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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>Zhang said she turned down a $64,000 severance package from the company to avoid signing a nondisparagement agreement.

You really have to ask yourself what kind of place it is you're working for and what you're building, if a totally regular employee basically is paid hush-money to not speak about their job.

This isn't a private business any more, it's the mafia. People talk a lot about the culture of free speech and the rights of end-users, but we live in a world where a private company that builds a social media website, this isn't the NSA or anything, can stop an employee from speaking the truth.

It's time policy makers throw all of this out of the window, together with the anti-competitive non-competes that at this point affect IIRC, almost a fifth of the American workforce.

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I know someone who got extra severance conditional on non-disparagement when leaving a pretty modest Canadian tech company.

Is this a more rare event than I thought?

It's pretty rare. Never have I ever met anyone who had or would sign such an agreement. Given my income bracket, I should have by now if it was merely uncommon. Then again, maybe not admitting to the agreement is part of the agreement. Insidious.

Worked in three companies and in all of them every single fired (as was the case here) individual was offered severance. Usually it's 2 months + 2 weeks per year of work but higher severances are routinely offered if company feels person can be a problem. 64k (4-5 months of pay) is essentially go away money - not FB trying to really hush somebody. Even baseless rejected EEOC complain will cost more to resolve.

I was not talking about "severance" per se, but about a non-disparaging agreements. I would agree that severance is typical.

That being said, California, Oregon, Washington State, Georgia, getting 4-5 month's pay as severance? That doesn't even make sense from a business perspective, imo.

If you're small enough you are face to facing investors, everyone has experience with volatile employees. If you're larger, you don't care about a single player anyway. That's just my experience.

Most (if not all) severance agreements in case of firing include non-disparagement. Severance is just cost of business - HR sees volatile employee and automatically offer severance with not-sue, not-disparage agreement. Employment lawyers are $600/hour and a huge distraction.

http://www.shpclaw.com/Schwartz-Resources/severance-and-rele...

> Most (if not all) severance agreements in case of firing include non-disparagement.

I've never seen it. Employment lawyers are very happy to take cases against companies, who have money. Just like non-competes, they have been dropped from contracts over the last few decades (severability applies anyway) on the west coast.

As a personal anecdote in California, somebody I managed got 1 month of fake employment (technically employed but without access to anything) + 2 month severance after being fired after 8 months on the job without any push from me or fired employee. And he was extremely nice and non-confrontational, just could not do the job.

It’s not rare, it’s common. Especially in the world of social media where people can leave reviews, etc.

Yes, grandfather comment is overly dramatic.

What you’re describing is the status quo termination agreement that companies require you sign in exchange for a severance payout. When people don’t have first-hand knowledge of unethical and dramatically harmful behavior by the company, and often even when they do, they sign it because they want the severance. What’s unusual in this case is not only did Sophie courageously speak up internally and now publicly, she selflessly forfeited her severance payout.

> she selflessly forfeited her severance payout.

Without discrediting her desire for the greater good. It is a lot easier to turn this kind of money done when you consider compensation in these big tech companies. To most $64k sounds like a lot, for a big tech employee that could be a fraction of one stock vesting event. She worked there for over a year so she at least saw one vesting event and Facebooks stock has been explosive over last year. She very well could have net $100k or more in a single vesting event. I'm sure she has enough money to tide her over until her next job.

you write: this isn't the NSA or anything

They sort of ARE the NSA

NSA CIA are part of the fabric of Silicon Valley and especially companies like

Amazon, Google, Facebook

CONTRAST with Apple where as long as Steve Jobs was CEO Apple flat out refused to join any of the 'Patriot surveillance and stop terrorim by spying on American citizens and the entire world' coalition

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