Hacker News Reader

Comment by m_a_g | Hacker News Reader

Signing an NDA before the interviews is a very common practice (unfortunately)

As long as we're signing things before an interview, maybe we should be adding clauses like "I'm in this interview solely for the purpose of applying for this job" and "I have no other commercial interest in this interview."

Or, to put it another way, this is not a large-scale sustainable enterprise for a startup; even if it "succeeded", the business environment will adapt to eliminate it. Interviews are too expensive to let companies be screwing around getting paid to pitch crap at you in an "interview".

I've never seen this (though also not interviewed a ton). What are they afraid is going to leak from an interview? Presumably you're not diving into trade secrets with someone you're merely deciding whether you're going to work with?

> What are they afraid is going to leak from an interview?

Well, in this case, probably exactly what is in this article?

My favorite is when you've finished interviewing or whatever and then they ask you to sign an NDA. Haha, no.

maybe in UK, never heard of in US.

I have signed multiple NDAs for interviews in the states.

I’ve never done this in the states. It seems borderline unethical to require someone to sign a contract without any compensation.

That’s ok, thousands of other people will.

Seems weird to let leak “secrets “ during an interview that require a NDA though. Just be vague and tell them the secrets later.

And scrub whiteboards etc. every time you want to show around (or even just to the interview room) an interviewee?

...yes? If your secrets are worth an NDA, they're worth a little opsec.

I was responding to a suggestion not to use an NDA, and to 'just share secrets later'. Just pointing out that that's more involved than simply not breaking down (explicitly, in the actual interview) exactly how your middle-out compression algorithm works or whatever.

If they have secrets, yes! Don't give candidates access to secrets.

Yes, again, I was replying to the suggestion that 'oh it's easy no need for NDA, just share the secrets later if they get the job'. Point was it's not just deliberate sharing of secrets you need to avoid in that case. When candidates are asked to sign an NDA, it's probably not because they're going to be explicitly told anything sensitive.

Many years ago I interviewed at a military contractor. Every time we walked through a work area someone went ahead and announced I was coming through to ensure nobody had something that would require a clearance to see.

My current Australian client asked me to sign an NDA before doing the interview as they were busy applying for a patent.

I've done it in the US once, for a well-known tech company too. It's a bad practice but certainly present.

Google has you sign an NDA to interview. I wonder if I've just broken it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com