I don't agree in the slightest. If anything, developers who ask questions are the ones you want most. One of the worst traits in a developer is the tendency to say yes to everything.
Besides that, you're endangering the contractness of your contract if the other party cannot negotiate any of its terms, and indicates any confusion over just what it is he or she may be agreeing to--especially if they express their confusion in a document that can later be produced in court.
If I were to sign that "contract", I would certainly send the other party a written "signing statement" that interprets all possibly ambiguous clauses in my favor, and mentions that I received no valuable consideration for signing it. If you can't tell me what the contract means, I'll tell you what I thought it meant, and that will be what you can enforce. If you won't pay a lawyer to answer my questions before the fact, you can certainly pay one to determine the implications of my letter for you after the fact.
If I were a judge (and I'm not even a lawyer, but I can still role-play), refusing to even answer questions about the contract demonstrates a lack of equity, and I'd take that as potential grounds to dismiss any claims against the person who asked them, that may have been based upon the document they signed, which they were completely unable to negotiate, and likely received no valuable consideration for. If someone asks, "does this mean you can claim ownership over X?", you don't answer definitively, and then you later claim in court that you own X, that's bullshit, pure and simple. If the other party did not understand that to be the case at the time they signed, it is unenforceable.
If I were the defendant, I think I would also try to paint that refusal as an unwillingness to pay for some professional legal counsel at an appropriate time, rather than asking a judge to clean up their mess long after the fact. Everyone hates it when they get snubbed by someone, and then that person later comes asking for a favor. Referring legal questions to legal counsel is simply a cost of doing business. If you can't pay that cost, and try to shift it to the public legal system, how do you justify the rest of your business?
With respect, this advice is tremendously dangerous. The existence of a helpful theory of the case does not provide you with the protections you seem to believe it does.
With respect, it was not advice, as I am not a lawyer. It is my opinion.
If the entire legal profession chooses to hold a different opinion, and enforces it upon one another via their cartel, that is their prerogative. It will not affect my opinions upon what I would consider to be fair or just. Sharing my opinion may well put you on the losing side of a lawsuit, but I don't judge my value as a person according to my victories and defeats in court, and neither should anyone else.
My advice would simply be to not do business with Gigster--not as an employee, and not as a customer. They have at least one asshole in their upper management, and it only takes one to ruin a company. And further, I would advise re-examining one's previous opinions on collective bargaining organizations. If software professionals had a real labor cartel, it could blacklist companies that try stuff like this.
I doubt you have ill intentions in mind. The idea that one's personal conception of 'fair' and 'just' is sufficient to espouse how the justice system should work is common, but often misleading, as it is in this case.
Your statement on consideration, for instance, is incorrect. As is the leading statement in the post I replied to. Neither of those were constructed as statements of opinion.
In any event, I hope that readers recognize that there is a lot of misinformation in this thread and seek out proper experienced counsel to provide accurate answers to their questions.
Please do not equate the current legal system with a justice system. The system has to be based on law, and not justice, because everyone may have a different opinion on what is just and fair.
The courts system may seek out justice whenever it is possible to do so, but in my anecdotal experience, and in my exposure from [likely biased] sources, it declines to make the attempt, and seeks out simple expedience instead.
In cases where a jury may be employed to decide the outcome, the public opinion on how justice should work is relevant. If you are ever offered a potentially abusive contract, by all means consult a lawyer if you intend to proceed with it. But if you're ever on a jury hearing a contract dispute case, for the love of justice, please refuse to enforce a fundamentally unfair contract, where the party that drafted it refused to negotiate--or even explain--any of its terms.
I have been an "at will" employee for too long to believe that acquiring that status with anyone is worth anything at all. I was once "hired" by TekSystems in Madison, Wisconsin, to work at American Family Insurance. I filled out all the paperwork, got the coffee mug and pen, and was ready to go. Then, the Sunday evening before going to work, I got a call.... Don't bother showing up tomorrow.
So the next day, instead of starting a new job, I called up my American Family Insurance agent and cancelled my policies. That wasn't even the first time that I was "hired" by a company and then never actually got any work assignments or pay from them.
"Hiring" doesn't mean jack squat. It just means that the company has decided that it may, in the future, offer you a work assignment without requiring additional contract negotiations, pay you for it, and then report your tax info on a W-2 instead of a 1099. The essential relationship is the exchange of labor for pay. Anything I can do as an employee, I can also do as an independent contractor, and any "employment benefit" can be exchanged for an adjustment in the contract rate. So what is the "hiring" part worth? $0.
It is the height of arrogance to think that being able to say "I am an employee at Company X" is worth more than one square of low-grade single-ply toilet paper. And it is the height of stupidity to claim that you have to be an employee to exchange labor for cash.
How do you know? Gigster has raised $10MM+. For a business that actually drives revenue (as opposed to Random Social iOS App), they have quite a long runway even if they lose a few thousand dollars per project.
