Out of curiosity, what do you feel you gained by not signing the NDA/non-disparagement that was worth so much to you?
I can imagine answers, but I've never been in that situation. There are may be things I won't think of.
This is why I'm asking - my first instinct is take the money so I'd like to fully understand the thinking of the opposite side.
In any case thanks for replying.
Additionally, the belief in one's own moral choices and behavior is often one of the important steps in finding fulfillment in yourself. If your fulfillment is reliant on external validation, you will always be found wanting.
Don't see many pitchforks...
For me it's pretty dang high. Like on the order of 5-20 million USD in the bank. At some point I'm going to stop working. Rent and life expenses where I live currently are probably $100k a year (yes I could live on less or move, but that's part of the point).
Let's say I stop working at 65 and I live to 85. That means I need at least 2 million dollars in the bank to keep spending $100k a year and it assumes I die at 85. If I happen to live to 95 or 105 I'd be S.O.L. Also add in escalting medical expenses, inflation, other issues and 5 million in the bank is IMO the minimum I'd need to feel I could discard other money and stop worrying about it.
And that assumes I stop working at 65. If I was trying to stop earlier that would go up. I get at some I could theoretically live off the interest.
My point is, at least for me
> a certain amount of money to cover life expenses + recreation, additional money has diminishing returns.
Is generally false. It's usually part of the "if you make $75k a year, more won't make you happier" but IMO that's not true because I'm screwed if that $75k a year stops.
Also, source of that point is often misquoted. It says happiness doesn't increase with more money. But life satisfaction does increase forever with more money. Here's an article pointing out the original study did say satisfaction increased as well as a new study that says happiness increase too.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/02/07/new-study...
If I had even more money I'd angel invest. I think that would be pretty fulfilling. If I had even more money there's all kinds of projects I'd like to fund. I expect I'd be pretty proud to fund them.
It's not like we're talking about killing babies. Where' talking about signing an NDA or in my case not being 100% on board with a company's behavior in ways that are arguably ambiguous. As an example, if I had New York Times stock and was upset at their hypocrosy of complaining about ad supported companies while themselves being an ad supported company. Whether ads on NYT are good or bad is an debatable point. The point being, nothing the company who's stock I was holding was unambigously evil. But I chose my conscience over arguably trivial issues. In this particular case I think it was a mistake. If the company had been truely evil (by my definition of evil) then I'd be more okay with my decision.
By that logic we all (er, at least most of us) turned down $100mm by not throwing $1k into bitcoin at the right time...
More money has exponentially increasing returns. Other things don’t increase in intrinsic importance, being wealthy just frees one to focus on them.
If you're a minion, then you just build the volcano headquarters and the atomic missiles because, hey, it's your job. They don't pay you to think. Your job is to make your boss look good. You give 110% and think outside the box only when it's firmly inside the box of the primate dominance hierarchy you are embedded in.
Professionals, though, explicitly recognize they are part of a society. They owe something to the client/employer, but also to the public and the profession. For example, read through the preamble here: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-c...
I see myself as a professional. I sell my labor, not my ethics. So what I would have lost by selling my ability to speak out about a problem? My integrity. My independence. My freedom. $40k is a lot of money, but it wasn't worth 40 years of shutting up about anything Twitter would want me to keep quiet about.
Thank you, seriously.
Thanks also for explicitly spelling out what it means to be a professional. (duty to profession and society as well as employer, written source, summary "sell my labor not my ethics")
Why?
> The foundational qualifications of an engineer typically include a four-year bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, a master's degree in an engineering discipline plus four to six years of peer-reviewed professional practice (culminating in a project report or thesis) and passage of engineering board examinations. A professional Engineer is typically, is a person registered under an Engineering Council which is widely accepted.
Personally, I mostly refer to myself as a developer, not an engineer. Funnily, my great-grandfather came to America to work as an "engineer" in the Minnesota mines back when the standards for "engineer" were much looser. I imagine we'll have a similar process in the coming decades, where some sorts of software engineer will be licensed, and that you won't be able to call yourself by that term without getting into trouble.
For a very brief moment in time, some jurisdictions fought against the use of the title. In Canada Engineer is a protected title (like CPA) and they tried to hold Software Engineer to the same professional standards as other engineers (civil engineer, mechanical engineer, chemical engineer, etc...). This meant having a degree, working under a Professional Engineer for some period of time, then passing an exam demonstrating expertise and high ethical standards. I don't remember all the details, but I think Microsoft fought this and today Software Engineer doesn't imply anything in Canada.
