People Who Signed NDAs That Have Now Expired Share What Secrets They Were Supposed To Protect (30 Answers)
If you expected that the biggest secret you’d keep in life was who actually ate the last chocolate-chip cookie at home, then, unfortunately, you’re very wrong. Odds are that you had to sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement (NDA) at some point in your life. Corporate wants its employees to protect its secrets and needs to guard its profits, and they use legally binding contracts to do so. NDAs are also useful tools to protect the interests of private citizens, as well as businesses that are negotiating with one another.
Once you sign the NDA, you’re legally obligated to fulfill the conditions until the terms expire and you can get sued if you talk about what you promised not to. Some NDAs can last for a year or even half a decade. Others, however, are in effect indefinitely. It really makes you wonder what secrets lie behind all of those documents. Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore. Bored Panda took a trip all around r/AskReddit and has collected the most interesting stories from people whose NDAs have finally expired. Check out what they disclosed to the internet and upvote the posts that you found the most interesting.
Pssst, Pandas, over here. If you’re in the mood for some more saucy and secretive stories after you’re done enjoying this list, check out Bored Panda’s recent lists about expired NDAs here and here. If you’d like to spill the tea about your own expired NDAs, feel free to do so in the comments, too.
Bored Panda wanted to learn more about NDAs, so we reached out to Susan Carle, a Professor of Law at the American University Washington College of Law, who was kind enough to answer our questions.
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I work for a moving company and we work with a women’s shelter often enough. Typically women escaping abuse will have the shelter hire us to go in and get their belongings (sometimes with police company) and all the movers sign NDA’s to protect the women from letting their new addresses slip. I can’t disclose anything that interesting but I want to take the opportunity to say, those people who jump at the slightest sound, the littlest surprise, be nice to them because you don’t know whether they are just jumpy naturally or if there’s a reason they are like that now.
Professor Carle, from the American University Washington College of Law, told Bored Panda during a phone interview that more and more employees in the United States are using non-disclosure agreements. The main purpose of NDAs is to protect the companies by preventing employees from leaking sensitive information and to avoid embarrassment for the business as a whole.
However, just because someone breaks an NDA doesn't mean that they've committed a crime. Breaking NDAs doesn't lead to criminal penalties, as they are civil contracts between two (or more) parties. Not following the terms of the agreement can, however, mean that the company may seek damages to pay for the breach of contract.
It can get a bit overwhelming when your employer keeps pushing you document after document to sign, and sometimes, you simply don't have the time to read the fine print everywhere. However, according to the professor, the employees themselves would have very little leverage to renegotiate their contract after signing it if they happen to realize that their NDA might have terms unacceptable to them. That means that it's imperative that you take the time to read the documents in full if it's an issue that matters to you.
Amazon is probably here but I'm saying it anyway.
The reason why people p**s in bottles is that they are fighting against TOT(time off task). If in a week you accumulate a combined total of 15 minutes of non working, not break away from your station you a reprimanded or more likely fired. So walking away to pee, TOT. Slightly late to station due to high foot traffic, ToT. Stop at you station for a breather because it's hot, your tired or sick, TOT.
The above plus the strict metrics and constant oversight of the lead staff makes working there feel like you are a machine.
It reminds me of film representations from the twenties about the the sadness of the futures poor.
I worked for a mall pretzel stand about 25 years ago and had to sign an NDA about the secret pretzel ingredient. It was baking soda.
Seeking legal counsel before signing a document can be a good way for a worker to figure out the finer details of what they're signing if they feel that this is what matters to them. At the same time, the reality is that many workers simply sign the NDAs without digging too deeply. Professor Carle noted that employees always have the option of speaking openly and honestly with their superiors about why a non-disclosure agreement might be needed at all. Frank communication can help in these instances.
There can be plenty of good reasons for businesses to have NDAs and why they'd prefer their employees not to disclose certain information. Signing an NDA doesn't mean that a company is necessarily up to something nefarious. But they are primarily there to protect the companies from as many legal angles as possible (which is why employers consult lawyers to help make the contracts as airtight as possible), not necessarily for the benefit of the employee.
However, the professor told Bored Panda that "employers can do a lot of harm via non-compete agreements" if they, for example, force their employees to sign a contract that prohibits them from working in a specific line of work in the entire US.
There are powerline transformers that predate ww1 still up and running in the US and the utility companies aren't a 100% sure where most of them are. They only find out when one finally dies.
Someone over 100 years ago put up a transform that powered telegrams all the way to Twitter.
Used to be an au pair for a famous couples children. NDA was there to protect the family - I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the kids on any of my devices, the photos i did take were not allowed to include their faces and the rest were just general rules about not sharing their private information. Even to this day i won't sell that information even though the NDA has expired, probably some of the nicest people i have ever worked for.
That's very reasonable. Probably one of the famous couples that didn't turn their socials into a 24/7 baby feed...
Used to work in a warehouse where we made feminine hygiene products. The pads came out of one machine into several different branded boxes. Both the nickel gas station pads and the 10 dollar a box pads.
Also we had one product of pads where we imported them from china, then repackaged them into our own boxes. I didn't have a problem with that. The problem I had was the box had an emblem saying "made in America"
Would've been ok if it said assembled in America. But no.
At their core, NDAs establish a confidential relationship between two or more parties. It’s a legally binding contract that helps guard highly sensitive information. In short, it’s a way to make sure that someone actually follows through on their promises not to spill any secrets.
