[DennisP]

I was faced with this last year. I'd been at the acquired company for sixteen years, so most of my ideas on the side came about after I started employment. There were too many to practically list anyway.

I met with a business attorney for an hour. He said the terms were enforceable in my state; in fact, they'd taken it as far as they could without making it unenforceable. There were significant and potentially very expensive downsides for me.

In my state, employers can fire employees for any reason, so there was nothing stopping them from firing me for not signing.

I tried to negotiate, but they were inflexible. Fortunately the job market here is good, I had significant savings, and I had been thinking about taking a sabbatical anyway to develop some of those ideas. I refused to sign, they asked me for my resignation effective three months later, and I gave them a letter.

All this stuff varies by state, so meeting with an attorney in your state would be a really good idea. Mine cost $300.

[irishloop]

Sounds like $300 well spent. Too often, I think, we take legal matters into our own hands when a small investment up front could save you so much later. If we accept how many others are inexpert at technology, what makes us think we're suddenly legal experts?

[DennisP]

Yep. I read the contract very carefully myself so I could ask specific questions of the attorney. That was a big help in getting the most value for my $300. Read it like you're examining source code for bugs.

The attorney pretty much confirmed what I thought the contract meant, explained a couple provisions I didn't understand, told me what could be enforced in my state, and outlined how things could unfold if things went sour.

Something else he mentioned is that startup investors tend to be wary of these sorts of IP provisions, and often require old employers that hold these contracts to sign away any rights to relevant ideas before they'll invest.

[caseysoftware]

Please don't take this as patronizing but I think you have one of the best and most intelligent approaches I've heard on here.

As the parent notes, too often we assume we're legal experts because "it's all logic" when it's not. It supported by logic but the phrasing - like source code - is vital to the full understanding.

[karmajunkie]

+1, and a little bit more: the reason you pay for a lawyer is not so you can read what's in front of you, but to know the context in which you're reading. Case law is a huge part of jurisprudence, and just as you wouldn't expect someone who's dabbled in development to know the full context of even one framework, much less the plethora of tools and standards which shape the choices we make every day, its is pure hubris to think we can easily do the same in another field without extensive training and experience.

[dpeck]

agreed, I've pretty much decided that I don't even have any business reading a contract. Legal meanings of words and my interpretation of them could be completely different.

In reality with a legal document a common persons options are to sign it without reading and accept whatever it is, or hire a lawyer to explain it to you.

I wish it wasn't that way, but it most definitely is.

[DennisP]

In my limited experience, there was nothing about the language that had misleading definitions. What the contract said in English was what it meant. The only parts that had special legal meanings were terms that I didn't understand at all.

But reading the contract doesn't tell you, eg., what's actually enforceable in your state. The meaning of the contract might be clear but there's all sorts of context that you only get from an attorney. (Mine scoffed at one or two expansive provisions, and mentioned a few ways that poorly drafted provisions could be attacked in court if it came to that.)

By reading the contract carefully I was able to write up a list of detailed questions, and got more for my money than if I'd just said "here's a contract, tell me about it." If for some reason you won't be seeing an attorney, reading the contract and assuming the worst is way better than signing without reading.

[rmc]

> In my state, employers can fire employees for any reason, so there was nothing stopping them from firing me for not signing.

At will employment screws over us white collar, high end, knowledge worker. Here in many states in Europe, there's no at will, and if your employer is bought, then they have to give you a job on the same, or better, conditions.

At will is bad for tech workers.

[wpietri]

As a fellow tech worker, I'm fine with at-will. At least in the US, shitty bosses aren't particularly constrained by not being able to fire you; they can be shitty to you in plenty of other ways. E.g.: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2015/06/randy_henr...

I'd much rather have an honest firing than a subtle, long-term shadow war with people for whom politicking is their job.

(Note that I don't think it's as good for routinized jobs or situations with illiquid labor markets. But there I'd rather solve it with unionization than direct government regulation. US governments just don't seem to be very good at this sort of regulation, possibly because our diversity of peoples and political viewpoints means we lack a strong shared understanding of "fair" in the same way one sees in, say, France.)

