> "What are the company's non-compete rules? If I wanted to make and sell an app in my spare time, is that allowed? What isn't allowed?"
I would not be surprised at all if the people interviewing me gave a nice answer and then on day one I'm asked to sign a contract that doesn't match what they said.
Ask if you can see the employment contract before accepting an offer.
To continue working at a company, you are usually expected to sign every piece of paper that they put in front of you throughout your tenure. If you don't, the consequences could range from absolutely nothing, to being pestered every six months, to being kept off a project or not promoted, to being fired.
If at some point you become popular or are seen as critical, you may be able to spend some of your political capital to get around signing some of the papers that you don't particularly want to sign, but this doesn't always work, and you can't always get away with this indefinitely.
An amendment to your offer of employment that tries to prevent you from moonlighting could come after your first day, or after your third month. They get to choose the timing, and the more unscrupulous will absolutely use this to their advantage. They won't give it to you after the first day or week, so you don't just walk -- they'll wait until you've settled in and are more likely to concede in frustration.
This isn't true unfortunately and there are absolutely horror stories of this happening to people. For example at some FANG companies you sign what you think is your regular employment contract and then move on down to the Valley excited to start your new job on the agreed upon terms... then as soon as you introduce yourself at reception just before orientation, you're made to sign a secondary agreement with terms you will likely have never seen before. If you so much as object or raise an issue about it you risk being terminated there and then. There was just such an article posted to HN years ago about this happening at... I want to say Google... but my memory of that is hazy.
Serious question then: do you really believe that they are going to show you “the second contract”?
It seems like the better question is: are there other documents than this contract on which this job depends to sign and can I see them. If yes, can you please put this in the contract.
Yes, good question. It can be more of a demand, even -- before you sign, ask "can you send me all of the documents I will be required to sign along with my contract?" and expect to be given the full run of corporate policy, non-disclosure agreements, etc etc etc. If they won't give them to you, they are hiding something and you shouldn't sign. Corporate policy should be incredibly boring and nobody has a good reason to prevent you from seeing that.
If you've signed a complete contract already, and there are new things to sign, they're asking you to agree to a new contract. Which you don't have to agree to, and if you don't, then anything you've already signed is still in effect. To get rid of you after that they have to resort to the termination provisions in the original contract. Of course "refusing to agree to corporate policy" is typically something that they can terminate you for. So a big part of the law dictating how much they can make you sign later is found in termination provisions. If your original contract's termination clauses are written so broadly that they could fire you easily for refusing to agree to a new contract that essentially rewrites the old one, then there are things you should see a lawyer about before touching it. (This is a much bigger deal than policy changes. I'm talking "no we actually have 10 more onerous pre-conditions to exercising stock options that we hid from you, such that you will find it almost impossible to do. sign here".) Large swaths of contract law are devoted to invalidating terms that say versions of "I can dictate the terms".
So my guess is that the horror stories were not supported by the original contract using likely-invalid language, but rather purely on the threat of messing up someone's new job. Especially if you're e.g. moving for a job, your goal is to sniff this out before you sign. So insist on full pre-signing transparency, get assurances that there are no other documents that are considered mandatory, and watch the responses carefully.
Just ask yourself, "what are the odds a programmer and a recruiter would miss a contract I needed to sign?" Remember, there isn't a representative from the legal department in most interview processes. It's really easy for the people that are doing the interview to mess up stuff like this, because asking to see the contracts is an unusual request, and there's little consequence for them if they mess it up.
Sure, hence you ask to see all documents you have to sign before you sign everything. And make sure your contact states that with signature everything is signed.
There are multiple things to sign. At my company, you sign most of them on your first day on the job. I probably could have asked to see them during the offer stage, but there's no guarantee that's the same document you'll be asked to sign (and likely the part of HR involved in giving you the offer is not the same part of HR that makes you sign the first day).
I asked to see these at the offer stage. They said nobody had ever asked for this before and didn't give it to me. Company with 100k employees globally.
