Advice from an old farmer: Avoid signing anything.
I just started saying, "If you are in need of my services, and require me to sign an NDA, you must cover the legal fees necessary for my choice of lawyer to review it."
Depending on where you're from, being aware of your local intellectual property laws and the like should not take too much effort in my opinion. Whenever I receive an offer/a contract/etc I take a lot of red pen to it and send it back with my comments. Most companies have no problem with this, the ones that do are good to avoid anyway.
I've had some success with, "Okay, well what can we talk about without the NDA?"
NDAs are hard; there are good reasons for them, but they are too-easily proffered and too-often signed.
Where possible, they are far more humane if they have a reasonable end-date.
At the end of the day, these agreements (and non-competes/non-poaching clauses), among well-intentioned people, can boil down to the spirit of Stuart Freedman's request [1] that Gerry Garvey memorialize an oath: "I swear that I will not screw you unnecessarily."
These agreements, however, are a bulwark against the ill-intentioned and malevolent.
I find it odd that a project to "standardize the NDA" doesn't let me view the template anywhere on the website directly, without giving them personal information
I prefer iagree@reallymymail.com, much more convincing - Mailinator alias domain, for those cases where you get "Thanks! We've sent the details to your email." If they block the submission for it, I know that we can't ever do business.
I thought NDAs were already pretty much standardized. If I need one, my lawyer has one made for all 50 states that is just a fill-in-the-blanks document.
I spent quite a while looking for a link from which to git-clone and never found one.
It is advertised as We’ve created a crowd-sourced, open-source standard NDA that companies can adopt as their own.
The desire to trademark the name makes sense, so that "oneNDA" can mean something, but to reap the true benefit of the crowd, CC-BY-SA would be a much better fit than the present CC-BY-ND, no?
Is it their business model that they charge for derivatives? I find it weird that there is no bigger adoption of open source in legal documents. I find 'pull requests' on our contracts always interesting.
I wonder how it even works? A contract, to be binding, must have 'value received' as I understand it. What value does the corporation offer? Am I being paid to interview? No? Then there is no contract.
Aren't most reciprocal? So they can't disclose info about you that you reveal, just like you can't disclose info they reveal. As a non-lawyer lay person that seems like it would be enough.
Before you know it you'll have to sign 3 legal contracts before an offer and 10 more after, then when you quit cause you found a better job they'll sue you saying you aren't allowed to work anywhere else.
by and between __[YOUR LEGAL NAME]__, government ID __________,
address _____________ (the “Receiving Party”), and _________ Inc
having its registered office at ________________________ (the “Disclosing Party”).
I have of my own free accord elected to undergo the procedure known as Severance.
I give consent to severe my memories between my work life and my personal life.
I acknowledge that once the procedure is complete,
I'll be unable to access my personal memories whilst at the severed floor.
Nor will I retain work memories when I return home at the end of the day.
I make these statements freely.
--[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEQP4VVuyrY