My current job tried to get me to sign one that would prohibit me both from discussing the content of the NDA, and had a noncompete rider that was extremely aggressive.
I told them I wouldn’t sign it, and it was unenforceable in this state anyway, so they might as well drop it. They did, but the whole thing made me super leery of working here. Corporate bullshit all the way down.
You can always always discuss any contract with a lawyer. It is incredibly illegal to try and bar someone from seeking a professional opinion on a contract. If any company tries this then immediately reach out to a labor attorney.
In Illinois, where I am, NDAs aren’t enforceable unless they’re provided at least two weeks before the start of employment, so they can be reviewed by legal counsel. They have this one a week after I started, one of many ways it was unenforceable.
An NDA can’t ever block discussing itself - I know because I had to sign an NDA in perpetuity covering who the other signatory was on a different NDA also in perpetuity. Everything subject to that inner NDA is now completely irrelevant, but the companies involved still definitely exist and are just as litigious as ever.
I later went on to design some computer processing systems and storage systems related to US Healthcare tracking which is mostly not covered by an NDA, though the work is proprietary and not shareable, and it’s much more worthy of the crazy NDA I signed in my twenties. NDAs are much more about who and less about what - if you’re working restocking vending machines with Suisse Credit, you’ll probably need to sign an NDA… but a more modest company doing legitimately secret stuff usually doesn’t care.
My current job tried to get me to sign one that would prohibit me both from discussing the content of the NDA, and had a noncompete rider that was extremely aggressive.
I told them I wouldn’t sign it, and it was unenforceable in this state anyway, so they might as well drop it. They did, but the whole thing made me super leery of working here. Corporate bullshit all the way down.
“You can’t discuss this contract with a lawyer” GTFO lol
You can always always discuss any contract with a lawyer. It is incredibly illegal to try and bar someone from seeking a professional opinion on a contract. If any company tries this then immediately reach out to a labor attorney.
In Illinois, where I am, NDAs aren’t enforceable unless they’re provided at least two weeks before the start of employment, so they can be reviewed by legal counsel. They have this one a week after I started, one of many ways it was unenforceable.
An NDA can’t ever block discussing itself - I know because I had to sign an NDA in perpetuity covering who the other signatory was on a different NDA also in perpetuity. Everything subject to that inner NDA is now completely irrelevant, but the companies involved still definitely exist and are just as litigious as ever.
I later went on to design some computer processing systems and storage systems related to US Healthcare tracking which is mostly not covered by an NDA, though the work is proprietary and not shareable, and it’s much more worthy of the crazy NDA I signed in my twenties. NDAs are much more about who and less about what - if you’re working restocking vending machines with Suisse Credit, you’ll probably need to sign an NDA… but a more modest company doing legitimately secret stuff usually doesn’t care.