Non-disclosure agreements are neither good nor bad: they’re simply a tool to protect someone’s interests. They make it very clear what kind of information can’t be shared with others and they also explain, in detail, what will happen if someone blabs.
However, that’s not to say that NDAs are perfect. They can potentially create an atmosphere of mistrust in the workplace. After all, nobody wants to feel like their employer doesn’t trust them. What’s more, confidentiality agreements can even prevent some of the best and brightest workers in the industry from joining the company if they feel that the NDA is too constricting.
Before signing any agreement, remember to read the fine print. You can always consult with a workplace expert or an attorney if the contract is highly sensitive. You should also do your best to clarify any wibbly-wobbly ambiguousness you might stumble across in the clauses. Make sure you know when exactly the NDA will expire.
Tesla has failed six attempts to get their cars licensed for racing by the FIA. I can't say anything past that, but if you feel like checking the registry you'll find they're still not licensed.
I didn't enjoy the battery melting under me when we pushed the car to the limits. Not did I enjoy the threat of a lawsuit if I didn't change my report. f**k Tesla
It's a real shame though because I love electric cars. They're 100% the future of motorsports and I really wish there were more batteries capable of emptying at the rate needed without breaking.
Fun fact: for a long time, autopilot accidents in Teslas, even the fatal ones, were able to be argued in the company's favour because investigations showed the autopilot to be not switched on at the time of the accident. After many repeats it was found that the autopilot was deliberately programmed to switch off one second before a crash, leaving no time for the human occupant to react. Elon Musk is scum. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/15/tesla-autopilot-crashes/
I walked in on my boss having sex with another employee on the table in his office. He was married and it was a family owned business so his boss was also his mom. After he offered to promote me and give me a few raises to be quiet, his mom ended up offering me money to leave and not say anything. I took it and left. All my friends think I just found a better job.
My NDA is still in effect, but I've covered my liability. A few years, with a previous insurance company I worked for, we fired an employee who had a nasty personality (imagine a toxic gamer working in a call center and that would be this guy).
He had been the son (or grandson) of one of the board members so he was untouchable. When his relative on the board got voted out, it was finally time for this little troll to be fired.
His supervisor took him to a conference room to let him know he was fired and he was escorted from the building by security. As the HR manager, I was tasked with clearing his desk and separating his property from company property.
That was when I found a heavily used 5" X 8" notepad on his desk that had a list of names. Next to each name was a mailing addresses and details about how this ex-employee planned to harm these people. I did some digging and found they were all current or former clients of the company and that they all had filed complaints against this monster.
It was a hit list.
I notified the board **AFTER** I notified the police. The s**t was arrested on unrelated drug and assault charges. The prosecutor now had to consider charging this guy for his hit list. Since she couldn't convince a judge there was a strong enough case, the prosecutor decided to empanel a grand jury.
Since I was the individual who found the notepad, I was subpoenaed to confirm its provenance. Considering any other employee could have walked by and deposited this list on this a*****e's desk, the grand jury decided to not move ahead to a trial. For the drug and assault charges, the former employee was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
As a witness, I wasn't issued a gag order regarding the grand jury investigation. However, my work did order me to sign an NDA to "protect the clients who were on that hit list" (it was really just to cover up that they were in any danger). I signed and then quit as soon as I got a job offer with another company. Those bastards on the board cared more about their profit margin and public image than they did about people's lives.
If they figure out I'm violating that NDA, there's not much they can do. They know antagonizing me with a lawsuit would only lead to me telling the media, naming the company and ruining their public image.
Name and shame! This is irresponsible and potentially dangerous!
Whether negotiating about your NDA, a better wage, or better working conditions, preparation is absolutely vital. Financial expert Sam Dogen, the founder of Financial Samurai and the author of ‘Buy This, Not That,’ explained to Bored Panda during an earlier interview that employees should do a lot of research before heading into any career negotiations with their superiors.
Some of the things to check for are to see if the industry is growing or shrinking, what the trends in the job market are like, and how the company itself is doing.
“Is your company's stock price doing well? If it's a private company, is it raising funding at higher valuations? Is company morale good? Are there more benefits?” the expert told us what questions we should consider before talking to our bosses and managers.
I worked security for a gated neighborhood of extremely wealthy people. Like, fortune 500 CEO, Senator(s) (sometimes both), etc.
We got to know which cars were "authorized" without being authorized. Because we weren't allowed to stop them, question them, or log them in in any way.
Because they were coke dealers selling to the elite.
1) YouTube is the most unethical platform on earth.
If you are a high value account, most of the policies of YouTube won't touch you. For example, there was a Brazilian kid twerking, with his small sister that was dressed very provocatively. Normally YouTube would take down this video for "minor sexualisation" but because the account had some millions of followers, not only it remained live on the platform, but also had a safety net, in case a "stupid" agent tried to take it down.
2) everyday there are thousands upon thousands of very horrible videos being uploaded on YouTube, and it's up to a human being to go through them and take an action.
As you can understand, a lot of agents develop depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other mental problems due to the nature of the videos they are watching
Not sure if I’m no longer bound or not or how common knowledge it is, but living in NYC I was paid to be a fan at a major red carpet movie premiere for a popular film franchise. 100% of the people there were paid to act excited as famous actors and a VERY famous director walked out and said hello and did interviews. We were under strict instructions not to let anyone know we were hired.
