Comment On Confusingly Confidential

My wife worked for a small (family owned) company who, supposedly, wanted to improve themselves.
They distributed to all employees a SURVEY.
It was a crooked photocopy with numerous questions phrased as:
"Do you feel COMPANY respects your abilities?"
"What is the most important goal COMPANY demonstrates"

I think if they can not take the time to (slightly) CUSTOMIZE the survey, they are not serious.
As it turned out NONE of the negative comments from any employee was taken to heart. The whole thing was ignored.

We have a contractor that is being phased out that is going to become a consultant.

Heaven help them all.

Sounds like they went to Rent-A-Lawyer for the final draft of the NDA.

Well, the guy who I quoted got deleted before I noticed, making my last comment utterly out of context.

In any case, I've never run into such an obvious lack of care for legal matters, most places I've been to have been almost over the top with it.

Alex,
Please don't backmouth Rent A Coder. I have been able to "fill the gap" between jobs and am proud to be among the top 1% on the site.
Of course, the competition is VERY tough because there are many who can provide 80 hours worth of work for $50.

Cyrus:

We have a contractor that is being phased out that is going to become a consultant.

Heaven help them all.

My motto:

Those who can, Do
Those who can't, Sell
Those who can't sell, Consult

In any case, I've never run into such an obvious lack of care for legal matters, most places I've been to have been almost over the top with it.

In situations like this you almost wonder if you should go ahead and sign it. It's so obviously bad it couldn't be enforced.

Anyone looking to go so this cheaply they obviously think their idea is gold while back in the real world it's the implementation that has value.

3. i agee and acknowledge that i will not backup_copies/database_copies/copies_of_files will be taking place of I understand that the site will under fedral or intranational of copy write law has no database backups limited to not including copie of files and with databse of from the site

And that's what it sounds like when English gets kicked in the face.

Backmouth?

Niiiice.

I think BADMOUTHING Rent A Coder is certainly warranted, you said yourself: "Of course, the competition is VERY tough because there are many who can provide 80 hours worth of work for $50."
That has to speak for the quality of work.

They speak the English as she is goodly spocken.

coderPlease:

"...80 hours worth of work for $50."
That has to speak for the quality of work.

I think it speaks more to where you live.

In order to get a PS2 dev-station, I had to sign an NDA with Sony which had language along the lines of:

"[Name] is warned and agrees that if any term of this agreement is broken, Sony will take any action it deems necessary, and that financial reparation to Sony may not be sufficient"


Not having any first-born children at that time, I agreed...

Captcha: Smile. Somehow fitting...

It sounds like they got that last line in the oontract from the lolcats website.

im in ur contracts steelin ur sekretz...

OneMHz:

3. i agee and acknowledge that i will not backup_copies/database_copies/copies_of_files will be taking place of I understand that the site will under fedral or intranational of copy write law has no database backups limited to not including copie of files and with databse of from the site

And that's what it sounds like when English gets kicked in the face.

There's Triple-negative at its finest form.

That NDS should have been on a wooden table. I doubt it's legally binding otherwise.
WTF!

Simon:

"[Name] is warned and agrees that if any term of this agreement is broken, Sony will take any action it deems necessary, and that financial reparation to Sony may not be sufficient"

That sounds pretty damn scary. I once had to sign a NDS that included something along the lines of

"Consequences include, but are not limited to: Cancelation of service, financial reparation of all damage incurred, bodily harm and all consequences named in ...[blahblah]"

Needless to say, I was very carefull, I like my legs.

I've never had to sign an NDA. They just don't tell anything.

Russ makes an interesting point. I wonder what would happen if a brave soul did sign that gobbledegookish NDA, did whatever s/he wanted, and then was taken to court for violations of gibberish...

Who wants to be the sitting judge on that case? :-O

Cyrus:

We have a contractor that is being phased out that is going to become a consultant.

Heaven help them all.

Naa, I have no fear that your company will hire him back and put him in charge because he will then be "The Consultant." I feel for you, really I do, LOLOMGWTFBBQ!

