Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately I have worked with smart, nice people who would take this contract literally, are overly invested in their jobs and would be likely to take me out - even preemptive to any order from the company - if I violated my "contract".

Playing fast and loose with the words "smart" and "nice" there.

Getting taken out by an autistic hitman with a namshub installed by a cryptocurrency company IS on my 2027 bingo card.

I dont understand why you have all these requirements. A suicide pledge in a contract is unenforceable (both socially and legally), so signing it or not doesn't really matter.

> A suicide pledge in a contract is unenforceable (both socially and legally), so signing it or not doesn't really matter.

If it doesn't matter, it shouldn't be in the contract. I don't tend to have a lot of drafting power in employment contracts, but pushing back on meaningless contract provisions is a lot easier than pushing back on substantive ones.

It's at least worth getting them on the record, in writing, as 'we absolutely insist on this (bullshit) contract provision being in here, it is required for your continued employment'.

I would be extremely wary of tying a big part of my life to a company that insists on me signing an unenforceable contract.

> Also, regardless of whether I would sign, I think it's in pretty poor taste and a bright amber flag (but not quite a red flag) if an employer thinks this is a funny or acceptable thing to put into a contract.

How is this in any way NOT a red flag? In what universe is this a neutral signal about the health of an organization that manages a significant amount of capital?

> It's also in very poor taste and reeks of coercion to send out a manifesto or mandate like this on a Friday and expect people to sign or agree by Monday or lose their jobs. They likely wouldn't be able to have it reviewed by a lawyer over the weekend if they chose to do so.

In sum total, "this sounds very very bad but not necessarily a red flag". Absurd.

Yeah. Agreed. This is ALL red flags, all the way down. Might as well be cutesy anime red flags drawn onto an actual physical red flag. Suicide isn't funny and shame enforced ritual suicide for "failing" is even less hilarious, if that's possible. Reeks of sociopathy...

Of course it's a red flag? People only ever work for cryptocurrency companies in the first place because they're scammers themselves and think they can get rich while leaving suckers holding the bag. The whole thing is a red flag from the beginning so I don't know why anyone would expect otherwise.

That a wildly unhinged take, they could just work in payments or finance lol but yes it’s a red flag and with that much at stake an insane individual would “enforce” the contract.

The one group of people that you should take literally in contracts are the Ethereum / smart contract folks. Code is law is the founding principle of Etherium!

If code is law, does that imply law is not law?

No, because it wasn’t claimed that only code is law.

You wouldn’t say “Dogs are mammals. Therefore mammals are not mammals.”