inevitable decision where you need to decide to enforce it and come across as even more of an asshole? For what benefit again?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com