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Comment by mattvanhorn | Hacker News Reader

Tell them to subpoena you - then the choice to testify is not yours any more. You'll have to. But you can tell future employers that you were forced, if you'd like to.

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This is smart. Guilty as sin or not, testifying against an employer seems risky for one's career. You want to be able to explain to future employers what happened in a manner that takes personal character assessment out of the equation: somebody broke the law and you got a subpoena.

EDIT: I've worked at some shops that were "cultish" and would look at testifying without a subpoena as not being part of the team. Fucked up, but organizations are often so. You need to do the right thing in the smartest way possible.

> Fucked up, but organizations are often so.

You can choose not to be a part of these organizations.

You can certainly aspire to that. Some companies are really good at hiding their true colors.

Mortgage, kids... Sometimes you need a paycheck.

Right, which is why trying to hide the fact you testified might be a bad idea... If someone won't hire you because you testified against a criminal employer... You probably don't want to work for them. Since, as you said, companies hide their true colors, this way you can know before being hired.

On the other hand, many times hiring managers are just looking for a reason to discard your resume to narrow down the talent pool. Anything negative gets you tossed. They see this. Maybe it's a good sign, maybe it's a bad sign. Either way it's something out of the ordinary that will take more time to evaluate. Better just toss the resume. There's still another stack of 100 candidates to go through...

if they're looking you up on the internet they've gone past finding a reason to chunk your resume.

Doing the right thing is rarely the most convenient option, that's why it's considered notable.

This is what they mean by 'your house is not an asset'

Mortgages are not inherently bad. It's what you take the mortgage for is the bad decision.

Example:

Good:

Having a mortgage for a legal duplex (2 dwellings) and renting the other half out, while you live in one.

Bad:

Getting a house that's one big sink hole of cash and having more bedrooms/lawn/what have you.

You can be employed to build someone else's dreams. However there are other options available to you that don't involve being a rat.

My reading of “your house is not an asset” is “Robert Kiyosaki apparently failed Introduction to Accounting because he still doesn’t know the definitions of basic accounting terms.” (Except in very rare cases, like when the verdict against you for the neighbor kid drowning in your pool is more than your house will sell for.)

I could have just as easily used "rent" instead of "mortgage". Spare me the political grandstanding.

PayPal comes to mind.

Not if their former employees won't testify against them?

I think OP's concern is that he'll lose out on even getting an interview. Basically, employers will get his resume, like what they see, google him then decide to pass

I agree with this approach.

If you do decide to testify, I would strongly recommend finding someone completely unrelated to the case who can coach you on how to be a witness. Not what to say, but how to say it. My only experience testifying was in a small criminal trial, but the advice I was given was to keep my answers short, factual and free of emotion.

Some companies will immediately discount you if you testify against a former employer. For those that look closely at the case, though, you do not want to come across as someone testifying because they bear a grudge. A calm, passive, "just the facts" attitude will be the best for your career.

There are two potential downsides to this:

* You may not be called to testify because you've made yourself a hassle, which solves your career problem but implicates you morally.

* Converting your testimony from freely-provided to compelled might have logistical implications. I've been compelled to testify before, and it was a nightmare for me. I'd have been happier if I could have told the trial participants "I'm busy this week, fuck off".

I prefer this over to the "search within yourself" answer.

Perfect, unless they're threatening to prosecute you as well if you don't cooperate.

Otherwise, explain the situation to the prosecutor and detective and ask to be subpoenaed. They'd likely be happy to comply.

There's no prosecutor. It's a civil suit.

In that case, it's a plaintiff.

My mistake :)

Excellent advice. Also ask if they can subpoena you and depose you rather than have you testify in court.

Yup, and they're likely to go the deposition unless he's a "star witness" they rather have for the dog & pony show in court.

This is the best answer here. Takes the blame off of you by mandating your compliance and testimony. Always just tell the truth - no one can fault you for that. If future employers have a problem with you testifying to what you saw, truthfully, then you don't want to work for someone like that anyway.

Will future employers care that he was subpoenaed? Or will they just see the headline?

Any employer large enough to have a legal department understands a subpoena.

Doesn't mean the hiring manager or individual HR drone does, though.

Yep, I did this once, I was also kinda hoping not wanting to testify will signal the lawyers my testimony won't be that great for them, but they didn't give up. Eventually I didn't have to testify because a deal had been reached while I was bored to death waiting for my turn. I did get a nice little compensation check for my wasted half day, ordered by the judge, which was cool.

If you want to testify, asking them to subpoena you seems smart. I can't see how a subpoena could make testifying look worse, and yes, it just might alleviate some employers' concerns. But your first step seems to be deciding, for yourself, if testifying is the right thing to do. What if someone asks, "Did you ask to be subpoenaed?" Most people won't go that deep, but wouldn't you still like to feel comfortable answering that? Do you want to let unproven fears about this somewhat crazy but very diverse industry sway your decision? What will you think when you look back on this in 5 years?

Of course you should never ask to be subpoenaed. You inform the Plaintiff that "I would never would willingly testify about all the illegal things I saw at former employer, you'd have to subpoena me to get me to talk!". You can then answer that question honestly with "No, I told them I'd never talk, but they subpoenaed me and forced me to."

Don't even tell them to. Wait til they do. Otherwise, if you then tell people you were forced, you will be lying.

Why would that be lying? Being forced to do something doesn't imply it was against your will. It simply means you didn't have any other choice.

It belies the fact that OP prompted the lawyers to subpoena him.

If you state "I won't cooperate unless I am ordered to by a court." then you did not prompt them for subpoena. The door is also still open for them to explain why they won't get a court order in which case you might still reconsider.

Could you explain what exactly you see as the difference between "I won't cooperate unless you subpoena me" and "I would like to cooperate, but I don't want this to affect my future job prospects, so please subpoena me"? The OP is prompting the subpoena in either case, as far as I can tell. In either case, the other side can choose whether or not to subpoena him/her. I'm not sure I see any difference between the two...

I think the first OOP said something like "Tell them to subpoena you".

The first option could be legitimately said by someone who doesn't want to talk or be subpoenaed. It's the difference in occupy style protesters saying "They'll have to come arrest us." and "Please come arrest us.". Though in both scenarios there may be some that get the desired end result, the first option places the responsibility for the end result on the third party.

This!

Why were they (singular) subpoenaed, though? It's definitely possible that a prospective future employer would consider a subpoenaed person a person who talks too much.

Why?

I think the logic goes that out of everyone at this company -- probably dozens or hundreds since OP says it's well known locally -- OP was the one that the plaintiff knew about and called up. Probably because the OP is a big-mouthed trouble maker and everyone knew it. Or something.

Whereas everyone else at the company were good team-players and kept their mouth shut and head down, so the plaintiff wasn't sure if s/he could count on their testimony or if they even knew anything.

Again, just explaining how someone might fear the logic would go. Not saying anyone does or should actually think like this.

Exactly this.

Good idea.

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