That's not a good enough reason. They want to hire you, they've been through a lot of candidates, spent tons of important people's time interviewing you, and may be paying a recruiter $20k to find you. They can send you a damn PDF. Insist.
Never sign anything on the spot. Always take it home to study it. If there's clauses you have doubts about, consult with your lawyer. Negotiate everything that's not acceptable to you.
You could also being a contract of your own for them to sign. They won't, of course, but it can help drive home the point why you need time to look at the contract.
So you've left your old job, and now want to negotiate? No one's fooled about who has leverage.
Story here not too long ago of a Google employee being let go on his first day because he did exactly what you're suggesting. I'm sure my company would do the same. When you hire over a thousand people a year (let alone thousands), they're not going to modify their efficient procedures for you. It's cheaper to hire another person.
I'm sure they'll let you take the contract home, but your only option really is to quit.
> So you've left your old job, and now want to negotiate? No one's fooled about who has leverage.
Handle it before you leave your old job, then. Do what works best for you.
I have negotiated contracts while already working, and that has worked fine for me. If they back out, I'll find something else. At some point you may notice they won't move any further, and then you've got a choice to make. If this is just another job and there are plenty like it, you quit. If it's a unique opportunity, you suck it up and sign.
But the point remains that you should never sign a contract on the spot. Unless it's really something super standard, negotiated by your union, or otherwise something that you really can't get around. But in every other circumstance, you always have options open. Never forget that.
Some companies do things in stupid orders though. I recently got an offer that had a contract that said the whole deal was contingent on me passing vetting and reference checks. Inside the contract.
Like I was going to sign, give notice at my current job, and if they're not happy I simply don't have a job.
I nope'd out of that process. Their HR was a mess.
Usually there's a surprise contract waiting for day one of a job, after you've left your other job. Yes, you can still walk away, but it's better to review that contract sooner.
If you don't ask to see the contract, it will almost certainly be a day one surprise. And even if you do ask, the legal department, who neither you nor the people interviewing you frequently communicate with, might still have some surprises in store.
I've been sprung with these before. Usually trivial, unenforceable issues, but annoying none the less. The worst was I once even had a background check _after_ accepting and signing. Nothing came up, but that could have left me with no job and no recourse.
How do you avoid this? It's a particular kind of institutional trickery that may not even be intentional but is very frustrating.
As a self-employed contractor, it's quite common for me to negotiate the contract and wait for screening while already working on the project. They still have to pay me for time worked, and if we can't agree, they're screwed as much as I am, because they're already investing in onboarding, and I haven't delivered anything yet.
So there is some room for negotiation, although some things aren't negotiable for them. I've often had a non-compete clause of some sort in my contract, and I've always been able to get its scope reduced, but mever been able to get it dropped entirely. But if you ask up front about it, it's also to their benefit to be honest about it, because hiring you and then having you quit at the last moment because of their lie is not good for them either
The other option is to get the contract signed, or at least seen, before you quit your previous job. If it's a job for which you need to move and dramatically change your life, then you should definitely get some hard commitments from them before you do anything drastic.
In the US employment is at-will, so it's sort of a moot point. Sure they can fire you because of something on your background check, but they could also fire you 3 days after starting because the manager doesn't like you. Short of a serious felony conviction it's unlikely to come up, and if it does discuss it or move on to thousand of other companies.
How would that help? Whether it's written or not, the agreement is as you say, until one party decides to end it.
And even with such an agreement, they might still ask you to sign something on day one. If you don't sign it, they may very well decided to "terminate the agreement" on day one.
If you're fired, you're eligible for unemployment. You're also eligible if you quit your job for a new company but then they rescind the offer. That's basically as much protection as you get in the US, since most states are at-will.
I would not be surprised at all if the people interviewing me gave a nice answer and then on day one I'm asked to sign a contract that doesn't match what they said.
Ask if you can see the employment contract before accepting an offer.