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Comment by bowsamic | Hacker News Reader

Classic Steve Jobs move. On the absolute limit of ethics for the sake of Apple

What do you mean for the sake of Apple? This didn't benefit Apple. He screwed with this guy for months because of a mistaken idea that the guy should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy without being told, and after months of messing him about sent him back the signed contract the second he had given up. There was no benefit to Apple here. In fact he harmed Apple by limiting their music collection in the initial stages. It's also not on the limits of ethics. It's unethical.

> should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy

I have to assume you and the author (at that time) aren't familiar enough with the corporate world to realize all discussions containing privileged information (contract details that would never get a press release) are confidential by default.

Of course Apple would never think they'd have to explain this. It's a reasonable expectation for them to have.

I work in the corporate world, I have detailed confidential discussions about technical details of upcoming products and contract details. The first thing we do in those situations is we all sign NDAs. The idea that you'd do a presentation to a hundred people and expect that information to stay confidential without specifically informing them is just absurd. Which is part of the reason Jobs just screwed him around rather than doing what you're meant to do - get the person to sign an NDA and then sue them if they break it.

Pricing details in contracts are trade secrets. You don't even need an NDA to sue someone for leaking that.

They're lucky Apple found a quick remediation. They delayed signing the contract because they had to wait and see if any damage was caused. Next steps would have been renegotiating or lawsuit.

lol, if you don’t put an NDA (or otherwise make it clear it’s a trade secret and try to protect it), you lose the protection the moment you start sending that out. Including in contracts.

For anybody else reading, please disregard. Nothing is expected to be kept secret without a signature.

I don't doubt you, but my experience is different.

Every company I've worked for (mostly F500s) has had an onboarding document you sign in which you're notified that everything inside the company is confidential by default. It doesn't expire.

Most of these companies also had annual training (the usual corporate policy refresher stuff) and this was mentioned during that as well.

I've worked on some very hush-hush projects. In my experience, NDAs were for people outside the corporation...partners, vendors, etc. Everyone who was employed by the corporation was under an NDA by default. I don't think I've ever signed a subsequent NDA for something my employer was working on, because I was already under one.

And even if they didn't do all this formally...it's a reasonable expectation. I would never think I'm allowed to discuss anything that wasn't publicly announced with outsiders.

I have to assume you aren't familar with the corporate world in the slightest. This is absolutely not how it works.

Anything that is supposed to be confidential has a signature. This is because without it, the person "leaking" information can always claim ignorance.

I presume you mean "the maximum physical limit of bad ethics" rather than any particular ethical standard.

On the absolute limit of ethics? This is simply not ethical anymore...

You mean on the limits of being sued for. Coz this man had zero ethics anywhere in his life unless "being ethical" was somehow correlated with also making money

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