NDAs just get in the way man, I want to be able to just leak all sorts of company secrets without any nagging from HR.
It’s not entirely wrong. Way back in the Next Killer App bubble, I signed a lot of NDAs only to find out there wasn’t anything worth disclosing. I think I am actually violating one of my NDAs to recount the time a guy offered me stock options to build a website that looked like Google with ads. It had a search bar, would return Google search results, and was otherwise riddled with ads. He got the idea from a porn search engine. I put on a suit and tie to meet with the guy. Didn’t have any capital, nor did he own the domain he wanted to use, and I wasn’t a web developer. But he was willing to give me 3% if I built the site for him and helped him find advertisers, because he didn’t have those, either. He was an idea man, you know.
Anyway, that’s not the norm anymore, and NDAs are perfunctory when protecting actual company information.
Sounds like a guy I worked with once. He asked me to design a webpage for him. I have zero knowledge on any of that, but he insisted on hiring me as I was apparently one of the most tech-savvy people he knew. I sat in his office for several hours cleverly messing around with PowerPoint putting images and text together. Used the programme’s internal hyperlinks to switch from one page to another. Put presentation mode on so it was full screen so he couldn’t tell I was using PowerPoint.
He put £50 in my hand at the end of it. I never heard from him again. Honestly was 4 of the most awkward hours in my life. £12+ per hour back in 2010 wasn’t a horrendous deal, and I get a neat story to tell!
edit: holy shit, I was telling my girlfriend about this and she informed me he actually got accused of fraud! Further digging on my part reveals they were actually cleared of the charges.
This is like the time I met with a coffee shop owner who said he needed marketing help. What he was doing sounded a lot closer to a cult. I didn’t see it coming. He was going to have “community hubs” in every country and he was going to change the world–it was so much more than just a coffee shop. “I could care less about the coffee shop, honestly.”
Oh.
NDAs without a hard cutoff, maybe a year or two in the future, can get bent.
Especially for artists. Holy shit, do artists get screwed by NDAs. Some people’s portfolios are fucking sparse despite years of doing art five days a week for years and years. If the business just kills the project - tough shit, it’s a secret forever.
To the point we’re still seeing people hesitant to talk about failed games from thirty years ago, even though the company is dead, and the company that bought their corpse is also dead.
There’s a non-zero chance that NDAs could use to shield bad people and/or bad companies from criticism, but often they’re just used to stop spreading info to competitors, stop spoiling stuff, etc. Not crediting someone is usually scumbaggery, but in case of VTubers, they usually get doxxed within a week, especially big names and those that used to be big previously.
An even bigger issue IMHO are NCAs.
NCAs are “slavery but with more steps” territory. You can’t quit because we own your degree now.
I had a company give me an NDA that essentially said I couldn’t work anywhere on the east coast after I quit because the had clients all over and there was a radius around each where I wasn’t allowed to work (I was young and desperate for a job so I didn’t pay enough attention to what I had signed). After I got a new job the old place came knocking. The new company’s lawyer laughed the old company out of the room when they presented it.
We need more doctrine based on argumentum ad fuuuck offff.
NDAs more often protect strategic information than some big secret.
Stuff like when they will release something, pricing, etc. It really means nothing to 99% of the planet and will mean nothing in a month, but a competitor can use the information to make counter moves.
If a company is divulging critical information with a prospective candidate, thinking an NDA is going to help them, they have more problems than trying to fill a job role.
I used to work on US military computers for drones, I quit like four years ago and the NDA still applies, so it depends. Also some NDA’s have a shorter expiration date than others.
If I’m signing an NDA for a first-time founder I expect their idea will start off with “It’s like Facebook but for…”
Genuinely did once get hired to do some design work for “Facebook but for dogs”.
They paid me money and I got to put photos of my own dogs everywhere as placeholders and look at them all day so whatever.
Dogster.com already exists
Why did i expect an actual social media site
Or failing that, take your pick of
- It’s like Uber but for…
- It’s crypto/blockchain, but applied to…
I feel conflicted on this one. On the one hand, most startups have absolutely shit ideas, no clue how to execute and will crumble into a pile of half delivered products. NDAs and non-competes are basically saying you promise not to tell anyone about the idea to “put ___ on the block chain”, or to not work for anyone working with “machine learning” for five years.
But also… It’s just asshole ragebait.
Gotta live the “ideas are cheap” stance when you know how much money some patents can be worth.
Yeah, but there’s a substantial number of people arguing that patents are over-issued, over-broad, and protection probably lasts too long - especially for software patents.
See the Apple/Samsung “scroll bounce” litigation.
However, that implies that you have a patent and getting a patent costs between $5000 and $10,000 if you’re lucky and it’s a simple patent.
I generally agree unless the idea is actually something groundbreaking, which in 99.99% of cases, it isn’t, even remotely.
When it’s actually something groundbreaking, the person having the idea should have some protection to actually get rewarded for the idea.
I’ve been in companies where tradesecrets were stolen and it can seriously fuck a company.
The execution doesn’t matter when a third party can undercut your price by 90%+.
Honestly, I agree with this.
Companies pay me to work. If they want to control my speech, i.e. tell me what I can and can’t say when I’m OUT OF WORKING HOURS, then I want a part of the company.
