Isn't it great when even something as huge and life-changing as a job is subject to a contract of adhesion with no negotiation allowed? I'm sure glad to live in such a free country with great worker rights. (Sarcasm intended.)
I used to ask potential employers when I got deep into interviews with them. "Is there any way I can see all the contracts I would need to sign on my first day?" and my experience is employers are very taken aback the question. How can you possibly talk remuneration when there also is some hidden contract that is part of it that you can't see until your first day?
Here (Germany) offer letters are used to outline the general terms of an offer however the next step will then be that you’re sent a contract (some of mine have been > 10 pages) outlining a lot of relevant things such: - role (ideally even with a job description but that is rare) - place of employment (city/country) - IP assignment - length of probation - length of notice period for both sides - expectation of work travel - vacation - compensation
And a bunch of other things that I’m forgetting.
Similar to the above story, there’s always some resistance from employers to customize terms. It’s operationally much simpler for a company to have unified terms. However at every company I’ve been at I’ve been able to secure changes to the IP assignment clauses.
Of course all of this only works because these contracts are enforceable. There’s no such thing as at will employment here.
When you get the offer letter it's an outline only. Then you either accept the offer letter as it is, or walk away. Asking for the detailed contract (called 就業規則 in Japanese) will always end up losing your job offer, because you have no legal right to see the contract before you join the company.
Some companies are so hostile (and this is the norm in my experience), that even very valid questions along the line of "Do I get severance pay if I am forced to retire?" or "How do stock options work?" will end your job application process right there because you will get labeled as overzealous.
Also, Japanese law doesn't require to state in the contract the exact position that you are hired into. So you will often get hired with the job description: "engineering team member". Of course HR will tell you mealy-mouthed or mellifluously that you are a senior/principal engineer and/or a manager, but none of that will hold any legal water in a lawsuit since your contract doesn't say so.
If you ask me, Japan and the US, some of the largest economies of the world are constant labor right abusers and the UN and other nations simply turn their head when this ever gets brought up.
I just wanted to read the actual language around hours worked and overtime because it was never stated what the policy was.
Turns out you couldn’t read it without a director sitting next to you, and it was in a binder that you weren’t allowed to touch.
My conversation with the CEO:
“Why would you need to read that?”
“Because my contract says ‘in accordance with the 業務規則’ and I’d like to know what my contract is”
“Well you can ask me a question and ill tell you if it’s in there”
Glad I got off that sinking ship.
Regarding details, well, there is a list of things mandated by law to be included in the offer, they include things like salary, hours, list of additional allowances (手当), though not necessarily all of them, retirement pay and such, so you should be able to receive that information without even asking. In my, albeit not very numerous, experiences in one case I've got something called 雇用契約書兼労働条件通知書 ("Employment Contract And Notice Of Working Conditions") , which included all the details, and in the other case I've got a separate 雇用契約書 (Employment contract), which included generic things like "you work for me, I pay you for that, don't go spreading company secrets around", and 労働契約書 (Labor contract), which included all the details like salary and whatnot. I should probably note, however, that I've only asked for and received these things after we were finished with all the interviews and reached a 内定 (the employer making an internal decision to hire the worker. It's nothing official, just a word to describe the state of the person(s) responsible being okay with the idea). I just politely asked for documents to review before I make my final decision, and while I've never received 授業規則 even after asking, they happily obliged with contracts and documents related to how the company decides on employee's salaries. I think there's a lot more resistance to bother with contracts and whatnot when they don't know if you're willing to work with them in principle or not.
As for "how stock options work", well, while it's probably nice on the side of employer to entertain such a question and while it's probably reasonable to give an answer along the lines of "erm, these are stock options of this and that type, these additional conditions apply, google please?", ending the job application process right there is probably overreacting.
I also feel it's important to note that 就業規則 is not really "a detailed contract", because it's not a contract, it's more of a "Labor rules" for the company, so it does count as an internal document and not for outsiders' eyes. Obviously, the rules must conform to the law and as someone has already noted they must be easily accessible to workers, which was always the case for me. In fact I have always received a hard copy of these on my first day.
Typically employment contracts are signed and settled well before you enter the building as an employee.
I would be surprised if the OP’s anecdote regarding the Googler pulled on the 1st day is in line with reality.
Edit: apparently I’m wrong, the downvotes were deserved! I run hiring at my company and we send people all contracts at the same time that we send the offer letter. No surprise paperwork on Day 1. I’m surprised to hear other companies wait until the start date to sort out legal
(I couldn't say what fraction of my employment paperwork was handled in this way, but things like IP assignment were definitely included.)
