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- 3. Workplace Callout: Who is an NDA protecting?
3. Workplace Callout: Who is an NDA protecting?
See the Top 5 Global Jobs of the Week, remote enthusiasts we admire, companies that stand out, and helpful tools for distributed workers.
Ada Ani & Jessica Ramos
April 05, 2023
Hey there,
#wearedistributed has grown by two and we are excited to meet you!
We, Jessica Ramos and Ada Ani are the two newest team members and we’ll be working together (Jessica from Spain and Ada from Nigeria) to bring you this newsletter, community events, and much more in the future. We’re overjoyed to be on board the We Are Distributed Team!
For this week’s entry, we’ll be covering different topics, from the Top 5 Global Jobs of the Week series which you can apply for on our global job board, remote enthusiasts we admire, companies that stand out, helpful tools, and most importantly, what’s the deal with NDAs?
Let’s dive in.
Top Global Jobs of the Week
1/ Product Developer - Audiense
Why apply: Salary is up to $65k, four-step application process, location-agnostic pay
Why join: Flexible working hours, 4.2 Glassdoor rating, 100% globally distributed
What you'll do: Carry out pair programming, and feel comfortable with this practice and other extreme programming practices: TDD, DDD, and clean code.
2/ Technical Advocate - Discourse
Why apply: Recommended salary range of up to $50k, paid assessment, transparent salary framework
Why join: 5.0 Glassdoor rating, Series A startup, flexible hours
What you'll do: Some days you may be running a small migration or helping a customer tweak their CSS. On other days, you may troubleshoot a technical issue with a customer’s site.
3/ Social Media Manager - BairesDev
Why apply: Recommended salary range of up to $55k, flexible hours, diversified and inclusive team
Why join: 100% work from home, 4.0 Glassdoor rating, hardware setup
What you'll do: Work with the marketing team to develop social media campaigns that help achieve corporate goals.
4/ Integration Engineer (PHP) - MailerLite
Why Apply: Fully remote and distributed team, salary is upto $60k, 4.9 Glassdoor rating
Why join: Global health insurance, hardware setup, company-paid retreats
What you'll do: Help implement and coordinate solutions across a variety of our products (MailerLite, MailerSend, MailerCheck, and upcoming ones).
5/ Full Stack Engineer - Appwrite
Why apply: Fully remote and distributed team, funding stage - Series A, 4.4 Glassdoor rating
Why join: Flexible work schedule, up to $3,500 in laptop and office reimbursement, healthcare benefits
What you'll do: Build reliable, performant, and scalable APIs and dashboards in an advanced Docker microservice architecture that developers would love to use.
Do you know anyone suited for these positions? Share this newsletter with them so they can apply.
Know any employers hiring for roles in at least 3 continents? Direct them to our job board to list a role.
Global Employment Advocate of the Week
Let’s give a virtual ovation to Talitha Thompson for continuously spreading the gospel of global work!
As seen in her bio,
“Why I do it: The best jobs are limited to a handful of the world's population who live in the wealthiest cities. However, brilliant people are everywhere…”
We could not agree more!
In one of her recent posts, Talitha sheds light on the importance of companies being transparent with a job’s pay.
Most job seekers feel reluctant to apply for jobs without a clear salary range as most recruiters will only wait until the last stage of the hiring process before disclosing pay.
Imagine spending hours in interviews and assessments only to be informed of a below industry standard pay.
Scenarios like this are time-wasting for both job seekers and recruiters and let’s be honest, if a company is paying fairly, why are they not proud to display it? 😒
Thank you, Talitha, for drawing attention to the importance of pay transparency and for being a remote work enthusiast!
Workplace Callout
Social media (or at least the job-centric part of it) has been agog since the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued a clarifying memo last week regarding the “scope” of a February ruling by the federal agency’s board.
This ruling says that U.S. employers cannot include blanket non-disparagement clauses in their severance packages, nor demand laid-off U.S. employees keep quiet about the terms of their exit.
This particular clause in NDAs has been increasingly common in recent years. US companies have used this “open-ended” clause to muzzle employees and stop them from speaking up about working conditions by offering a few weeks or months of pay in front of them at the exact moment they are losing their job.