“Everything is relative in terms of performance. You should be paid based on how well you do and if you are outperforming your peers,” he said that job performance is relative and that we should evaluate where we stand in the company as objectively as possible, in comparison to our colleagues.
“The longer you are at the company, ironically, the less you get paid compared to the market. Therefore, you need to consistently speak up for yourself each year as new employees join with higher and higher pay packages,” he warned veteran employees to keep this in mind.
A recently hired employee trapped a secretary in a bathroom at the company Christmas party and r@ped her. He was caught in the act, sentenced, and will serve a long jail term. All the employees who knew about the details were forced to sign strong NDA and ordered **not to talk** to any other employees. No one was told why the guy didn't show up for work ever again. The victim was offered a generous payout and never came back to work. HR put out a story that she was taking time off for personal reasons and her coworkers were never told why. Everything was hushed up as much as it could be. The company changed from open bar to drink tickets for all future company events.
This is incredibly short sighted. If they handled things correctly and this crime still became known to the wider public, the company would have shown they were able to do the right thing, meaning their reputation would be better...I expressed this a little clunkily, but you know what I mean?
I used to work in a call center that had Bayer Advanced (yes, THAT Bayer) as a client. Bayer knew/knows full well that their neonicotinoid based pesticide/gardening products killed bees and were responsible for colony collapse. We were instructed to bold face deny and/or lie to the customer or caller if we were ever asked about it. We were also instructed to lie about the spray nozzles on the bottles. Bayer knew they sucked a*s and were almost always completely DOA defective, but they refused to admit it and decided it was cheaper to just keep mailing replacement nozzles.
Had a friend who worked for Bayer for quite some time until she and others were fired because of their age, and high salaries. Bayer wanted younger people to whom they didn't have to offer as many benefits, etc. My husband, an attorney, filed a lawsuit against them, and Bayer settled for quite a hefty sum.
From a secondary source, but trustworthy
John travolta is gay. His partner was sick in the hospital, he came to visit him many times, whole floor was emptied and everyone in the floor had to sign an nda
But yeah, those rumors are true. Weird how they started way back then
If true, what a vile person you must be to try and out somebody and using a very emotional time for them. Don't do this, it is none of our business what their sexuality is.
I signed an NDA for a prominent American show where they take a certain type of business on the brink of failure and "transform it" to save the business. When the producers of the show found out my wife and I both worked there, they tried to fish through our relationship for tv drama. When they found out we have a solid relationship, they tried to convince us to fake our drama with scripted conflict.
Long story short, we got fed up and quit during shooting. We were cut from the show. Oh well.
There are so many stories that reveal 'reality' shows have much more fiction than reality. It made me quit watching several shows when I found out that the main guy had done his research and was ready to talk to a client about a piece in a knowledgeable manner. I don't mind 're-enactments but some of this stuff is all fiction presented like fact.
I was part of the beta testing for DC universe online. I remember a few missions that were voiced probably just by developers, before they hired the voice actors to do it. I wish I had saved footage of it but there was one where Supergirl was clearly voiced by a man doing a high-pitched falsetto voice. One of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Not my own but from a family friend.
Coca Cola and Pepsi regularily settle disputes behind closed doors on things like employees trying to quit and join the competitor. Their employment contracts have entire clauses stating you cannot be employed by the competing companies even after you quit so to protect company intel and confidentiality.
For example, a Coca Cola employee feels like he is being mistreated by the company so he quits and tries to work for Pepsi. So Pepsis legal team will inform Coca Cola as soon as they find out and Coca Cola will sue the guy for breach of contract and in return Pepsi will pay them. This is done so Pepsi and Coca Cola dont sue each others into bankrupcy for breach of laws regarding industrial competition and market regulations.
Basically a peace treaty of sorts.
In civilized countries, these things are unenforceable as you cannot prevent someone with a particular skillset from earning a living. It is more usual to say that you can't work for clients or suppliers for a set period of time, basically to prevent poaching and stealing IP.
Smile Direct Club has an NDA that basically protects their company from any criticism of bad results. If you were to check their page on the Better Business Bureau, you will see that most of their complaints are not available, which is due to the NDA.
For anyone to get released from their contract for anything ranging from loose teeth, cracked teeth, or misaligned bites, you have to sign the NDA. Signing it waives your rights to criticize the bad results, gives you a fraction of your total money spent (at least for me) or seek any sort of reparations for any future dental costs. The kicker is that more often than not, you aren't given the option to get a release. They ask you to give pics for reevaluation, and if they see nothing wrong, they usually deny any wrongdoing and say the results were deemed "satisfactory." If you keep calling/emailing, you get the runaround from management and the only way to get a release form is by writing a complaint to the BBB. And usually, the day after they send you the NDA to get the complaint down and release you from the contract.
I'm sure legally, this is all above board. But thinking of it clinically, it's super fucked up to me. You're expected to trust your teeth to non-licensed dentist professionals who are priding themselves on the word of mouth of others while silencing criticism? And rather than try to address the problem, they gaslight you and convince you that it's part of the risk. That you only get out by complaining to the BBB and to protect their bottom line, you're expected to just shut up about it, have a fraction of your money refunded and now expected to deal with the fallout yourself.
