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Comment by slymon99 | Hacker News Reader

literally no big tech employer is going to allow you to add clauses to your employment contract

Then you tech employee are not big enough. Of course they can do this. Goes to HR, Hiring Manager, HM approves sends back to HR, HR sends to legal, HM pings because legal is slow, bam it's done. Everything can be done between humans.

It can be done. As in, the systems won't spontaneously combust if people try to do this.

But the number of people who can pull this off is unimaginably small. Even for highly desirable hires the immediate response is going to be "we don't do custom contracts, end of story."

Goes to HR, HR says "are you kidding me?", informs HM that candidate did not accept the offer, hires different candidate

Goes to HR who thinks about executive relocation packages for a moment, then looks again at what salary band the applicant was in and how much extra they're asking for expenses and informs HM that candidate did not accept the offer, hires different candidate

Goes to HR, HR forwards to HM, HM says "wow, this candidate sounds like an absolute nightmare to manage", hires different candidate

Goes to HR, HR forwards to HM, HM approves and sends back to HR, legal says "no, I don't care how good the candidate is, this provision is too messy". A lucky candidate might at least get "take it or leave it" with the original contract at this stage

Goes to HR, HR forwards to HM, HM approves and sends back to HR, legal is slow so HM pings legal who might have carefully considered precedents with executive relocation but is annoyed to be put on the spot and says no with some cautionary tales about employees who think they're lawyers instead. Another candidate is hired...

All of these scenarios are more likely for most positions than the sequence of events you've described. Humans are good at doing things you don't want them to do too! And if you're in the category of employees who are so special the company will rewrite their standard employment terms just for you, your probably not in the category of employees who risk financial hardship from being made redundant before they start

Tech employers have their own relocation clauses usually that have the same wording.

Literally they will if tech workers unionize, which has its own baggage and list of disadvantages for everyone but if tech companies get in a bad habit of treating employees poorly that’s exactly what will happen.

Perhaps so. But until that happens, I can't stick it in an employment contract.

And also, unions don't exist to give workers the ability to stick arbitrary clauses in employment contracts, they exist to try to lobby for better standard terms for union members. And relocation packages for new employees are a very long way down a union members' list of concerns, since people tend to join the union after they've relocated...

No! A union explicitly means a random employee will lose the ability to add or remove any clause from their contract as the Union will negotiate that. That doesn't mean the Union wouldn't negotiate a better contract then the employee would on their own but you absolutely lose that power in almost all Union setups.

There's a lesson here: such employers near-exclusively hire cogs who are supposed to fit in place. Many might find it useful to ask about such a clause as a sort of "canary" test.

Then it can just as well be called ToS, instead.

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