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Comment by an_opabinia | Hacker News Reader

It is utterly insane to me how confused people are in the rest of this thread. There are people getting paid like $200,000 a year, and they can't be bothered to pay a lawyer $3,000 to read their employment contract once and explain any of this to them?

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What's the point of a $3000 contract review if the employer's response will be "Not changing it, sign or walk."

Well, it helps you decide whether to sign, or to walk, right?

But who would pay $3K for a contract review??

...someone whom Google is about to make a millionaire?

Employment contracts are fairly uniform, and just not that complicated. A simple contract review is not expensive. One or two hours, a few hundred dollars per -- if you're feeling fancy.

Special cases are special. But most cases are not special.

What we know is one person said that's what happened.

I certainly know of people who have suggested and gotten changes to agreements like this. But you need to be professional about it.

What do you mean by professional here? My guess is some mix of emotional detachment, serious tone and use of the right jargon and vocabulary?

Put bluntly, being a PITA when it wasn't at all necessary, as corp-issued devices are common. If I were a manager hiring this guy and heard that he kicked back the standard contract everyone else has for a pointless reason that had a workaround everyone already knows about, I'd have ended it right there because it casts their judgment in a poor light and I could see them causing me or my department issues in the future.

"Poor culture fit".

This is not an answer to the above thread.

"What do you mean by professional here?", the answer to which is "not being a PITA for no reason". Seems pretty direct to me.

The comment I replied to claimed that being professional about requesting a change to your contract can get you the requested change approved, implying that being unprofessional will get you kicked out. My question was, how to be professional in the way that will get your change more likely to be accepted. If you claim that you can not get the change approved in any way, then you are not answering me, but contradicting the comment I was replying to. Sorry if breaking it down like this seems condescending.

No offense taken. My point here is that this entire process of "changing the contract" was unnecessary on its face, and everyone involved knew it. The professional thing to do would have been to not spend the cycles even pursuing it.

It's like asking what the best way to write a lisp in INTERCAL would be. The best way is to not do it.

The thing is, from many sources I keep hearing that the suggested unchangability of terms and pay is just a negotiation tactic. They will come to you with printed documents, with policies that things totally cannot be changed, it's like that in the system, there is just no way. Then in many cases magically there are suddenly ways to change all those things after some more negotiation. You obviously need a strong position for this, good alternative offers etc, but you don't have to be Michael Jordan for the above story to happen.

A lot more things are open to negotiation than some people imagine. Even including buying a fridge at your local chain store or similar. Not every time, and not to everyone who merely says "I want".

I'd get a lawyer to advise on the text and the change, make sure it really means what you think it does. And talk to them about your concerns, explain why you want the change. Make it clear you are open to other reasonable solutions.

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