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Comment by Osmose | Hacker News Reader

"Stabbing you in the back" is pretty strong language for posting social media about a personal experienced at a job she no longer has at a company that will barely see any consequences from this post using a right that literally the government has granted all workers now.

Like what world do you live in that people don't complain about their old jobs such that you think it's that unacceptable?

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People can complain about old jobs, sure. But not if they explicitly make a promise not to do so, especially not if they get paid in return for that promise. Whether governments will let her get away with it or not, it's a backstab to extract cash from someone in return for a promise to be nice, and then to break it.

That explicit “promise” is a simple contact, the likes of which companies break all of the time when fiscally advantageous and legally permissible, whether against employees, former employees, or against each other. Also, VMWare isn’t even painted as the villain in this account. You are getting outraged on behalf of an entity that cares not.

Funnily enough, it would seem that VMWare historically has bigger things to worry about when it comes to the military, protests, and broken contracts:

> The Defence Information Security Agency (DISA) reversed a decision to award VMware Inc. with a $1.6 billion contract, following a protest by number of tech companies last February.

> The Pentagon’s decision to cancel its joint enterprise licensing agreement with VMware means the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was able to dismiss protests against the award made by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Citrix Systems Inc., Nutanix and Minburn Technology Group, LLC, as per the statement at this link.

https://siliconangle.com/2015/03/17/u-s-military-drops-1-6b-...

Stab in the back feels apt for signing something to get money in exchange for not saying bad things, only to go and say bad things once the OP realized there would not be consequences for that.

It depends- was that clause the linchpin of the agreement, or rather just a technicality that became obsoleted as it became unenforceable? A bit of click-through EULA.

In any case, regardless of the intentions of the author, VMWare doesn’t look particularly worse off for having this story publicized. It feels like they were caught between a rock and hard place.

This individual has shown they lack a moral compass and will happily lie and disparage anyone they want in both public and private life. Their community of friends are enablers of this negative behavior. I would not hire them.

Agreed. As to the world lived in: most people are so enthralled with money that any risk to earning more in the future is unacceptable to them, sadly. Companies then bank on that behaviour to help sweep things under the rug.

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