Thousands of dollars wasted dealing with a cracked tooth, a misaligned bite, and having to get two of my crowns replaced. I wouldn't wish having an off-bite to anyone in the world but now I have to live with it and the bills due to a pandemic and being stupid enough to sign the NDA just to be done with them. Just hope someone sees this and thinks twice about Smile Direct Club.
Sorry to hear this. I hope you can do better soon. My fiance had a botched, painful removal of all his upper teeth about 7 years ago and they made his denture wrong and refused to take our calls, cancelled our appointments. We are on state insurance and you only get free dentures every 8 years or something. He doesn't have upper teeth still because he is afraid of getting his teeth worked on now.
When I was tech before I was a vet, I worked in a lab that mostly tested animal meds on animals. Flea products, heartworm meds, etc.
We had one product in testing for human medication though, which was an injection that supposedly was going to shorten the need to wear retainers after having braces.
Of course, to test that, we needed animals that had worn braces long enough to replicate the changes that happen to human mouths that have had braces.
What I'm getting at, was that some days it was my job to brush the mouths of like 50 beagles that all had braces and make sure the wires and brackets were in place and not causing any trauma to the lips or gingiva.
The image of dozens of goofy little dogs clack clack clacking around me in circles around the lab super excited to see me, doing their ridiculous beagle howls and flashing their braces as they did so will never leave my brain.
As Security Chief, I found that my boss, the Region Security manager, was stealing.
At that time, I thought to keep things "in the family'; imagine the scandal that, in the security branch of a nationwide mobile phone company, one of the people in charge of security was caught doing what he was supposed to prevent. Naive me.
So I reported directly to the CSO who, after getting a confession, ask the culprit to resign.
After that, he placed his 24yo niece (or something, family related) in the Region management, then, after 2 months fired me.
A year later, I found out that the first boss was indeed the CSO cousin who ordered his niece to fire me in retaliation.
Wiser me knows now to bring those things directly to HR.
I was a science themed kids birthday party magician. I had to sign an NDA and non-compete in order to be taught the experiments that I performed during the show. They’re cool demos, I could even wow adults with some of them, but they’re not that special, I guarantee you that I could find the experiments themselves on the internet or in a homeschool textbook (the flair and the showy part was all me). But all of us “magicians” were college students, so the NDA and noncompete were there to intimidate us a bit. The non-compete was important, the owner didn’t want us stealing the experiments and create a competing company, but the NDA was just saber-rattling to keep us compliant with the NC. It was worth it, he paid us well and the tips were usually pretty good.
But the NDA and the NC expired a decade ago, so if you want, I can spill the secrets!
The outcomes of quite a few reality shows I directed, were rigged.
Netflix has created a group of AI that will essentially be like the Skynet of streaming media.
It can predict with crazy accuracy what you’ll click on based on not only your previous views and clicks, but the time of year it is in your location, the WEATHER going on outside your window and the kinds of movies you like to watch when it’s raining or snowing. it figures out your likely holidays celebrated, your favorite colors, typefaces, and genres. This leads into the marketing AI.
They have created an AI driven software that creates movie posters and promotional art for a film or show appear to be whatever genre they want. For instance, it’ll create artwork for an action movie that makes the movie look like a rom com if you’re into rom come and not actions. It’s literally an automated super smart photoshop like computer just for film/tv artwork.
It’s cool they can do that, but if that’s what they’re using for their „what to watch next” interface in the app they’re really missing the ball in my case.
Your leather car interior is likely to shrink in the sun.
Leather seats need to be TREATED with moisturizer just like any other leather product. Of COURSE they'll shrink in constant sun/heat - all leather does without leather treatment on a regular basis!
Your phone company doesn't always comply with FCC regulations involving the recording of phone calls. A lot more may be recorded and insecurely stored than you realize.
This is why my phone calls are nothing more personal than asking my roommates about dinner.
Work in film VFX so there’s a lot.
Ummmmm let’s see, I mean the obvious is always that studio interface = s**t movie. I’ve never worked on a film and heard “the studio wants to reshoot this sequence” and ever had it turned out to be a good thing.
But my guess is 99% of you know that.
So a specific? There are so many good movies you’ll never get to see because of studios. I mean you’ll see them but not until they’re recut, reshot, and completely devoid of any artistic vision that created them.
People point to “the Snyder cut” or now Suicide Squad and I can honestly tell you if a film is over 50 million and not directed by Scorsese, Nolan or Tarantino it’s created by a mindless collection of studio executives who don’t know s**t about filmmaking.
Ad Astra was incredible and would’ve been such a tribute to 2001 but the studio saw it and got scared of James making a slow paced science fiction film that made you think.
They pulled it from him, made a mess when it was given to a second editor (because he wanted to add 15 million in new VFX shots) then given back to James to fix but with this new direction.
Woman in the window was interesting and while not a great thriller, something that was decent and thought provoking. Think Shutter Island. But three test audiences in New Jersey, a second distribution company (Fox to Disney) and a second director for massive reshoots created the shitshow that was unloaded on Netflix.
There are several big time films that’ll never see the light of day because the studio bought them and is sitting on their release. Things you’ve never heard of with great directors and casts because the studio doesn’t want to be associated with it for whatever reason. Weinstein was notorious for this but several other producers have done the same.
What’s going on with Scarlet Johansson right now is waaaay too common for everyone in the industry. Only difference is she’s above being blackballed and has the money to pay for the lawyers needed to defend her.