I don't recall if I tried to figure out whether the strongly connected component that comprised the handbook was the same as "all pages on the wiki", but I was a little distressed at the time (this being one of my first jobs) that I was being asked to sign my name on something that I couldn't realistically read.
I still have email copies of the contracts which they sent in parallel. This includes General Hiring Contract & Salary and a standard NDA with California Section 2870 modification.
The benefits (to Google) of being a giant company with at-will employment.
(Normal, not right. And I started working here in the early 90s.)
Don't quit your job, move cities, etc etc without a signed contract.
I have enough experience to know absolutely nothing about me employer is guaranteed/permanent in the US.
Relevant story for the HN crowd: I worked for a small company (~250 employees). Real chill place. Six months after I start they were suddenly bought out by a huge multinational corporation. First order of business is everyone needs to sign a non-disclosure agreement and an agreement that the company owns all the code you write while employed with them, even if you do it on your own time. There were some people who were reluctant to sign, it was made extremely clear that if they didn't sign they would be unemployed.
That one didn't bother me, I only code at work anyway. What did bother me was at another employer right after I became eligible for the employer's (generous) match on my 401(k) (after 1 year employment) an email went out a few weeks later saying "Sorry, we won't be matching 401k contributions anymore."
I know a guy (very senior engineer) who negotiated that he would be working from home 3-4 days a week before taking a new job. Employer agreed. Few months later line manager notices that employee is not logged into whatever work chat they use in the middle of the day. Not habitually, once. Next day it was announced that there will be no more working from home.
But, as a matter of practicality, it's less likely that, after you've signed your contract, Google comes to you on your first day and says "I'm altering the terms of our deal, pray I don't alter it further".
This is all mostly about managing unexpected risks, and my point is that it's actually pretty common for contracts to contain/omit clauses that you really take issue with. I'm just saying it's prudent to know what you're getting yourself into before you up stakes and move cities.
It's been my experience that benefits change very regularly, sometimes significantly. For example, my current employer updates their compensation plan every year at the very least.
It's been my experience whenever the company I worked for ends up in a position where they are financially strapped benefits and work conditions change suddenly, drastically, and very frequently.
If you don't work for a big company (or even if you do) there is a good chance where you work will be acquired if you work somewhere long enough and that changes everything. I know some people I used to work with who experienced 4 acquisitions at the same job.
Penalty clauses in a non-union job in the US!??? How on earth does one get such a clause?
I've had five software jobs and four non-skilled jobs and never seen anything even approaching this sort of clause in an employment agreement, or heard of anyone ever having this sort of clause in their employment agreement, unless you're talking about like CEOs.
The only employment agreements and/or offer letters I've ever seen (from both myself and my spouse) were more-or-less "here's your starting salary and you are employed at will." In fact, the last offer letter I signed literally said something along the lines of "this offer letter is not an employment contract or a guarantee of continued employment."
I'd love to see/read these mythical supposedly "contracts" sometime to see the exact verbage. I very seriously doubt that one just gets to walk away with a big payday just because their employee changed the benefits plan. Not in the US.
So far, it hasn't been a problem.
Here, salary expectations are given in the first screening call. If they can't meet the expectation or you won't be happy with their lower offer things end there.
Interviews / code tests happen.
Offer comes over phone or email. This includes salary.
There is no signature at this stage and nothing is set in stone, its just an offer. If you accept the offer a contract is drawn up. Still nothing is certain.
Changes to the contract can happen here.
Once both parties sign. That is when you're "signed".
This happens well before your start date, usually you would stipulate the start date in the contract, so if you need to give a month's notice to your employer your new contract with a start date from a month is signed before you even hand in your notice.
There is a 3 month trial period on all employment where they can walk without much repercussions, but this is more of a concession on your part because employment is very well protected.
Any weird IP bullshit or other conditions of employment that need signing would be in the contract you signed on for.
They can't bait and switch like what you're discussing. Any NDA's are discussed up front and at least their existence is disclosed in the contract giving you a chance to see them early.
Basically you can't put new conditions of employment on people after the fact, and if you did it wouldn't be valid in court anyway, contract law trumps contract content here no matter what.
Things don't have to work exactly like this, you might want to leverage the offer for a higher pay at your current job, counter offering is commonplace here but I wouldn't ever accept one. They'll be looking for your replacement as soon as you accept.
It's like if you bought a car, signed and paid, and discovered there is an extra agreement to actually use it, and that one says any ideas you have while driving belong to BMW.
Negative liberty: no one can get in my way of doing whatever I want! Google has the right to rootkit my life and I have the right to ignore it and work at a bodega because all tech giants eventually agreed this is a good practice for them
Positive liberty: corporations can't infringe on my right to a private life and must protect my liberty to be a free unconstrained being
I don't know about you but I'd much prefer a world where everyone is guaranteed certain freedoms than one where big companies can use positive liberty arguments to exploit people in new and novel ways.
