March 20, 2023 • 18 mins
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In this episode of the Employee Survival Guide Mark discusses what things you can take and not take with you after being laid off or terminated for cause. There is a common misperception among employees about what exactly an employer owns. Mark explains that work for hire means anything you do for the employer belongs to the employer. Many employers make employees sign Nondisclosure and Confidential Agreements to protect company information. Listen and find out the quick and easy answers to this very real and large problem many employees experience. The most important item companies cannot control is each employee's individual intellectual property, i.e. their work experience and know how.
This episode was prompted by a Wall Street Journal article Mark read dated March 16, 2023 captioned: Worried About Layoffs? What Files You Can Take With You—and How to Do It
The content of this website is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice nor create an attorney-client relationship. Carey & Associates, P.C. makes no warranty, express or implied, regarding the accuracy of the information contained on this website or to any website to which it is linked to.
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Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:08):
Hey, it's Mark here and welcome to the next edition of
the Employee Survival Guide,where I tell you as always, what
your employer does definitelynot want you to know about, and
a lot more. Hey, it's mark hereand welcome back to the employee
Survival Guide. Today, I'm gonnado something different. And
every day this week, I'm tryingto muscle something out have
having do a daily podcast foryou on a different topic. I read
(00:33):
voraciously every day, trying tokeep current to basically keep
you current came across anarticle in the Wall Street
Journal today, but it came outon the 16th of March. And the
title of the article was worriedabout layoffs. What files can
you take with you and how to doit. And so a pretty familiar
(00:56):
topic to me. And I wanted toshare some helpful and
insightful information to allowyou to figure out what your
manager is not telling you andyour HR departments not telling
you so that you're protected,and also how you can deal with
that. property issues orpersonal property issues on your
(01:18):
computers cuz everything's oncomputers these days, of course,
and but what happens if you makemistakes and you take
information you shouldn't? Andso I'll try to to exhaust this
topic very quickly for you. Andso what what can you take with
you, as you are among the socalled 100,000 employees in the
(01:43):
tech sector who've been laid offin 2023, according to layoffs
dot FYI, where the article didmention that, but there's
probably close to two and 1000plus layoffs occurring. And
obviously, there's also peoplegetting rehired. But
nonetheless, you've been workingat your company, for whatever
(02:04):
length of time, you haveinformation that you worked on
projects you worked on, youknow, current information you
want to use to bring your nextemployer, let's say you want to
use it to, I don't know fromanything from the directly
compete with your employer,because the Federal Trade
Commission is going to ban noncompetes to whatever, to just
(02:26):
simply, hey, I liked thatspreadsheet that was using or
that project or that deck,whatever that was, I want to use
that but not necessarily takethat information. But I want to
use it for idea making and mynext job because that's what I
do. So can you take let's saythe slide deck? Can you take the
(02:47):
spreadsheet? Can you take thatinformation that was on that
computer? Or you're about toleave your job? Can you save it
and download it onto yourpersonal computer? The answer is
depends. That's not helping youright? So I'm not trying to be
difficult. But the strong answeris no. Whatever your company has
(03:11):
you do as a work for hire.
Overall, you're basically givingthem every access to everything
you create for them, that'swhat's called work for hire is
you'll see that, and sometimesan offer letter, you'll see that
in nondisclosure agreements. Andwhat work for hire means is
simply it's it sounds like it isyou work for them you produce
whatever it is you produce forthem while you're working at
will, then the company owns yourIP that you created for them.
(03:34):
That's a simple rule. So whatdoes that mean? It means your
spreadsheet your deck your emailthe row to your colleague,
moments before you are fired.
That email the the singularelectronic document the the
paper file it all it belongs toyour employer by law, state and
federal. So you can't take itwith you. But people do it all
(03:57):
the time. And especially clientscome to me with a layoff. They
have chosen information theyalready in their possession,
which they have with them,either because they copied on a
printer, whatever it is, or theymoved it over to a private email
address. Whatever they did toprotect themselves in the case
the employer was going to firethem or discriminate or breach
(04:19):
of contract, whatever theywanted to do. So as you can see
a lot information really isowned by the employer. Well
what's not owned by theemployer? Let's think about like
personal photographs. I mean,some employers would be
ridiculous argument to make thatthey would actually own your
photograph because you stuck iton your work computer. It's your
photograph and they can'tacquire your likeness of your
(04:42):
face. So that's an easy one. SoI think when it comes to the not
to segue too far into this topicarea because you can go
different directions but the youshould not be saving information
on your corporate computer.
That's personal in nature. Ifyou have the next invention,
that's gonna make you a lot ofmoney. Don't save it on your
(05:02):
computer. Okay, keep everythingoffline. Let's get into the idea
that ever so many companies nowhave what's called employee
monitoring software at somemagnitude at some level. And
they're monitoring what you do.
And they actually have controls.