Finally just know if you go to a film and say “how did they not fix that shot” realize the director wanted to, we just didn’t get approval, or “who comes up with this s**t” it probably wasn’t s**t until the studio got involved.
I have been apart of a focus group program for over 10 years now. It's mostly opinion chat sessions but there were occasional times where I would test or try out some new product that I'd have to sign an NDA for.
You remember when HP started that line of mini laptops?
Yup. Beta tested those.
Some other things now on the market I've tested before release were: Gillettes Fusion, Facebook Dating, Xbox Project X Cloud!
And yes they pay wonderfully.
I did the same for a while, testing a couple dozen products. Most of them never reached the market, but I remember testing an AWFUL first version of the Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. All the products were sent as unbranded samples but was pretty easy to spot the brand with the questions in the interview. Usually among the first questions there was "Which of these brands you know?" and "How do you know BRAND?", giving it away pretty quickly. Unfortunately they did not pay "wonderfully". I usually got some free stuff and about 30 euro in some kind of credit (I chose Amazon) for each 60-minute questionnaire.
I signed a NDA with EA games in order to pitch them a game idea that myself and 2 friends had developed. They turned us down due to there being a similar title already being in production. That was 10 years ago and there's still never been a game in even remotely the same vein as the one we pitched. Frustrating to say the least.
They don't own the idea so pitch it to someone other than EA, Blizzard, or Ubisoft
You know those Jackbox party games? They have a database full of about a hundred jackbox games that were pitched but not used, since rejected games often get featured in later party packs.
Notably, one of those jackbox games is called Poop Cake. Won’t detail how it works in case it does get released, but there is a rejected jackbox game called Poop Cake that exists and is officially documented for potential future use.
Worked for an ultra-famous, multiple-Oscar winning actor. He was developing an espionage movie as a pet project. I was hired as a researcher. Mostly I found him people in the spy business to talk to. I would read everything available on the person (usually there wasn't much, but I could at least learn everything publicly known about the institution they worked for). I would brief him and together we would conduct the interview with the screenwriter.
He wanted the project to proceed in complete secrecy, which under normal conditions would be impossible. People like meeting movie stars and they can't help talking about it. If we were researching any other arena, word would get out. The cool thing about talking to spies is that they keep secrets for a living. We interviewed a former head of the Mossad, a former head of Shin Bet, the guy who ran the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan for the CIA, the guy who ran the Contras in Nicaragua for the CIA, and even a former Mossad agent the Mossad was trying to kill. Not one peep ever became public.
Over the years some of those contacts became friends of the movie star. This is unusual. It's hard for movie stars to have friends. Apparently professional spies are good at it. When you are ultra-famous, the people you value most are the ones who keep their mouths shut.
Uber was planning to make their own Google Street view for use in the app to better help drivers find riders and to map the world for driverless car technology . But they were going to use Uber drivers to capture the images for the streetview. The plan was to mail out inexpensive GoPro like devices that magnetically attached to the roof of the driver's cars. Each would have SD cards that could be mailed back to Uber. Routes would be generated and the drivers could accept them in the app and get paid. This plan fell through quickly and uber eventually sources this data from third parties and ultimately abandoned their in-house driverless car ambitions.
Also Microsoft developed a really cool backpack mounted camera that was going to be used for something like Google Street view. The plan was to take it into pedestrian only areas so you could get imagery indoors like malls and in walking spots. The United States military snatched up the entire project for their own use and that product was never released or even announced to consumers.
I got into a super small alpha test of a game in... 2014? It was a new survival game, one of those where you build during the day and try to survive the night, and let me tell you, the game was so, so meh. I played in a small server for about 4 hours and was so bored I just stopped playing for the rest of my access time.
There were all kinds of issues, not with the tech, but just glaring flaws in how the game worked. Some resources were way too abundant, some were really rare, there was practically no music, and the guns were dull. We also completely broke the enemy AI by building a jump pad to get up to a floating platform that required using your air control, so the zombies couldn't get up to us.
The game was Fortnite. The feedback on that alpha we played was so bad they basically took the whole game back into development until the version you know came out. What we were playing was a pretty early version of Save the World, except it was more like a typical Survival game. No BR back then, as you might expect.
The sequel trilogy had a plan. You can even see the narrative coming over the hill for the final stretch in the closing moments of The Last Jedi.
Kylo Ren was supposed to die evil. He was literally supposed to be an embodiment of the antithesis of the hero’s journey. Like if Luke Skywalker was born evil and had to resist the light to become ultimate evil. It would be Rey’s one great failure: she could not save him. It was supposed to be a message to young girls that just because you want to fix someone doesn’t mean you’ll always succeed.
However TPTB (*coughKATHLEENcough*) chickened out when they saw how huge the Reylo fandom was and scrapped their plans for 9 and hired JJ to c**p out whatever the hell Rise of Skywalker was.
I can not wait for the tell all’s to be written about the making of that trilogy.
I have tons more details about what went down too, like Driver only being down for the role if the ending stayed the same and how pissed he was when it changed.
Oh I am terribly interested in this. The message to girls would've been great, it's something we need these days.
GE knowingly put shitty compressors in their fridge units knowing they would fail within a year. Rather than do an extremely expensive recall they offered to replace the units for free if someone complained knowing that a large percentage of people just buy a new unit.
The shitty compressor was so cheap to make they kept using it in their profile lineup.
