Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

> Around 2009 or 2010, the company decided to try to pull a fast one on some of us. They said that our original NDA somehow hadn't gotten signed (what?), and that we needed to re-sign it...Sure enough, they delivered, and sent me the original NDA. Note: they didn't send me AN original NDA they were using circa 2006 when I started. They sent me THE original NDA, complete with my signature from the day I started! Yes!

> So then I started reading along, doing my best to do a 'diff' in wetware, and found that they had actually added some clauses. One of them amounted to 'taint' for your personal devices. Basically, if you signed in to your corp gmail from a device, they claimed the right to audit it at any point in the future.

This kind of psychotic behavior is one reason I'll never work at a megacorp. I'm sure some smaller companies do it too, but it seems less common, and they won't have as many lawyers on retainer just waiting for the chance to justify their salary by pursuing it.

And if I ever did find myself at a company that tried to pull something like this, I'd probably quit on the spot. I won't work in an environment where I'm having to constantly watch my back.

What I don’t understand about this is they were most likely an at-will employee. So the company could have just said “new policy, sign it”.

I had an employer do this - I was working there a few years, owner came in and said “we’re doing background checks, fill this out and sign it”. I asked what happened if something came back on it, and he said that I’d be fired.

Google employees are sort of known for being willing to make stands on moral and ethical convictions. As well as advertising itself as a company that welcomes that type of person, paying as much over the local median as they do likely means many employees can afford to lose their job and have at least a few months worth of living expenses saved up. Combined, these mean Google employees are probably very likely to make a stink about something if you trigger those traits, IMO.

Sometimes, how you say it is as or more important than what you say. Giving benign plausible explanations for red flag behavior is expected from big corporations. This isn't their first rodeo, or at least not for the people they've staffed that deal with this.

I don't think that's true anymore. Google employees value their careers higher than anything else, otherwise they wouldn't put up with all the bullshit. Just working for Google itself is a huge red flag in their personalities.

> Google employees are sort of known for being willing to make stands on moral and ethical convictions.

Lol what?

Compare with almost any working class work-place with a union, and you will be surprised what 'willing to make stands' looks like.

The thing about collective bargaining is that it's collective and a strategy to help yourself, and even when it's a stand to help some other union, it's to help strengthen unions in general, which helps your own Union, and those your own bargaining power.

Oh, and it's all done under a group to make help avoid consequences.

All sane choices to make, but not exactly what I meant to convey by taking a stand on moral or ethical convictions. I more meant being willing to deal with the consequences when you don't really have enough power to force that change. I wasn't trying to paint Google employees as overly noble, just somewhat that and also priveleged and naive. And of course that's just my perception from the outside.

Maybe it's different where you are - but here in the UK working-class unions do often take stands on moral and political issues outside their own interests.

A major example is the massive action they took against South African apartheid in the 1980s - a political issue many thousands of miles from their interests.

https://www.aamarchives.org/who-was-involved/trade-unionists...

Many students' unions vote to ban newspapers they don't like from campus, and things like that as well.

Google employees aren't even remotely near that kind of practical stand yet.

I think those were fired long ago from all FAANG.

Sorry, I am not a native English speaker. Is this what you call "sarcasm" ?

I can confirm based on my experience that smaller companies do it this too. They may not have many lawyers on retainer but being small, they can (threaten to) walk you out immediately with no consequences, cut-and-paste irrelevant passages from other companies in the new NDA, and other assorted unnecessary nonsense.

A couple of days ago I was talking with my wife about events in Afghanistan, and saying how life is going to get a lot worse for women and girls under the Taliban.

She replied, "yes, but everyone has their oppressors"*, to which I quipped, "yes, ours is HR".

----

* Some context here. My wife is Māori. For North Americans, think "First Nations". Oppressors? We got 'em. Most of us are them.

Imagine Taliban HR.... Thats gotta be some dark shit. Making sure everyone is in line and following instructions... :)

> . Oppressors? We got 'em. Most of us are them.

Nope, at best you are the partial descendents of an oppressor. As of course, are almost every Maori.

Guilt is not inherited. Stop loathing yourself.

I wasn't talking about history. Inheritance has nothing to do with it.

In the present day, Māori have lower incomes, poorer access to housing and so poorer health, and they are discriminated against by health professionals when they do present. Māori have less access to finance and are discriminated against for jobs, and their children by primary school teachers. Racism: we has it.

As far as I can tell the same is true for First Nations people.

> Racism: we has it.

Ok, I'll bite…

Yet all those affluent, successful Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Koreans, Arabs, and Indians somehow get a free pass from the local racists?

For racism to be the ONLY reason, the Pakeha (Europeans) would have to have somehow come together at some secret congress in the past and agreed to ONLY discriminate against the Maori (and Pacific Islanders) - and then secretly pass this pact down generations and induct new European immigrants into the pact.

All the while intermarrying with the oppressed at an increasing rate and deifying them in All Black jerseys?

How else do you explain that multiple groups of non-European folk find NZ (filled with racists according to you) to be a venerable paradise, yet the only community that is armed with 1) its own dedicated government department, 2. dedicated cabinet minister, 3. reserved parliament seats, 3. privileged access to land and sea resources, 4. its own courts, and 5. drowning in public funding cannot compete with the children of immigrant shopkeepers?

It really is a primary school analysis.

Or - unspeakable alternative b) - there are other reasons for the disparity other than clan members with a kiwi accent?

But, that said, you are fortunate enough to be born in a time and place where simplistic, progressive analyses that accuse entire population groups of racist crimes are now considered acceptable in polite society - so go for it. Mate.

Don't just sign the last page. Initial every page. Always.

This has always been required for the mega-contracts I've had to sign, which have sometimes spanned hundreds of pages. Not only initial each page, but to have the pages cascaded so there's initials running over the margin of consecutive pages - this was required.

> if you signed in to your corp gmail from a device, they claimed the right to audit it at any point in the future.

Ooops I dropped it.

Boating accident.

Corp trip, so please refund

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