And you actually haveexperiences personally, where
you can't go certain areas inthe internet, and you can't do
(05:23):
certain activities, and you'rebarred and for whatever you've
already seen these blockadewalls inside of your own
devices, they also have, that'sa more physical thing that you
can actually see and interactwith. But employers oftentimes
don't show you they're watchingyou, because that's intentional.
So when you want to screenshotsomething, or download an email,
they can see you do that. Andit's all it's all timestamp
(05:47):
records of everything happening.
So let's not be naive thatemployers don't have or can't
see what you're doing, they cansee everything you're doing. So
what can you take with you? Notmuch anything. And there's
certain topics you can do, I'llget to that in a second. A
covered employee monitoring, soyou know what that means. NDAs
(06:12):
non disclosure agreements andtrade secrets, what we're really
talking about is the employerprotecting lawfully what's
theirs. They do to do that underconfidentiality, proprietary
agreements, that in effect, baryou from taking any of their
information. And they'll go toAdd Link degrees to explain in
those documents, all variousnuances of the type of property
(06:36):
belonging to the company, youshould pay attention, because no
Corp is going to say thatthey're incorrect, they have a
right to protect themselves thatagreement. And I don't disagree,
I think those agreements shouldprotect the companies where I
disagree is that the companieshave non compete agreements. And
they use those to extract outeven more things to basically
(06:58):
screw with you and prevent youfrom getting a job when these
proprietary NDAs andconfidentiality agreements, do
their job and do it successfullyto protect the employers
information. Non competes aregoing to go the way of the you
know, whatever example you wantto come up with, but the Federal
Trade Commission is going to banthem for a period of time until
they get some court challenge.
So NDAs trade secrets. Here's ananother federal statute to be
(07:24):
aware of. It's a weird one, andI don't create this stuff. And
so here it is. It's called theDefend Trade Secrets Act. It was
created, because lobbyists foremployers wanting to stop people
from putting stuff and federalcourt proceedings have of
confidential, proprietarynature. the Defend Trade Secrets
(07:45):
Act, you'll probably see in someof your NDAs and proprietary
information agreements, say inessence, that if you want to put
something that is proprietary tothe company, in a public filing
in a court, you have to file itunder seal, they're not saying
you can't include theinformation, you just have to
file it under seal. If youdon't, then you actually can
(08:08):
face criminal and also amonetary penalty. Early statute,
I don't think I have not seen acase they actually somebody got
prosecuted or sued over theissue yet. But now, you know,
the statute exists. And itapplies to this. It applies to
this because you're gonna useall that raw data of like
emails, deck spreadsheets andstuff to help you build your
(08:31):
case. Or let's say you wanted touse it in some other manner. And
you got sued over it. I mean,there's I'll just pause and say
that the statute exists. And Itried to hold myself back from
different topic areas here, butcontact lists, this is a good
one customer lists. customerlists are generally open source
information. I wouldn'tnecessarily try to just cut and
(08:54):
paste an entire list. Becreative, in terms of whatever
it is, but the company will sayits trade secret. It's really
not because you can actually goout and buy the list if you want
to like if you are dealing withpeople in the financial
industry, you can easily findthose names of those companies.
So contact lists generally arenot protected as trade secrets.
(09:16):
A covered work emails,definitely
yes. Template spreadsheets toall definitely yes. What about a
cover work for hire already andpersonal photos have already
been discussed. Let me talkabout a topic that you haven't
seen coming yet in thisconversation. And that is your
(09:40):
personal intellectual propertywhere you actually have personal
intellectual property that youyou own. Think about this for a
second. You do. Let's say you'vebeen working in the financial
industry and you're been therefor about 1520 years and you are
(10:00):
I don't know, you've createdthis protocol of whatever it is
of method, and you want to go tothe next employer because you
just got fired and laid off. Andyou want to use it to your next
employers benefit. Or let's sayyou want to become a consultant
like a McKinsey type or Deloitteand Touche, and you want to use
that, to sell the idea. And, canyou and use in the personal and
(10:27):
intellectual property is youryears of experience of doing
something, perfecting it theways and means of how to do it.
So think about the open sourcenature of industry practice, or
whatever that is. But you havethis different personal way of
how you do it, or you havesomething that is just novel
enough, that makes it somethingof your own adventure, but not
(10:50):
necessarily invention, orsomebody would file with the
patent trademark office, butit's just a different way. And
you have basically theintellectual knowledge and
experience that makes it yourpersonal IP. So that's what you
really describe when you'reworking experience is really
your personal IP. This isactually serious. I do put this
in executive contracts, I do tryto carve out this personal,
(11:13):
intellectual property IP as muchas I possibly can. When
employers are trying tooverstate their control of what
is proprietary information withan executive, because the
companies don't own your priorexperience. That makes sense.
And so that's what personalintellectual property is.
(11:33):
Companies want to trample on it.