When Intel unequivocally announced that they were not developing mobile phone hardware, I was testing their mobile phone hardware kits.
When Chili’s first got their Awesome Blossom, there were no machines to cut the onion, so we did it by hand.
I had to sign an NDA before they showed me how to do it.
This was in November, 1990, Ft.Worth, Tx.
I worked on the browser for a couple of Nintendo devices back in the day. We had to black out the windows and work in isolation from the rest of the company with a curtain around the door so no one could see the device prototypes when we went in and out. The projects all had codenames so no one else at our company would know what we were working on. We weren't allowed to talk about work at lunch in the canteen either. Still some of the best times of my career.
Every voice query you say into your phone is recorded.
Imagine the billions of „NO I don’t want to use… argh how do I turn it off… friggin button… DEACTIVATE VOICE…” out there somewhere.
I worked as a producer at a local news station in North Carolina and my NDA just expired last month after leaving the job in 2019. I thought it was a bit odd that we had a very detailed and thorough set of rules on mentioning the personal views/behavior of the "talent" who worked at the station but after like a week on the job I realized why. Basically, half the people you see on tv, even in the local news, are absolute tyrants. The other half are nice but are generally just talking heads with little substance. It was disappointing and I realized then why we had to keep our lips shut while we worked there.
you mean you actually think people like Tucker C have anything in their heads except soundbites?
Played in the orchestra for a diamond company at a number of their Christmas parties they threw a few years ago. After the Kardashian heist in Paris they didn’t want us sharing where and when the parties were until we’ll after the parties were over for security reasons.
We used the B2 in the gulf war in 1990, 6 months after its official first flight and continued using it under different call signs throughout the early and mid 90's. We did night mid air refueling missions with it to keep people from seeing it in use. It wouldnt officially enter service until 1997.
I would expect this to happen with a lot of the more advanced military tech. Build it, test it, revamp it, and keep working on it until it can't really be improved much more, then call it "new" and make it public. That way the enemy and the public think it's state-of-the-art, and there's not yet a solution to beat it.
That a yacht manufacturer advertising a 'Kevlar hull' need only install 2 sq/ft of a 3000 sq/ft hull for the statement to be enforceable in court.
I did some IT stuff for a state government (a couple actually, but only one had me sign an NDA).
Nothing terribly interesting other than there is so little for tourists to do in the state that they photoshopped people kayaking in the super polluted river that no one would dream kayaking in
Even worse, they listed attractions from the next state over as something tourists could do while visiting them.
I dont actually know if it expires, but I'm not in the service anymore, so i dont care.
At the end of Navy basic training in the u.s., you go through an exercise called Battle Stations. Yes, they actually make you sign an NDA for just this.
It's a 12 hour simulation of life on a ship, in a huge mockup made by universal studios, which tells you how realistic it actually is. Among other things, the p-ways are at least twice as wide as reality.
It takes place overnight, so you're running on zero sleep. You get split into groups of maybe six or eight people, with a supervisor who just just battle stations at the training camp. You do a bunch of scripted scenarios throughout the night, starting with loading cargo and casting off, then doing some basic tasks like watch monitoring. I remember one took place is the water purification plant, and we needed serious hearing protection.
Partway through the ship comes under attack by some enemy, and the scenarios become damage control oriented. Fighting a fire, crawling through wreckage to find injured people and getting them to safety, moving ammo racks to a different compartment to avoid flooding.
The scenarios themselves were fun, but the real challenge is staying awake. Between each one you go back to a shared compartment and wait around for every other team to finish their thing. No sleeping, no sitting, no leaning. Boring as shit when you're not actually doing something.
After it ends you get to exchange your Recruit cap for a Navy one. They also play an inspirational video which happened to have one of our RDCs in it. Then basic training is over, except you're still living there for at least a couple days of nothing until you can leave for A school. Also, no sleep until the next night.
This is odd to hear. We did almost the same thing with an old 1800s ship in the 4th grade.
I had to sign an NDA before working with Sears. It was basically saying I wouldn't talk about the tactics they were using to survive in a changing world. That didn't age well. It was difficult to keep a straight face during orientation, but I knew they were going to be bankrupt in a few years, the writing was on the wall, but at the time I needed the job experience. We also had to sign a non-compete agreement, which I laughed at as well, internally of course
I did an advert for what was at the time HTCs biggest swing into ultra high end phone technology. I was allowed to hold the phone during filming and a guard put it in a suitcase at all other times. I was not to talk about the phone until it was on sale to the general public.
Pretty lame now, but I had tech friends who knew I did the ad grill me about stuff. I wasn't even allowed to say what color it was.
I was able to get a hands on of the iPhone X, a few weeks before it was released. In 2017 it was a very exciting phone, and it was thrilling seeing something with "just" a bezel. Good times.
don't buy fine art except from a real dealer in a working gallery or a specific specialist, never just anywhere... the carribean/cruise industry is so full of vanity galleieries, its a scandal waiting to happen
Or... Just buy a picture you like, at a price you are comfortable spending. I've bought a few limited edition prints direct from the artists. Best case, they're the next Banksy, and I have a very expensive nice picture on the wall. Worst case I have a nice picture on the wall....
Most F-22 fighter jets have a decepticon sticker somewhere on them.
Awesome. I have no idea why an NDA would protect that kind of information, but it’s sweet to know that Starscream is still alive and well.
