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Comment by gwillen | Hacker News Reader

I was hired right out of school by Google in 2007. I was absolutely presented with various contract documents on day 1 to sign. In fact, I was not even given paper copies of them; I was supposed to click my agreement in an intranet signing tool.

(I couldn't say what fraction of my employment paperwork was handled in this way, but things like IP assignment were definitely included.)

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At one of my first jobs, one of the things I had to agree to was having read "the employee handbook".. but it was not a pdf or other document, it was part of an internal wiki or something, with in-links and out-links all over the place.

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.

There's always a price to pay for all the innovation that happens in SV. It's just that it ends up being paid by the people rather than by the companies. Companies can afford to pay for the most exclusive of bodyguards, the government.

When I was hired by Google in 2010, I was sent physical papers to sign and return. I distinctly remember this because Google mailedthe papers to my old address from my first application rather than my 2010 address so I had to drive to my family member's house to get papers on a Friday and send them back by Monday.

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.

That’s quite reminiscent of the user experience Google’s customers go through with the TOS

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