[USNetizen]

I'd much rather own/operate a business in an At Will environment. If someone isn't performing, you don't have to worry about tens of thousands of dollars (or more) in legal fees to defend your decision to get rid of them. Add to that all of the lost productivity and taxes paid funding a position for someone who is wholly incapable and then having to create a year-long paper trail to back up a decision you came to as little as a month into their employment.

That is time and money that could have gone towards hiring high-skill, productive people who actually WANT to work at your company and supporting expansion (e.g. new job creation).

Contrary to your statement, Knowledge Workers fare the same in At-Will situations as they do in others because of the high levels of job demand. The demand itself motivates employers to retain them (and if they don't want to incentivize their retention, there are thousands of other companies that will).

I'm speaking, of course, as an employer who has offices in both At-Will and other states in the U.S.

[kyllo]

The term "Right to Work" doesn't mean that employment contracts are required. Right to Work is a euphemistic term for "employees cannot be required to join a labor union." Totally different issue. Many states are both "At Will" and "Right to Work." All US states implement "At Will" employment but some states have exceptions to the rule.

[santaclaus]

> Right to Work is a euphemistic term for "employees cannot be required to join a labor union."

I thought forcing someone to join a labor union as a condition of employment was illegal under Taft-Hartley across the entire U.S.? One can be required to pay agency fees to unions for contract negotiations, however.

[kyllo]

Taft-Hartley outlawed closed shops but did not outlaw union shops:

A pre-entry closed shop is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed. This is different from a post-entry closed shop (US:union shop), which is an agreement requiring all employees to join the union if they are not already members. In a union shop, the union must accept as a member any person hired by the employer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop

A union shop is a form of a union security clause under which the employer agrees to hire either labor union members or nonmembers but all non-union employees must become union members within a specified period of time or lose their jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_shop

A Right to Work law is a state law that outlaws Union Shops in that particular state as well.

[rmc]

Likewise in EU/CoE. There is a right to form and join a trade union, and that extends to not joining a trade union. However no-where in EU has "at will" employment.

[USNetizen]

Terminology has been corrected. Though, not all states are "At Will" given the severe restrictions they place on it.

[6t6t6]

The problem is who defines what is under-performing. For some employers, not performing may mean not wiling to assist to meetings at 8 pm or taking job related phone calls on weekend.

In many European countries it is possible to fire a worker who is not performing, but the employer needs to prove the reasons, and also which steps have been done in order to correct the situation before taking the decision to fire this person.

[cma]

> high levels of job demand

But then there are the normal boom/bust cycles. Tech workers were largely immune to the last bust, but that isn't historically the case.

[rmc]

> I'd much rather own/operate a business in an At Will environment.

Laws that are good for employees are usually disliked by employers.

[sago]

At will employment screws over all workers. At least white collar knowledge workers are somewhat less fungible. The ability to fire an unskilled worker is unconstrained by law or business efficiency.

The rhetoric around at will employment as being good for employees, because it makes them more flexible, is a fig leaf. It is carte blanche for exploitation.

[smitherfield]

Tech workers over here are paid about twice as much (before taxes!) as tech workers in Europe, so I'm not terribly worked up about US employment law. All those regulations aren't free, and one way or another the cost comes out of your disposable income.

[danielvinson]

Do you have a source for that? I work for a large international company with engineering teams in many countries including European and American ones, and the workers in Europe generally make a bit more than the ones over here. Small sample size, but I feel like you are comparing a small subset of workers (Developers in SF/NYC) to a large one (Developers in all of Europe).

[rmc]

I'm European, and have seen numerous anecdotal numbers of salaries in US companies, and it seems much higher than what I'd expect to get here.

[learnstats2]

I understand your point of view, but I would point out the other side of the coin.

People who are not able to give their whole lives up to their employer's demands, for any number of reasons, are less able to work in tech in the USA - they're not good value with even if they have reasonable human needs. This contributes to a very unequal culture in the industry.

(Even if people on this forum might generally benefit from that)

[rayiner]

It's almost as if people with different cultures vote to create the kind of society they want to live in. :)

[stephengillie]

At-will employment puts FTE/Salary employees on an equal footing with contractors. Which really just brings employment back down to pay, benefits, and working environment & employer culture.

You just have to recognize that nobody can truly predict the future, nobody's going to protect you in every situation, and that you have to have your own "big ball of money" to sit on in case of emergencies.

[liopleurodon]

What state is this in?