In the early 80s, I was a struggling theatre person trying to make ends meet. I knew a lot of production so most of my gigs (in the pre-gig economy days) was a day here and there doing corporate production, like conferences and meetings. They paid amazingly well. I was hired to do sound for a top secret meeting at Smith-Kline. NDAs were routine so I didn’t think twice. There was a group of video guys to manage images and such and a couple of us audio guys whose job it was to run the mics of the people in the meeting up and down, and we were all hidden behind the screen. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss recent research they had which showed that stomach ulcers were caused by what they called “campylobacter pylori”. Smith-Kline’s #1 drug at the time was called tagamet, and it was an ulcer treatment that worked by inhibiting the production of stomach acid. It was going to go out of patent in the next few years. The top secret meeting was to discuss the fact that they had discovered that the most effective treatment for stomach ulcers, with this new information on campylobacter pylori, was bismic salts which just happened to be the main ingredient in pepto bismol, the big over the counter stomach medication in the US at the time. They had to decide whether to release the studies they had which showed their #1 drug was not as effective as an otc medication, or suppress their data and hope they got to the end of their patent on tagamet to get as much money as possible before the truth came out. I don’t recall any decision anymore. I know the info did not come out for years, and I remember telling the story as soon as ten years had passed, and saying they voted to suppress the data, but I cannot swear to that. The point is, they knew and years passed before it became common knowledge that stomach ulcers can be treated with antibiotics. It was my first introduction into a world where people’s health is secondary to profits. The bitter irony was I HAD stomach ulcers and took tagamet, so was a real victim of their decision. I suffered until the mid 90s when I was finally cured.
Except stomach ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori. Did they rename the bacterium or just get the specific cause wrong?
They tried bringing WoW to Xbox.
Spoiler, didn't f****n happen.
When Google Stadia was just a thing that was being thought about by the company, their totally useful helpful market research demo wasn't even a little indicative of what they were doing. They showed five seconds of a cutscene from what I think was an assassin's creed game, just a bird flying over a forest, and asked whether it was good.
I had an "artist" (he told me he was known all over the world) have me sign an NDA when I was a young website designer. He wanted a site to promote his new sculpture idea. I recall it was a group of kids holding hands in a circle, it looked ok but not unlike any sculpture you'd see outside a public library. This guy was saying it would lead to world peace and such.
The requirements for the website were CRAZY detailed, like 40 pages of instruction. It had diagrams of how I should use the mouse to make blur effects and similar bullshittery. I remember we were going over his 'vision' after I signed the NDA and vividly thinking "oh, this guy is just plain crazy." After 10 minutes I said I had an emergency and had to go and just never talked with him again.
I have an artist friend like this in a group of mostly IT nerds. He drew out his entire website on A4 pages glued together and every time he wants a change it’s another set of handdrawn ‚website blueprints’. We indulge him, make what we want and then convince him it’s exactly what he asked for. I imagine he does the same to us when we ask for something outrageous in his field of expertise so it all evens out. ;)
Worked at a private low security psyc ward years back so obviously had to sign the NDA as they were criminally insane. As in they were put there because they were too crazy for a regular prison.
Let me tell you in the private institutes the health care team including the nurses and doctors do not really give a shit AT ALL. As long as you're not fighting us it's fine. If you do start fighting you get put on the floor and held so the nurse can come running in with a needle to the ass to calm you down. That's about it.
Now that they've stopped developing disney infinity for the wii so many years ago, all I can remember was testing the game, using a hoverboard and slowly sinking into the ground.
I found pallets of candy in the top of the racks that was behind displays and furniture in my Wal-Mart, one pallet had been the home of a mother rat and her brood. Did you know rats don't like raisins but will eat the chocolate off and leave the raisins in a pile.
Management decided to put the unopened bags of candy on sale in the clearance aisle instead of disposing the rat infested pallet.
it's ok as long as they didn't sell the rat-eaten candy that's fine. it's not like you lick the bag it comes in.
Worked a private roll-out of the Boeing 777. Showing it to potential buyers before the general public. My NDA expired a couple of weeks later. Big deal was made in the briefing at the beginning. "No Cell Phones" big signs all around "No Cell Phones" "No pictures" first thing one of our chowder heads does is whip out his phone and take a selfie with the jet. Security was on him like white on rice, confiscated and wiped his phone, escorted him off the premises. We just waved Bye-bye
I used to design and produce custom products. Clients would come to us with an idea and pay for prototypes and then production. I’ve designed products you see every day, and others you don’t see but are part of your daily life. Also many classified military products and projects. I was bound by an NDA to my employer. I am named as inventor in many patents, but due to the nature of my employment the company(s) I worked for own the patents.
As a product designer myself, I have never seen this kind of workflow in charge of a single company. No one subcontracts development, engineering, prototyping, patenting, industrialization, cost optimization, production to a single company. No company allows a subcontractor to patent inventions made under a specific contract, since the IP generation is integral part of the contract.
My family had to sign an NDA to learn where my great aunt lived. When her mom died she moved into a group home but people don’t like group homes for some reason and the group home (apparently intellectually disabled people freak them out? Idk...) had to keep their presence a “secret” it’s all really weird and super unnecessarily cloak and dagger. Only my grandparents actually signed the thing so if there’s a family event they have to be the one to pick her up for it. My cousin is also moving to a group home soon this year, but her group home has no problem letting people know where they are so I really have no clue whatsoever why this other one does.