We are in agreement about which type is better, so this is solely a quibble about the names.
My partner always corrects me and I think they have them wrong :P at least we agree on which one is better too
My rough guesses of what you could do:
- unionize your shop / commit to working at unionized shops (addresses the power imbalance between individual employees and the employer by treating employees as a group)
- use the power you have as an employee to drive change at your workplace, if you're one of those employees who is well-treated by your employer and doesn't need to unionize
- advocate for stronger labor protections in law / vote for lawmakers who will create them
- advocate for existing labor/contract protections to be interpreted the way you want (e.g. advocate or vote for judges who share that interpretation, donate to or create non-profits who can file amicus briefs or write law review articles advocating for this interpretation)
If this is what's at the top of the HN discussions on a barely-related article, it's pretty clear to me that tech workers, a relatively powerful group, feel pretty strongly about this issue. So why don't we do something about it?
You'll be fired for donating to that PAC if it's actually becoming controversial and effective. Fortunately, unions have the same status in campaign contribution laws as PACs, so your best bet to do some lobbying as a worker is to join a union and use it as a PAC.
My father spent the better part of a decade trying to hire his replacement because the union wage was so attrociously below market for his labour.
And then the politics, favouritism, bullying and abuse that occurs under a union; because the shop steward et al formed a social clique to get themselves and their buddies the best hours and best positions.
My two siblings went to work in unions and now regail me with similar tales.
No, I'm happy working for small and independent game studios and negotiating for myself, thanks. I happily donate the money to political organizations that would otherwsie be used to pay union dues.
I don't doubt that a great many unions are horrible. For a great many reasons, unions are often, but not always, structured horribly with badly mismatched incentives, almost no democracy, and poor accountability. There are reasons for this, that can and have been addressed.
You're simply never going to be able to outcompete your employer in legalized bribery. It won't happen.
Also, if the PACs you're talking about ever get actually influential, there will be just as much politics involved. And you still haven't adresses the most important point, which is that your employer can retaliate against you for doing so without any problem.
In any case, unions can be and often are better, and can be and indeed often are hundreds of time more effective than what you're describing ever can be.
I don't need to outcompete on donations; I need to collectively pool my cash with other like-minded individuals in order to pay for political activity that will coerce and convince legislators. Those with the most money don't necessarily win, but money is the key to gaining access. I've had my representative read to Parliament an exerpt of a letter that I wrote; there was nary a need for money to get that response, only access.
My employers have never been interested in what I do with my money, and I suspect they would be _far_ more interested if I were to begin organizing a union.
The solution to employee abuse is legislation and regulation, not yet another layer of political bureaucracy.
Now :
>How could they not be? The ability to advocate for yourself has been given to someone else, over something as intimately personal and important as the labour you undertake for the majority of your waking hours.
You can structure a union in such a way that hierarchy is very weak and involvement is direct. The reasons why this often isn't the case are interesting, and you should read about them.
The root if the issue is this : your ability to advocate for yourself is almost nil. You need to get together with your fellow workers to have any impact. By doing so, you will lose some of the flexibility in your advocacy, but will receive greatly increased power.
Literally the only politically effective lobbying group for the average person is a union. There have been many studies done about it.
I have second hand experience with four unions, and first hand experience with two. All but one were great, and the one that wasn't was clearly deficient for obvious structural and social reasons thah could be addressed.
In any case, you're free to continue wasting your money. You will be contributing to PACs that will eventually get bureucratized, ossified, ostracized, and turned against you, and because you plan on aligning yourself with extremely narrow organizations that lack the power to withold labour, they will collapse and crash.
Not only that, but success in such politics is a question of money and connections. The entire tech sector, totalling tens of trillions of dollars in valuation, is better connected than you are, will be able to vastly outspend you, and will do so in a much more efficient way than you can via a heterogenous network of PACs.
I see unions having enormous utility for those living where there is effectively one employer, and who have no real market for their labour. That's where unions shine.
In any case, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.
This made me laugh. If you have to fix the union, then really all you've done is worsen your situation.
"And now you have two problems."
- Refuse to work for a company that treats privacy as a commodity that can be bought and sold.
No one has to work at Google. Anyone who gets an offer from them has ample opportunity to work elsewhere.
It's a recognition that few employer-employee relationship approaches a negotiation between equals.
It just seems that invading their employees privacy is table stakes for them.
However, trying to negotiate the legal terms of a contract with a FAANG is highly unlikely to succeed, since HR is not authorized to change anything and Legal doesn't give a shit about you.