If Software Engineer were a real profession, then you could be sued for malpractice and lose your ability to work in the field. It would also mean you have real power to push back against employers asking you to do illegal or unethical things. You would have personal liability and wouldn't be able to claim you were just following orders.
https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-profess...
I have never heard of anyone having to “work under a professional” for some time after taking their degree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Engineer
If you are talking about software engineer, then no you wouldn't have heard of that. You can't get a EUR ING designation as a software engineer (AFAIK).
Academic study just isn't sufficient to understand modern software development. One of the hallmarks of academia is how short-lived everything is. But many of the interesting issues in software development only become visible on long-lived projects. As a hiring manager, I consider fresh-out-of-school developers to be dangerous until proven otherwise.
I don't yet think software development is stable enough to turn it into proper engineering. But if it were, what I'd be looking for is a relatively high standard that includes both exams and a few thousand hours of supervised practical experience, similar to what they require of electricians or therapists.
I borrowed this from the way quite a few lawyers work. Its served me well and garnered quite a bit of good will over the years, but at the end of the day I do it primarily because I sleep better knowing I’m not ripping people off and taking advantage of them.
Ethics is not just a box you tick
There are other perspectives, though. Here's a starting point for one of the big categories of thinking that might lead one to turn down $40K essentially just on principle:
For what it's worth, I'm at root a consequentialist, but see virtue framings as cognitively much more tractable given both the weird feedback loops of one's own psychology and the immense computational cost of trying to predict consequences over coming decades.
I wouldn’t sign that. Less, if I’m honest, out of any sense of duty, and more to maintain leverage. If that story is worth $40k to the firm it could be worth more to me, down the road, should my past employer and I find ourselves disagreeing.
It’s leverage held in reserve, not planned for immediate exploit. If we part ways and all is hunky dory, it sits stale. But if e.g. the firm gets bought by an asshole and he frivolously pursues ex employees for dumb reasons, e.g. deciding a non-compete covers everything from finance to gardening, I have something to fight back with. (One can similarly ask why the company needs non-disparagement protection.)
Employers and former employees get in stupid tiffs all the time.
It's the "if we end up disagreeing part" that seems like blackmail. And, hey, maybe that's what they're going for! Could say "yep, I want to be able to blackmail them if I need to." But the comment I replied to wasn't that explicit.
How is it blackmail if the company is the one offering the money?
For a few million dollars for a bounded period of time, sure, disconnect yourself from the Internet for that bounded period of time. For $40k, you're just taking on unnecessary problems that you don't actually have the resources to solve.
(I was offered $0 to sign an NDA after leaving my last job. I did not sign it.)
I read sagas about people getting doxxed every day, even children. You may trust your opsec, but it only takes one slip-up to be out a large quantity of money. I wouldn't risk it.
That silence was worth a lot to Twitter.
Totally agree. These agreements make sense. Just saying that if I were shown the door, I wouldn’t sign. (Different question if I’m asked while happily employed. Would be more inclined in that case, provided it only applied through the date of signing and if it were mutual.)
Example of buying silence is $7M settlement with security guy and even that apparently did not work.
And Twitter very clearly did not give a shit about "good feelings". Otherwise they wouldn't have done it for us as surprise meetings and security guards walking us out after, with salary ending that day. If you want good feelings, the way you do it is giving people paid time to find a new job. It would also have been nice to be able to finish up my work and tidy up loose ends. E.g., I had an employee whose annual review I was in the middle of doing. She was stellar and she deserved to be properly celebrated, rather than some rando manager come in and try to guess after the fact.
$40k is a lot of money to some people, and not significant to others. To that person, being able to share the single post above might have more more value than an extra $40k in their savings account.
I get that with tech salaries 40k is practically a relocation fee, but I see those agreements as being about as binding as an EULA. I'd revel in them coming after me and can't for the life of me imagine damages past the 40k they offered unless you straight up lie.
Would they have come after me for anything I've said so far? Probably not. But probably isn't definitely. Even without signing it, I still have to measure every word against the odds I'll make somebody at Twitter mad enough to try to make an example of me. Signing would have made that much more fraught.
You're willing to sacrifice 40k to make comments on HN freely.
I'm not only willing, but would truly relish, even years fighting over some kitchen sieve of a anti-defamation contract in court. (all while the employer is forced to air out exactly what they tried to pay me off for mind you)
I'm not saying the latter approach is everyone's cup of tea, but I can definitely tell you which one I think is more likely to make an impact that hurts them...