I'm gonna guess that the group home with the NDA has relatives of famous people living there.
While I was in college I would pick up side gigs from freelancer and other websites. One of these jobs (writing some simple code to analyse potential properties for a realestate investment group) became pretty steady and I was asked to sign an NDA.
The NDA was one of those boiler plate ones you could buy at an office supply store, it all felt pretty sloppy and my client never struck me as very competent in the field, but the pay was always on-time and the work was steady, so nbd.
As time went on, I realized I was just doing some random guy's job for him. I spent about 2.5 years doing it, it was incredibly easy and I taught myself some things that have come in handy since (I was studying physics at the time, so my computer science background was pretty rudimentary). I wrote a scraping tool to comb mls listings, then some simple vba code to do an analysis in excel. After an initial 60 hours or so to get things set up, I spent on average 4-5 hours a week on it and was paid between $12-$18k per year.
All in all it was a great gig, would totally do again.
work smarter, not harder. As long as client receives fair value your hours of input should not matter.
I was previously not allowed to tell you that the company I used to work for did white label work for BT, and that if you ever have a BT Openreach engineer come out to your property, they very rarely actually work for BT themselves (basically if they have a BT van) and are in fact one-job contractors with next to no knowledge of what they're actually repairing.
I was also not allowed to tell you that while it's standard practice to have sales people not take their contacts with them when they move companies, and that my business would enforce that by suing leavers who did, they also would not employ sales people who said they were not allowed (or not willing) to poach their previous clients and contacts from their previous company.
I heard that first part from an engineer himself. While he was on the job. So I'm wondering if this is an old thing, or if the guy I spoke to didn't know/care.
Nothing remotely interesting. I was a payroll officer and 401(k) trustee so it was just personal and privileged information. Like you know how you can't legally be prohibited for talking about salary? In my case I couldn't, because I had access to everyone's pay rate. I suspect most NDA's are similarly boring. I still won't talk about anything I remember because nobody cares.
I hired a manager for a professional sports team. Nothing fascinating, just that they were hiring a new manager then one got hired. The most interesting part is this kinda thing works a lot like any other higher level hire. I always assumed it'd work different but it really is just another job
If you hired Frank Lampard for any of his managerial gigs, you done goofed.
Wow, comment was downvoted 3 times? When you discover your parent has been lying about his work for 45 years, made millions of dollars which he used to travel the world, only to discover he was making chemical weapons? Usually banned by UN? And ppl are unhappy we cut ties w this person? Who spent his entire career choking babies and burning people and destroying ecosystems. Wow. Bored Pandas aren't who I hoped they would be 🙁
When I worked at Nationstar - now Mr. Cooper. The fiance of the 2nd nurse who got Ebola worked in the same office as us. They told the news that they sanitized and the fiance was quarantining. In fact (nothing was ever cleaned) and we all got an email that said we'd be fired if we didn't show up because if our managers were coming in, we should too. The fiance also came to work everyday. He wore a mask but socialized close with lots of people.... There were hundreds of people in the call center. He'd also be fired for not coming in.
Also, they were very strict about being "in compliance" so if you were on the phone during your scheduled break, that's ok.... But when you have to go to the bathroom for 5 minutes and it wasn't scheduled, the whole department + all managers got an email and it said, "Stephanie Rearick has been out of compliance for 5 minutes" when I got back I also had an IM waiting for me from my manager telling me that I wasn't on the phone. I replied all that I am in fact self-aware and I understand that I had to pee and apologized that my bladder did not understand company policy.... Got a big talking to for that one
Load More Replies... Found out 20 yrs after their retirement that a parent had been a chemical weapons engineer not just making more efficient refrigerators. So shocked I can still see the dinner plate in front of me when the beans were spilled. No remorse. Cut that person out of our lives, no going back from that.
Wow, comment was downvoted 3 times? When you discover your parent has been lying about his work for 45 years, made millions of dollars which he used to travel the world, only to discover he was making chemical weapons? Usually banned by UN? And ppl are unhappy we cut ties w this person? Who spent his entire career choking babies and burning people and destroying ecosystems. Wow. Bored Pandas aren't who I hoped they would be 🙁
When I worked at Nationstar - now Mr. Cooper. The fiance of the 2nd nurse who got Ebola worked in the same office as us. They told the news that they sanitized and the fiance was quarantining. In fact (nothing was ever cleaned) and we all got an email that said we'd be fired if we didn't show up because if our managers were coming in, we should too. The fiance also came to work everyday. He wore a mask but socialized close with lots of people.... There were hundreds of people in the call center. He'd also be fired for not coming in.
Also, they were very strict about being "in compliance" so if you were on the phone during your scheduled break, that's ok.... But when you have to go to the bathroom for 5 minutes and it wasn't scheduled, the whole department + all managers got an email and it said, "Stephanie Rearick has been out of compliance for 5 minutes" when I got back I also had an IM waiting for me from my manager telling me that I wasn't on the phone. I replied all that I am in fact self-aware and I understand that I had to pee and apologized that my bladder did not understand company policy.... Got a big talking to for that one
Load More Replies... Found out 20 yrs after their retirement that a parent had been a chemical weapons engineer not just making more efficient refrigerators. So shocked I can still see the dinner plate in front of me when the beans were spilled. No remorse. Cut that person out of our lives, no going back from that.