NDA's aren't as bad as non competes... if you wanna talk about ridiculous you should see some of those I've been asked to sign in the past.

I'd love to share them, but the accompanying NDA makes that impossible.

Ryan:

NDA's aren't as bad as non competes... if you wanna talk about ridiculous you should see some of those I've been asked to sign in the past.

I'd love to share them, but the accompanying NDA makes that impossible.

Truth.

Honestly if a company offers you a non compete and not a godly sum of money (say 50% over the going rate) throw the non compete back at them. There's nothing worse than signing one of those, and then you leave the company and realize you can't even do the job you know how.

Ryan:

NDA's aren't as bad as non competes... if you wanna talk about ridiculous you should see some of those I've been asked to sign in the past.

I'd love to share them, but the accompanying NDA makes that impossible.

Only if you agreed to it.

Ryan:

NDA's aren't as bad as non competes... if you wanna talk about ridiculous you should see some of those I've been asked to sign in the past.

I'd love to share them, but the accompanying NDA makes that impossible.

Yeah there are some Non-competes I refused to sign without a contract stating that they would continue to pay me for 5 years after leaving the company. Because that's how long I'd be out of work to honor it. Needless to say, they either drop it or I didn't work there; usually the later as there was always some fool willing to just sign it and get a paycheck.

I love a big bowl of copypasta in the mornings.

Rentacoder (guru, elance, etc) are capitalism in its purest form. You are competing in a world wide pool of talent. I do it from Canada and am just now hiring a couple of new graduates to take on the easier work. I'm up in the top 3% on that site and would be higher if I didn't take my repeat customers outside (their fees are pretty steep but its nice to have escrow with someone you don't know).

There are a whole lot of really smart Eastern Europeans that are willing to work for US$50 a day. If you've got a comfy job writing vanilla VB/SQL/Windows/whatever, I'd be looking over my shoulder if I were you. (Or, I'd be farming my job out and golfing every day).

However, if you offer unique value, then you can get enough $500/day jobs to make a comfortable living. Sometimes, being able to put together two coherent sentences in English is enough to justify the extra in the mind of the customer.

FredSaw:

coderPlease:

"...80 hours worth of work for $50."
That has to speak for the quality of work.

I think it speaks more to where you live.

I don't know, they could be cobbler gnomes. Not much call for cobblers, these days, and $50 would feed a family of cobbler gnomes for two weeks.

"...to leverage their collective synergy with a quality-driven approach that focuses on delivering key objectives."

Whatever the hell that means...

Captcha: pinball, which I'd rather play than work.

Kinglink:

Ryan:

NDA's aren't as bad as non competes... if you wanna talk about ridiculous you should see some of those I've been asked to sign in the past.

I'd love to share them, but the accompanying NDA makes that impossible.

Truth.

Honestly if a company offers you a non compete and not a godly sum of money (say 50% over the going rate) throw the non compete back at them. There's nothing worse than signing one of those, and then you leave the company and realize you can't even do the job you know how.

At least here in California, non-compete clauses have almost no legal standing. Every company makes you sign one, but no one can really enforce it unless it is in a very very narrow way. If you were the memory bus architect at AMD and then became the memory bus architect at Intel, you'd see a lawsuit (and it would probably be thrown out). If you're not worth the price of a lawsuit (like you and I), you certainly have nothing to fear. As long as you are not disclosing confidential information to your new employer, your previous employer cannot interfere with your ability to make a living.

3. i agee and acknowledge that i will not backup_copies/database_copies/copies_of_files will be taking place of I understand that the site will under fedral or intranational of copy write law has no database backups limited to not including copie of files and with databse of from the site

I like that they're taking the initiative to make their legal documents easier to understand than the typical legalese. Do you know if they're still taking on freelancers if they promise not to databse copies of files backup?

Appropriate for a lolcode development house...