Sounds like both parties had a hard line on what they would accept
Why is this difficult? Why complain about something that is 100% in your control?
Employer that has thousands of employees don't have the time to amend contracts on per employee basis. Seems fair to me.
Google has HIPA-level access for personal data, even some medical data about people, security is tight. They don't want some righteous asshat arguing about contract agreements.
Saying that Google would snoop your personal phone (which doesn't have your Google work account) as a Google employee needs some hard facts to back that up.
Since you don't know the legal details of the contract, how about we stop speculating conspiracy theories? Please keep the discussion factual and reasonable.
My claim is that it's possible for them, not that they are necessarily doing it. The technology is there.
My advice is: if you have any sort of fight with any big tech corp that gets the high levels involved, stay away from their products as far as you can.
Microsoft at least has spied on a private account's data to resolve some IP theft. https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/microsoft-admits-spying-on...
Another prior art: it's well documented that nation states do such stuff all the time. Group of diplomats from country A visits country B to discuss a big treaty with them. They stay over at the Hotel and discuss their strategy. The Hotel is bugged so country B gets an advantage during the negotiations.
An interesting labor law challenge is "one side repeatedly making assertions that don't accord with contract, and I rely on those assertions, or the other side should be punished for making statements that suggest bad faith."
Second, their protest is laudable. But their decision was consciously: "the legal department of this $xxx billion company (that spends $xx million maintaining this employment contract template) will bend to my will, or I will {quit OR relent}". If they'd quit? Job well done. If they'd relent? Then why try? You're screaming into a void, and if you didn't recognize this prior to redlining, you have a bad trait for an employee.
All scenarios point to a competent red-liner achieving their desired outcome -- an ethical win in whatever case. Only an incompetent/shortsighted/kneejerk/low-critical-thinking red-liner would achieve an undesired outcome, because they didn't consider the game before playing.
Me: "Hey manager, can I make an expense report for this work phone?" No matter the response, I'm ok with it, because I make Google money, and that's policy. I should work towards becoming management if I want that to change. But I probably have better things to do than such a trivial disagreement.
I wish corporations were less psychopathic, too, but this is not the hill I'd die on. Or, I'd be damn sure ready to die if I redlined as a "nice to meet you" first act.
Also Google is very special in that their employees are extremely sophisticated and curious, so they need ~complete~ control of any electronics that access their networks.
They'll stop looking pretty quick.
Only partially joking.
Straw man. If a small change like this costs a company any more than a thousand bucks, they are Doing it Wrong.
You might argue that $1k is also a lot to expect, but consider that the company has likely already spent north of $25k (and sometimes a lot more than that) on the recruiting process that brought them this new employee. If they're going to throw that away to avoid an internal approval process that costs another thousand, that sounds like a bad financial decision to me.
And if your second paragraph is correct, then "Google HR lies to you on your first day as policy - if you ask certain questions" seems to be the only logical conclusion.
It's been some time since "Do no evil" meant anything there...
One party here is altering the verbal agreement, and expecting the other party to accept without additional negotiation.
I'm careful about that.
Would that be a deal breaker even at a dream job, yes.
Practically speaking, I think giving The Guardian or some pro-union think tank/lobbyist a copy of internal corporate policies would move the needle a lot more than a personal stand, but the personal stand is admirable nonetheless. Currently my financial freedom supersedes that level of moral freedom and agency.
Although it does seem like Googlers organize for their own comfort; they don't seem to bother doing it for their users though.
And what does Google (and most companies) do as a "nice to meet you" first act? Present you with adhesion contracts that you must sign with barely enough time to go over them. Nice.
This isn't a solution, but a covert work-around.
Also, super important context: Of all the companies in the world, which ones would have employees, say, designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun, or...? Google, certainly. So I get Google's position, as long as you're allowed a personal phone free of corporate intrusions.
Exfiltrating data is comically trivial, it wouldn't be any fun...
Also, I don't consider an employer having total visibility into its devices to be a power-trip. The onus is on the employee to keep their personal stuff out if they don't want it getting swept up. Of all companies, even Google couldn't design machine learning or quarantining sufficient to wall off personal data from company data inside someone's phone during their forensic prevention and investigation. So the legal department sure isn't going to promise they can unbake the cake that is your voluntarily mixed-use device.
That's fair, and I agree with that (as long as it's company-owned hardware and not personal hardware under a BYOD program). But I personally do not want to (and currently do not) work for a company that trusts me so little that it needs to spy on every activity I do on the hardware they give me to do my job.
I get that some people are fine with that, and that's ok, but I'm not, and I don't think I'm alone in this.
The power inbalance you speak of is why unions are probably needed.
You were a special snowflake in the 90s/early 2000s now you are a cog.