>If anything, developers who ask questions are the ones you want most. One of the worst traits in a developer is the tendency to say yes to everything.
I didn't say that. I said that I disagree with the way he framed his questions.
Perhaps I'm missing something. Could you explain how the way he framed his questions was disagreeable to you? From my reading they were perfectly reasonable.
>So gigster can do something really awful and I can't seek damages?
The implication made here is that the writer believes that gigster is going to "do something awful".
The over all tone of the writing is offensive rather than defensive. In other words, the email is not written like he wants questions answered, but rather that he'd like to jump to conclusions.
The responses to his inquiries leave much to be desired as well.
> The implication made here is that the writer believes that gigster is going to "do something awful".
That's a completely bullshit attack and putting words into his mouth. Gigster has the potentional to possibly to do something awful in the future due to being a company made of different people, with there being no guarantee that the people you're talking to one day are still there the next. And trust is only possible between mutual human beings, not between one human and an amorphous ever-changing conglomerate of humans.
I'm not putting words in his mouth. He postured his question to be rhetorical. It's not even really a question at all. It doesn't seek clarification. It seeks a specific response: to get that person to admit to something they might not feel is true (that the company is awful or can do awful things). It's not nice and it's not an appropriate way to attempt to negotiate a contract.
He made things into a me vs you situation when. Had he formed his objections, those two individuals responding to his inquiries probably would have made an actual effort to resolve the issues.
Say that we're doing business and I ask you to sign a piece of paper that says that you promise not to tell the police if I burn your house down. Obviously, you think this is pretty ridiculous (and concerning), so you ask in disbelief "wait, so if you burn my house down I can't even tell the police???"
My response to you: "You're being overly aggressive with your attacks. That's not nice. You could have asked a question if you had one, but you're not even asking me a question, this is just an aggressive rethorical question. It's clear that you don't even want clarification. That's not nice and it's not an appropriate way to negotiate a contract"
No. They did. By not including the mirror of that clause indemnifying him against them, the contract was the first to state "you could do awful things", so they have no standing whatsoever to complain about anything.
How many times do I have to repeat myself on this point? I'm not refuting that the company could do awful things. I'm explaining that if you're an ass hole to the person who can change it and make sure it stays changed for everyone in the future, it's not going to happen.
If you restricted yourself to saying it is tactically unsound, and drop every other thing you're trying to say, i'd be able to join that position.
Also note: If the company opens with an attack, and when called upon it doesn't apologize and fix, then that points to maaaaaaany other problems in the company and getting it fixed is a minor priority. It is in fact only a proxy towards figuring out if the company as it is, is deserving of any kind of trust.
Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
What he wrote was a statement of fact, not of opinion. Gigster can in fact do something really awful and there is no recourse. In any contract negotiation, sometimes you need to be clear what the problem is. If you, as a party to a contract, indeed feel like there is zero chance that other party will do anything to injure you, will keep to their promises, and has your best interests at heart, what is the point of the contract in the first place?
There is an appropriate way to be clear on what the problem is and an inappropriate way to be clear on what the problem is. My initial point is that he did not raise his objections in an appropriate way.
I completely understand why he objected and I would have objected as well, but I would have done so in a more appropriate way.
Why is there any onus on him to conduct himself in any kind of appropiate manner if the contract sent to him was in turn wildly appropiate (and not even accompanied by a polite set of words)?
There isn't. He didn't have to respond at all. However, he expressed, through his language, an unwillingness to negotiate the contract. That's why he ended up not negotiating the contract.
It's also why when people address me or my employer the way he did, I just don't engage at all.
Oh, so not only would you be impolite enough to send such a contract, when questioned on it you would also be so embarrassingly impolite to not even answer that you stand by your previous insult. Gotcha.
(1) it's possible that they didn't know the language could be used to hurt someone in that way. You won't give them the benefit of the doubt and instead would rather give that benefit to the person who was actually impolite.
(2) Again, as I said before, I don't agree with those terms. That doesn't mean I'd be an ass hole about it. To my benefit, I'd politely negotiate and have a much higher likelihood of negotiating the contract to my liking.
(3) If someone posed the same concerns to me in a polite and professional manner, I would go out of my way to correct the contract (hey boss person, this contract might be bad for developers!). On the other hand, if someone is an ass hole, they're going to an "ass hole" response.
Try it. Try being polite in a situation where you'd like to be an ass hole. You're going to be surprised at the end result.
> The implication made here is that the writer believes that gigster is going to "do something awful".
In what other context does it make sense to talk about the right to sue someone other than "doing something awful"? These are not the rules for the office's Secret Santa, this is a legal contract which details what would happen precisely if either party "does something awful"
People don't sue each other because they think they are doing wonderful things, they sue them when they think they've done "something awful".