Allen, Allan, or Alan? ;-)

Ed. Note: Fixed! Shows me for changing the submitter's pseudonym name from Alan to Allen halfway through.

I once worked at a small "full service" Web agency for a guy that insisted on writing all business documents and client communication himself, despite being quite obviously dyslexic. He also made use of the "copy and paste from everywhere but never proofread" method. Throw in the fact that he often emailed clients and employees from the tiny, auto-completing keyboard of his Blackberry and we ended up with many examples that could match today's WTF.

You're lucky - we have people here who provide $50 worth of work in 80 hours...

I was going to harp on them for misspelling "federal", but then I realized that federal and "intranational" mean the same thing.

3. i agee and acknowledge that i will not backup_copies/database_copies/copies_of_files will be taking place of I understand that the site will under fedral or intranational of copy write law has no database backups limited to not including copie of files and with databse of from the site

I've read this a few times, not sure what why want someone to write some copy, but are they trying to say that they will never back up their database? I can't copies_of_files, so does that mean once I create a file, it stays on that disk, in that folder forever?

Or perhaps all of their work is done in stone and chisel?

ParkinT:

Alex,
Please don't backmouth Rent A Coder. I have been able to "fill the gap" between jobs and am proud to be among the top 1% on the site.
Of course, the competition is VERY tough because there are many who can provide 80 hours worth of work for $50.

If you reread his description, he badmouths it from the contractor's point of view, since any causual browse sure makes it looks like programmers prostituting their skills for peanuts and demanding, flighty clients wanting the moon for the change in their pockets. Sounds like a great place if it's the only thing standing between you and a reposession/foreclosure, or you're in school looking for spare change, but at least normal software sweatshops have a minimum wage.

ParkinT:

Alex,
Please don't backmouth Rent A Coder. I have been able to "fill the gap" between jobs and am proud to be among the top 1% on the site.
Of course, the competition is VERY tough because there are many who can provide 80 hours worth of work for $50.

Proud of doing lazy student's homework and effectively contributing to more future WTF's? Good job!

Merus:

I don't know, they could be cobbler gnomes. Not much call for cobblers, these days, and $50 would feed a family of cobbler gnomes for two weeks.

And think how many underpants it would buy.

I can back that up - but $50 is an exaggeration. Where I live (SE Asia) the average monthly wage for a programmer is around $500 a month, so 80 hours would be $250. But, I guess if you lived in a mud hut somewhere in Afghanistan...

Hello there,

I just like to throw in my thoughts about the only 'original' part of the NDA: i guess it's not. They put a sentence through an automatic translator to get it from any language to English. Usually that kind of smooth talking is what comes out of it. Then they pasted it from the textbox into the text file. That's why it looks selfmade.
Maybe it was Spanish before- try to retranslate it ;)

I'm one of those Eastern Europeans and very happy about the opportunity that RAC gives. Don't get me wrong, I'm not starving, there are lot of IT companies that fight right now for guys like me in my country. Average salary is about $75-100/day for senior coder, i'm making about $50 at RAC. So why I am doing it? I like the freedom of choosing and like working from home. I don't want all my life to be part of corporate bullshit and want to do what I like. That is simple for me, so give the work to guys like us and enjoy your golfing :)

In a company where I worked as a contractor or consultant or whatever-name-you-prefer, they decided to offer me a contract since it was cheaper for them and I'd get more money. All fine, except for the addendum to my contract. It contained both the NDA and "Non competition" clause.

I refused to sign that "Non competition" clause and luckily my manager understood. He spoke to HR and they told me that I could ignore the addendum - hence I never signed an NDA :)

Ofcourse in many cases, even withouth an NDA, selling sensitive company information is illegal.

Allen or Alan??????!1

The real wtf is that some company is drafing NDAs to the same literary standard as that now acheived at the WTF website!

Capcha: digdug

Reminds me - login to Digg, post a controversial opinion, wait, check the scores. Now go in anonymously and check the scores again. Tada! They've magically changed. Web 2.0 goes to s**t when sites sell out. Maybe users should rap with the advertisers directly instead of wasting effort trying to persuade moneygrabbing ego-maniacs to stop f**king up their own sites.

