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Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

Sorry if it's a bit off topic but are you required by your employer to tell us you work from them and whether your opinion represents them or not? I read such disclaimers a lot about people working in your company, but extremely rarely for any other company.

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Another tech giant engineer here. All too often random opinionated comments get taken way out of context and misconstrued as something pertaining to the company they work for. Separate from any NDA concerns, no one wants to have some reporter quoting them as "Google insiders reveal targeting of Republicans". I can't speak for Google employees, but I certainly don't have to preface anything with "this is my own opinion", but I certainly won't say anything that implies that I'm voicing some stance or opinion of my employer.

Google has some wording in our contract thst says we are required to put a disclaimer when we're posting publicly, I don't remember the exact wording, but I always include it on any topic that is even tangentially related to the company.

This is actually a lot better than previous companies. My employee contract when I was at Cisco, basically said I couldn't talk about anything Cisco related on the internet without sign off from upper management or PR or something.

HN is more defensive about some companies than others. The F and G of FAANG mostly.

Edit: Even mentioning the rule to someone who asked can bring out the haters.

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