On Dec 22, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Aaron wrote:

> "The Employee agrees to keep the company informed of his ideas and
> suggestions towards the technical development of the lines of 
> equipment to
> be engineered, sold and/or managed by the Company.  [...]

Standard.  Better than some, since it expresses interest only in ideas
related to the company's products.  It ought to be accompanied by a
request for disclosure of any existing "inventions" that you are 
claiming
pre-date your employment...

>
> [no moonlighting]

I don't think I've seen one of those, though I vaguely require needing
permission to do things outside of my first job (which was granted.)


> ...the Employee agrees not to work directly for
> any competitor of the Company ...

(Is this in the USA?)  As someone mentioned, this tends to be illegal.
It also tends to be pursued only in really nasty cases involving the
upper echelons, especially in sales (bigwig sales guy moves to new
company and immediately starts bad-mouthing the old companies products
to all his old contact list...)


It might be worth asking what happens if you want to modify portions
of the agreement, but if you like the job and were planning spending
most of your efforts toward the new company anyway, it probably isn't
very important.  I haven't heard much about companies abusing this
sort of agreement, although there are occasional issues over wholesale
spin-offs where a significant group moves off to some new company with
an idea that could have been implemented at the first company.  (and
you KNOW how many internet startups are filled with ex-cisco employees!)

I don't think it's common for a company to show you the exact employment
agreement before you start, though if you're planning on doing outside
stuff it might pay to ask.  Stay at a company long enough and you'll
probably be asked to sign agreements that have been modified or newly
created long after your initial employment (like the "ethics agreement"
here that says we can't put firefox on the company-owned laptops...  
That
created quite a bit of ... heat on some internal mailing lists!)

BillW

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