I don't think variant spellings of Allan are really a big deal. You know its not the real name anyway because these are anonymised, and you know its talking about the same person.

RAC isn't only for cheap code, though ... a few months ago I posted a project there (plugin for a popular open source system) because I was a bit busy and didn't want to spend time learning a new language and a new API just for one task. The cheapest bid I got was asking $500/day, and estimating the job would take 2-3 months. At those kind of prices, I decided I could afford a few hours to read the API docs (the completed code was 17 lines).


And I just glanced at that NDA again, and only just realised what the term "limited to but not including" must mean. So ... does that render that entire clause meaningless?

Angel:

And I just glanced at that NDA again, and only just realised what the term "limited to but not including" must mean. So ... does that render that entire clause meaningless?

I recall (my memory gets ECC errors, so be warned) that there's a thing in general contract practice that bad wording should be resolved to the benefit of the party who didn't write the contract. If that's right, this line of bilge would mean you'd own the company. :-)

probably to a seven year old kid.

Simon:

"[Name] is warned and agrees that if any term of this agreement is broken, Sony will take any action it deems necessary, and that financial reparation to Sony may not be sufficient"

Wow. seems to me "any action" opens up a lot of possibilities. If you disappoint them in some way, they could (for example):

- Require 7 years of indentured servitude
- Punch you in the nose
- Repossess your car
- Burn down your house
- "Date" your girlfriend
- Kick your dog

[quote user="Russ"][quote] It's so obviously bad it couldn't be enforced. [/quote]

I did that once and it didn't blow up in my face.

Had been working the classical young programmer, startup company 60-90 hour weeks for pocket lint and loving it. We'd been through things like having to code in shifts due to more warm bodies than working terminals and we were still working in stackable chairs at folding tables.

Boss's brother comes sauntering into the bullpen and hands out the new NDA. My buddy, Ed, and I immediately begin reading. Boss's brother blows a gasket - he wanted us to *sign* it, not *read* it!

Ed and I looked at each other, then looked at him as if he were a side dish we hadn't ordered, and returned to our reading. We pretty much shared a brain back then. Anyway, we concluded that there were so many self-contradictory clauses and nonsense grammatical misconstructions that it was meaningless so we signed it and went back to coding.

Turns out they were scrounging for VC to make payroll and needed the NDA for "due diligence". Later I let myself be put throught the diligence wringer and developed a deeper appreciation for this little incident.

This was the same boss's brother who thought it was hillarious to step inside the bullpen door and begin a conversation, then casually wriggle his shoulder on the light switch. In Houston, thunderstorm-and-above-ground-elecrical-distribution-capital-of-the-free-world, in the era of small Unix machines and no small UPSs. Barrel of laughs.

sas:

Simon:

"[Name] is warned and agrees that if any term of this agreement is broken, Sony will take any action it deems necessary, and that financial reparation to Sony may not be sufficient"

Wow. seems to me "any action" opens up a lot of possibilities. If you disappoint them in some way, they could (for example):

- Require 7 years of indentured servitude
- Punch you in the nose
- Repossess your car
- Burn down your house
- "Date" your girlfriend
- Kick your dog

That's typical of the legal overkill that appears in far too many 'just sign this' wavers.

I routinely piss people off by (a) insisting on reading every word before signing it, (b) requesting changes where the provisions are vague or otherwise unacceptable, and (c) running it by my lawyer if I have any concerns.

Usually, the person who has asked me to sign it is astonished and annoyed that I want to read it and, after about two minutes of fidgeting, starts summarizing the contents for me and telling me how routine and inconsequential the document is. This even happened when I leased an apartment!

My thinking is that if it's legally important enough that they require my signature, it's legally important enough for me to make sure I'm satisfied with its conditions.

And my CAPTCHA has absolutely no relevance to the subject at hand.