Comment by macksd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macksd | Hacker News Reader

"indemnify" does not actually mean "we will sue you" so I feel you need to add some more context to what you're saying - it sounds like you've been caught in a bad situation, and while I'm very sympathetic I suspect the real lesson to share with others isn't what indemnify means.

When I hear "indemnify" in a Silicon Valley-esque context, it usually means to insure a client against lawsuits from third parties. For example, I've worked for a company the indemnified our clients against lawsuits claiming that our open source project infringed on any trademarks or patents or other intellectual property issues. Meaning that if someone went after our clients for such an issue with our software, we would deal with the financial consequences.

That's a fair point, I was simplifying/exaggerating for effect.

What I wanted to flag was that if you transition from a FTE in your country's legal framework to a contractor in order to work remotely one might not be familiar with the term.

The way I interpreted it is as follows:

"If you mess up and our users or other parties begin a lawsuit against us then you're fully liable for all our costs and there is no limit on how much we may sue you/charge you for".

Which is more technically exact but coming from a FTE background effectively the same. Since bugs are unavoidable in software it's a terrifying clause to have in a contract.

Edit: I luckily wasn't caught by this but realised after a bug related to payment processing I had the clause in my contract and was able to get it removed. I was just horrified that my brain filled in "yeah from context that kind of sounds like a liability waiver" when it meant the opposite.

Oh that's interesting. I'm very curious if you're able to share the actual wording of the clause?

I don't want to post anything too identifiable on my throwaway but I'll post a modified excerpt:

"[you will] indemnify the company from [...] all claims, damages, liability, settlement, attorneys’ fees and expenses [from] any breach of [the contract] or any other action or inaction [you did]"

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