Yikes.
With this new ruling, that part of most people’s NDAs is now void, making employees spill the tea about their former workplaces, and it has been quite a read.
Here are some excerpts:
I worked for one of the largest healthcare payment processors in the US. I worked on a team of data scientists whose main job was to find new ways to fuck over doctors on behalf of insurance companies. They fired our entire team at the start of the pandemic.
— יונה the Kraken, a.k.a "Angsty Alan", a.k.a (@EstreyaGraf)
10:56 PM • Mar 26, 2023
When I worked at Vice, my boss was outed as a sexual predator and was reported to HR and they did nothing :)
— Kim Kelly (@GrimKim)
12:41 AM • Mar 26, 2023
The big progressive PAC I worked denied me disability accommodations and consistently violated our collective bargaining agreement because they didn’t want us to eat lunch
— amanda silberling (@asilbwrites)
4:14 PM • Mar 25, 2023
I was given a 27 page non-compete/NDA when I separated from a company after acquisition. 27 pages. I had a lawyer review it. She said it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever seen.
— Dr GiGi, DNP, RN, FAAN 💜☮️ 🩺💉👩🏽⚕️🇺🇸 (@YRoseTexas)
1:11 PM • Mar 26, 2023
I worked for a cosmetic company who’s VP asked if we can edit black models into old Instagram posts during the height of the George Floyd protests(they only used skinny white girls).
— Jorts are just baby jants (@JortsOverJants)
3:47 AM • Mar 25, 2023
In a normal company with a great work culture, NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, are legal contracts between a person (employer) with sensitive information and a person (employee) who will gain access to that sensitive information and data.
Nowadays, NDAs are blankets that employers use to get away with almost anything as seen in the tweets shared.
Workplaces need to do better, re-evaluate their priorities and understand that NDAs are to protect sensitive data, not to cover up vices such as discrimination and all forms of sexual, and physical abuse.
We look forward to seeing more countries implement laws like this that protect employees!
Distributed Company of the Week
This week, we wanted to give a shout-out to DuckDuckGo as our Distributed Company of the Week!
DuckDuckGo is a private app you can download to your browser that protects your privacy by eliminating online tracking, offering email encryption, private search, and more.
Some of the reasons DuckDuckGo stood out to us: The company is transparent about their hiring process–they even pay you for test projects–as well as their salary, which is included on their job listings.
Their company culture values transparency as well: they promise location-agnostic pay, full transparency about projects going on in the company no matter your role, and no traditional hierarchy which means collaboration happens between all team members.
Some of their benefits include stipends for wellness and co-working, reimbursement for software, flexible time off, and up to 8 weeks of medical leave for mental illness, injury, and more.
Their 4.9 rating on Glassdoor helps back that up, with many reviews highlighting their transparency and culture as pros to working here. Plus, they’re hiring!
Distributed Tool of the Week
AI has been a hot topic of discussion in the past couple of years, and while the thought of it can be a little scary, we believe there’s potential for remote workers and job seekers to use AI tools to their advantage.
For this week’s Distributed Tool of the Week, we’re highlighting an AI tool called Lavender for crafting emails that’ll get you better, and hopefully more, responses.
Lavender works by coaching you through your email writing by scoring it 0-100–you’ll need a score of 90 for an email to get the green light. For job seekers, this can be incredibly helpful when cold pitching.
They even offer a template you can use to cold email hiring managers, which includes suggestions like notable experience or skills and even suggestions on how to follow up if you don’t get a response the first time.
We like that Lavender not only tells you what you need to correct but offers suggestions and changes which you can use to boost your score.
Plus, it’s 100% free for job seekers!
In the end, tools like this can be extremely beneficial by cutting down on time doing admin work and making you a better crafter of emails.
Here’s a quick demonstration if you want to learn more about how it works and instructions for how to access it!
Global Employment Word of the Week
Ready to learn something new?
Asynchronous- When you send any type of work communication without expecting an immediate response, you're communicating asynchronously. This type of communication doesn’t happen in real-time, either due to time zone differences among co-workers or an individual worker’s schedule.
We hope you had as much fun reading this as we did putting this together for you.
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About this newsletter…
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