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Comment by bibabaloo | Hacker News Reader

> It appears a few other companies are doing this too, including Kraken (https://www.kraken.com/)

Kraken is still silly for going after them, IMO, but the Kraken case isn't as cut and dry. The person who had left the review on Kraken had accepted a large severance package that was conditional on signing a NDA.

I think the bad PR Kraken got for going after them wasn't worth it (especially as the review wasn't really even that bad) but the ex-employee was also not really in the right there either, having violated their NDA.

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Who cares if they violated an NDA? NDAs are supposed to protect company secrets, not prevent criticism.

It’s a contractual agreement to not air dirty laundry in exchange for money. If you want to bitch about the company publicly, don’t accept a payment not to.

Unfortunately, this is not true. An NDA is not a free pass to being able to censor whatever you want, even if the person signing the NDA took a fee, or received payment.

"NDAs do not prohibit people from reporting suspected corrupt conduct to an appropriate authority. The Crime and Corruption Act 2001 and the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2010 provide safeguards that allow people who have signed an NDA to report suspected wrongdoing, including corrupt conduct, maladministration and the misuse of public resources.

Under no circumstances do they oblige people who have signed them to maintain secrecy about suspected wrongdoing. You can still report suspected wrongdoing despite signing an NDA."

[1] https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Publicat...

I don't know that I'd consider Glassdoor "an appropriate authority" to be reporting corrupt or illegal conduct to.

It can protect whatever the contract says. Usually, severance packages include a nondisparagement clause. I highly recommend requesting that they amend it to say "mutual nondisparagement" and re-word the terms to apply to both the employer and employee. That way you get paid to shut up, but they are also forced to abstain from making potentially disparaging statements about you. It's a good ask.

Being a shitty employer isn't the sort of thing an NDA is made for. It's not a trade secret that they treat their employees poorly.

Idk... a lot of companies "secret sauce" seems to be squeezing the life and passion out of employees to make as much money as they can. Sounds like a trade secret they'd need to protect.

NDAs are sometimes not in the public interest and should be violated in those cases.

NDAs have got nothing to do with public interest whatsoever.

If you disagree with what the NDA covers, don't sign the NDA.

NDAs exist for a reason. If they don’t serve public interest, why allow them to exist?

Contracts between two parties exist to serve the interest of those parties.

Sometimes NDAs purport to cover things that NDAs cannot legally cover.

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