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Comment by sib | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure that the agreement that Google employees sign (a "contract") when hired reflects exactly that. At least at did when I joined (I left > 3 years ago, speaking here only for myself...)

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Is it legal (or moral) for an employer to keep you from being a board member of a dog rescue or a glove repair company without review?

The obvious answer is that "obvious lines" aren't at all obvious at the scale of Google.

Googlers are well paid, and that pay reflects this.

People said the same thing about non-compete agreements.

Sorry, not buying that’s for anyone’s good.

I don't understand your point.

What I'm saying is that it might be "obvious" that it's ok to volunteer for a dog rescue group.

Is it equally as ok to volunteer to raise money for a dog rescue group operating in Gaza?

What about other charities operating in Gaza? What about in Israeli occupied territories?

> I don't understand your point.

Then you don’t know the history of the non-compete agreement in the tech industry.

For decades, people were wringing their hands and holding themselves back from living well because they couldn’t possibly work for another software company after Google, Microsoft, whomever - because the contract stated they couldn’t work for competitors.

Well, then States showed up and said “that’s not even legal”, and people stopped handwringing.

But before, it looked very much like this thread.

If I was working for a dentist, none of your questions would be viable (let alone reasonable) for the employer to be asking.

California has had a ban on noncompetes since the gold rush.

and yet this is all very recent:

1.) https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30843644

2.) https://eppscoulson.com/google-got-slapped/

3.) https://www.lcwlegal.com/news/ab-1076-and-sb-699-codify-cali...

That's political speech, and specifically protected in California outside of work. If you fire your employee for political activities outside of work, you still have to pay them, because they're going to sue you for lost wages, and win.

Another way to frame that question is: Should we remove the right for people to enter into such contracts?

"Right" is a pretty dubious way of framing it when basically every company works this way. You don't really have any choice in the matter. Passing a law about this wouldn't be removing any rights of individuals any more than we "removed" their right to enter a contract for pay lower than minimum wage or with unsafe working conditions.

A more fair way of phrasing it would be to say that we should remove the right of companies to require it.

If you wanted you could also require companies to make this an option in the contract, which would it clear how much they are actually willing to pay for restricting peoples freedom outside of work in this way and gives employees the option of deciding if that tradeoff is worth it for them. I think that companies would not be willing to pay all that much for this if they couldn't just force it on everyone.

Legally, yes. I mean it still depends on a lot of things but mostly at will employment contracts will have clauses about such things. You will have to get approval from legal before you can get on a board of even a dog rescue or a glove repair company. A practical consideration is simple like if you are a google exec and you are on board of a dog rescue company and that company gets hit with allgeations that you are just shooting all the dogs and selling their meat to some foreign nation. News will cover it as "Google Exec on Board of Evil Dog Rescue Company" so you extend that repuation risk to Google as well since you are actively employed there. Obviously an extereme example but that's the kind of logic they think of.

Morals imo often have nothing to do with law, but fairness does.

> if you are a google exec

But that’s not who is being discussed. Why create a new topic?

If a low-level employee is part of a rescue accused of shooting all of the dogs, that’s just another day.

> News will cover it as "Google Exec on Board of Evil Dog Rescue Company" so you extend that repuation risk to Google as well since you are actively employed there

No problem with a standard morality clause in the contract, so they can pull the plug when you embarrass them.

I do have a problem with the idea that I need to check in with my employer every time I take a shit in my personal life.

Its not a new topic, the same applies for any employee as well. And no that's not just another day from the pov of google. That example was too extreme but even for minor things that can be a security concern etc if they are in active positions like that.

Also we are not talking about pooping? Why change the topic?

I like your shooting all of the dogs example.

That’s why I went with it - yes, a one-of-thousands engineer (or janitor, for that matter) from Google who also headed or even founded a dog shelter that shot all of the dogs is non-news, as far as Google and their legal team are concerned.

Same as an employee’s “pooping”.

Enforce or enact a morality clause, or explicitly pay me not to do things - beyond that, my business after hours is mine.

The answer is not that it matters, but as a matter of financial and legal controls they need to know and approve. Do they care? They probably are delighted, but also want to get all the paperwork set up to avoid problems.

The space this comes from is the legal undue influence side where they need to give notice to shareholders about potential conflicts of interest, and it needs to be in the form of having a clear positive audit trail that they have told people to follow a clear policy with no grey area so that any deviation is an accident not willful failure to get people to tell them.

In California, no. Under Labor Code section 96(k), you generally cannot be disciplined or fired for engaging in legal outside of work activities. If they do, you can sue for lost wages.

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