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Of NDAs and Resumes?

Posted by Cliff on from the screwing-with-your-CV dept.

TheFuzzy asks: "I was just updating my resume, and came to the sudden realization that over half of the projects I've worked on in the last 3 years are under ironclad non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and I can't list them. This leaves me with either a slacker's resume, or makes me insert vague statements like "advised 3 Fortune 500 companies on database performance issues" which sounds rather fictional. Attempts to get clearance from these clients to use them as references get forwarded to their legal departments, never to return. Have other Slashdot readers encountered this issue? How did you deal with it? Is it particular to the database field, or is it common for other specialties as well?"

5 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Attach an NDA to the Resume by CrosbieFitch · · Score: 2

    "By reading this Resume you indicate your acceptance of the terms of the attached NDA."

  2. Depends I guess... by ComputerSlicer23 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I believe that where I live (Nebraska), has a reasonable strong precedence for "nothing I sign as an NDA or non-compete can force me to give up my right to make a living in my professional field". They can limit areas of what you can do, like doing the same work for direct and indirect competitors.

    In essence, write up your resume however you like, ignoring the NDA. (My suspicion, is that either, your NDA is uninforceable if you can violate it in less then the 3 bullet points, and 1 paragraph description of what your job is, or you are writting your Resume incorrectly). If what you do is standard industry practice, nearly every NDA I've ever seen says "anything that is standard industry practice is not covered by this NDA". It's completely uninforceable otherwise. They pay you to tell them common knowledge, the then hold you hostage to never give up that information again for the term of your NDA.

    No mister roofer, you put shingles on my roof. For the next 3 years, every roof you build can't have shingles, otherwise I get to sue the bejesus out of you. You can't even tell the next guy you work for, that you know how to apply wooden squares to a angled board to keep water from hitting you. Nope, I've got an iron clad NDA right here. Uh-huh. Judge would throw you out on your ear withing 15 minutes of hearing the arguments for doing that.

    For goodness sakes, your describing what's already known to the general population in the industry. No offense, but your not doing anything terrible secret in the area of RDBM's database optimation. Most of the really cool stuff was figured out 15 years ago, and they've been waiting around for the hardware to catch up. Lets see, schema layout, indexing, denormalizing data, princepal of locality (temporial and spacial), and instrumentation/profiling. Everything else probably came straight out of the vendor documentation, and was applied to a particular database. Optimation comes down to "time this, change param A, time again, change A some more, lather, rinse, repeat. Move to parameter B". Maybe you've figured some cool stuff out about ODBM's or something. However, even most of that is just following the bouncing ball after reading the documentation from the Vendor.

    If they come after you, just explain to them, you'll take your six figure settlement now, or you'll find a nice attorney who'll work on contingency for 1/3 of the 7 figure settlement after the trial.

    I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice. However, they can't compel you to give up your right to earn a living. Barring a matter of national security at least.

    Kirby

    1. Re:Depends I guess... by sartin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A non-disclosure is not a non-compete. A non-disclosure can only prohibit disclosure of confidential information. A non-disclosure should clearly define information that is confidential and actions that make it disclosable. Notably, if you learn the same information through a public channel (one not covered by NDA) you are allowed disclose it.

      I have a spooky 10-year NDA with IBM regarding PowerPC features and test methods that doesn't expire until early next year. I'd estimate 99+% of what I learned on the project is now public information so I no longer fear talking to people about the instruction set (parts of which were under NDA at the time I did the project) and most of the then-bleeding-edge test methods have been presented at numerous contracts. For a few years, I actually ran occasional searches to let me know when IBM disclosed things so I knew I could talk about them. Now I can pretty freely talk about random test vector generation.

      My very favorite part of the IBM thing was they had lawyers review and blackout every document that hit my desk; apparently they thought my NDA wasn't strong enough. I received a manual on the test generation program that had all of the numerical constants in the examples blacked out. As an exercise, I reverse engineered them all from the descriptions.

      I have only had a few NDAs that actually prohibited mentioning the clients name. I charge a lot for that privilege.

  3. Real-hard realtime by MarkusQ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A friend of mine work on a number of "deeply embedded, hard realtime" applications, where he was able to clarify that "deeply embedded" meant there was absolutely no user-interface or even user-access to the device, and "hard realtime" in this case meant that any operations not completed in their alloted time window would be aborted due to the hardware they were running on no longer existing. He was also able to name his employer (a known defense contractor).

    While he couldn't tell people the nature of the product, he could tell them what his duties on the project included, as the parent poster suggested. Overall, he was able to drill down enough on the non-classified details to satisfy any interviewer that he knew what he was talking about without breaking any rules.

    -- MarkusQ

    P.S. Some interviewers also look for the ability to respect previous NDAs as a major hireing criterion, so handling this issue properly (respect the NDAs without acting freaked by them) could be a strong point in your favour.

  4. Not that big a problem. by crmartin · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've been consulting for about 20 years, and before that I did classified work for one of those customers, so I've dealt with the same problem extensively. It's really not that big a problem.

    First, it's not an unknown issue for the people reading your resume -- they know about NDAs, and probably are under one themselves. So they'll understand, in general at least.

    Second, being in an NDA doesn't mean you can't say anything. Quantifiy what you did in terms that will matter to a potential employer ("improved transaction rate to 500 tps, a 75 percent improvement") without associating the information with an identifiable employer ("In a project under non-disclosure for a Fortune 50 firm"). List the firms you've worked for as "Consulting clients include" so that people know who you've worked for in general, without making that association. Or, if the very fact that you worked with a firm is under NDA (betcha it isn't), then list the company that was paying you your paycheck, and say "Working for Big Deal Consulting, Inc.; Consulted to Fortune 50 clients...."

    (Notice, by the way, that if you were working independently, the fact that you were working for a client is public record; you deposited the checks which had a name and account number on them. Even if you were working for a DoD agency, the check says DoD, or "Maryland Procurement Office", or something.)

    Third, be prepared to talk about the tasks you did in the interview. Again, what you did as an engineer isn't all that sensitive -- it's the association between the specfifics of the problem and the company that's sensitive.