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Google's Evil NDA
An anonymous reader writes "Google's motto is "Don't Be Evil" — but they sure have an evil non-disclosure agreement! In order to be considered for employment there, you must sign an agreement that forbids you to 'mention or imply the name of Google' in public ever again. Further, you can't tell anyone you interviewed there, or what they offered you, and you possibly sign away your rights to reverse-engineer any of Google's code, ever. And this NDA never expires. Luckily, someone has posted excerpts from the NDA before he signed it and had to say silent forever." At the bottom of the posting are links to a few other comments on the Web about Google's NDA, including a ValleyWag post that reproduces it in its entirety.
The first rule of fight club is you do NOT talk about fight club.
The second rule of fight club is you do NOT talk about fight club.
The third rule of fight club is you can NEVER reverse engineer meatloafs fake boobs....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
What are they going to do? Kill m*BANG*
[Yes, we are. We will however submit your Slashdot message as a warning for others.]
"I know, I have several years on my resume I can't talk abuot except in the most vague ways."
Yeah, that part of your 'career' where you were in jail for climbing into the endangered bird sanctuary at your local zoo and buggering a heron.
Is that what that guy meant when he said in his interview he was doing "volunteer research into the sexual habits of endanger water foul"?
"The third rule of fight club is you can NEVER reverse engineer meatloafs fake boobs...."
His name is Robert Paulson.
"And this NDA never expires."
I thought that 2038 was a far expiration date for their cookie, now I must revise my judgement...
I have remained silent too long and I must point out that in fact Google caused my divorce. I was contacted by them numerous times for technical phone screens and was eventually brought out to CA for an interview and received very positive feedback. However, because of the evil NDA I was forced to keep all of this information from my wife. To her I was acting strange by: 1) jumping up from the dinner table to take phone calls in the other room, 2) flying out to some unknown location for a couple days, 3) returning happy, and 4) refusing to explain any of these actions. Google and its insidious NDA have ruined my marriage... woe is me!
-m
on the upside you could make your own crappy search engine called "Giggle", sign an NDA that you made yourself and tell prospective employers you're not at liberty to talk about it but it started with a "G"
Let them jump to the conclusions that you used to work for Google.
Collector's Edition
All well and good, but clearly the terms of your contract prevent you from disclosing your name.
I think I understand. Your basically saying that a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given?
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
If memory serves, David easily killed Goliath.