Have you ever signed a Confidentiality Agreement?

Most work places have them now. My previous place of employment had one that stated the usual, plus this clause, “Anything the employee invents while employed by us, becomes our property”
Meaning, if I was to come up with a marketable product, outside of work hours, they would claim the rights.
People wonder why big business are looked down on.
Also, many businesses have gag orders placed on employees once they leave their employ.
Louis Armstrong sang the tune, “What a Wonderful World”

Get on the fringes, work for yourself, you can then decide just how confidential you want to be. :smile:

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The company I retired from were starting to introduce personal contracts for employees. These stated pay, terms and conditions which each individual had to negotiate for themselves annually and with it came an NDA, or Non Disclosure Agreement, which states that disclosure of any part of your contract with anyone will result in an immediate disciplinary with view to instantly terminate your employment.

Fortunately, I left before that came into effect.

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We did - about 50 years ago. We soon avoided it.

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I have signed the UK Official Secrets Act (twice) that’s a confidentially agreement.

Pssstt… Wanna hear about the WB400 early warning system?

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Yes, I had to but can’t remember most of the stipulations. One was not to discuss pay with colleagues nor the content of appraisal interviews.

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NDA’s are pretty common and can be well intended - simply about respecting the other party and not revealing commercially / reputationally sensitive info. I’ve signed quite a few. I’ve also declined to sign one. This was with a small consultancy who wanted me to work on one of their client projects. This NDA also had a non-compete clause built in. That is unusual as normally that forms a separate agreement. The terms of this non-compete clause were too restrictive. They would have prevented me doing any similar work for anyone and given that type of work was what I did for living this was not acceptable. The consultancy owner refused to remove this clause, I refused to sign the NDA with that clause and I walked away. And given the reaction of the owner, who completely failed to see why his clause was a problem and would not budge, I think I escaped from a bad piece of work.

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Never been all that important Bretrick…I’m usually the last to know anyway…
:thinking:

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I think the clause of “Anything the employees invents while employed by us, becomes our property” is probably fair after most of the knowledge and ideas came from the place of employment. Especially if you are a long serving employee.
I developed a timer unit to control processes during the manufacture of diamond abrasive grinding wheels. It took the guess work out of the temperatures and times used in the pressing and forming of the diamond rims. It controlled 4 seperate units and took me six months to build. It was constructed well before the digital age…


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Did it pay off for you in any way? Did you patent it?

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I logged down the time spent building it Dachs and was handsomely rewarded, but I was forbidden to disclose the design or construction to any third party. Probably a bit naive at the time and happy to be allowed to do something I loved.

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No. I’m hopeless at keeping secrets.

What about “Official” secrets :grin:

It’s best to adopt a “Don’t need to know” basis :icon_wink:

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Sadly I no longer have a “Mum” to keep.

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