I mean, we're talking over thetop trample on it, you'll see it
come in the form of languagelike this, where in the
inventions agreement, you wantto call it generically, the
proprietary confidentialityagreements, you'll see a
paragraph that says yet, yougive your consent and waiver to
assigning the company, anattorney, in fact, to do these
(11:57):
things, had you known they wouldhappen, they don't need your
consent. And what it really istrying to say to you all that
legal crap that they're tryingto throw at you is that we're
going to basically fake you outmake you sign this agreement
that you probably didn't read.
He gotta read your agreements,folks, because that's why I'm
here to explain it. But read theagreements, because the employer
(12:20):
can fake you out and no quarterlaw can kind of retool what,
once you give it away? Can youstop them from doing this? Well,
yeah, you can negotiate thoseagreements, you can put in an
addendum to the agreement andsaying, you know, in essence,
you don't owe my personal IP,that's mine. It's my work
experience. You can't, you can'tadopt it. And companies try to
(12:42):
do that. So this really is theencapsulation of the topic of
when you leave a job, what canyou take from away with you? And
you've now discovered that well,email, spreadsheets, decks,
things of that nature, reallybelong to the company? are the
(13:02):
ways to get it out? Yeah, youcan use screenshots on your
phone, you can try to forwardinformation to your personal
email addresses. And people dothat all the time. I'm trying to
tell you that that informationon your personal computer that
you forwarded actually stillbelongs to the company, but
there's no way companies and andthis is real time information.
There's no way I've never seencompanies go through a process
(13:25):
and some court of saying afterthe person sign their severance
agreement, and then try to getback their information. They say
in the agreement, when you signa severance agreement, if you
enter in one that you gave allyour information back, well,
what if he kept some? Well, thenyou're in risk of breach of the
severance agreement? Well, whatif you didn't have a severance
agreement, and you just werefired. And that happens a lot.
(13:47):
And the company, there's reallyno mechanism, and I don't see
companies going after employeesto recover the one email, you
know, that was sent to so and soon a project. The companies
knows this, they're not going tobend over backwards to do
because it's a waste of money,for what value one email that
they already have it saved andbacked up, they don't know what
(14:08):
they already know what it is.
And it's kind of a giganticdeterrent effect. You know, if
you create an impression thatthe employer is this giant ogre,
and going to come out and justhaunt the corners of your life,
and then mess with you in thefuture, but some companies try
to do well, in fact, they do.
And they they do this becausethey don't they lack the means
(14:30):
financially to go after everysingle employee to collect all
their data, and then police itafter that. There's no system
out there, folks. It doesn'texist. It's it's a mere
psychological threat. And solong as some companies or if a
lot of companies behave in thismanner, and you believe it,
you've created a fiction thatthey have some way to catch you,
(14:51):
but there's really no way tocatch you. So I just want to
share that, that insight withyou. I don't experience those
cases, all I'm doing isemployment law, I don't have
people contacting me becausethey've been sued by their
former employer, because theyhave taken spreadsheets and
decks. I mean, these caseshappen occasionally. Rarely. I
(15:14):
mean, you know, 1000s of peopleI've dealt with, I mean, we're
talking like 1%. That's howminuscule this is, and how large
the transformation of data fromcorporate to personal occurs
every day. This get problem getseven murkier, when you have
people who now work, whetheryou're working in the office or
(15:37):
remote work, using their ownpersonal devices. And let's say
my office, I, in my office, Ibought a laptop and maintain the
laptop for all employees,because I'm not trying to
control you know, control thesecurity and cybersecurity. And
so that's normal employers do.
Some employers don't do that.
And they force employees to usetheir own devices, because
(16:00):
employers are cheap, okay?
They're cheap folks. And youshould actually ask your
employer to, you know, give youa device, because they're
getting, basically free use ofyour device and all its
maintenance. But it's, it's,it's lousy corporate,
cybersecurity, if you want toask me, but that's the risk. But
here's the problem. You're usingyour own personal computer, and
(16:21):
you're going on their platform,and you're storing information
on your computer. Whose is it?
It's on your computer, they tookthe rest of let it out there on
your personal computer. And thenyou get the murky area, what
happens when the person's letgo? And do they kind of send you
a certified receipt and saying,give it back to me? Well, they
(16:44):
tried to, but it's still outthere. So a lot of devices are
being used personally andprofessionally, that have a lot
of information belonging tocorporations. And there's really
no way for the corporations topolice it. And they are using
software to monitor it. Maybethey keep tabs but they're not
doing anything to to affect thatoutcome and get it back from
(17:05):
you. A lot of threats and a lotof just older behavior by
employers, the same old same olyou're used to, okay, you're
used to being beaten out downand beaten the shit out of and
by employers, and no one'sstanding up for you and telling
you what to do until me Well,that's what I do. Because I
don't really give shit anymorefor a long time. So that
concludes today's topic that Iwanted to bring to you. This is
(17:28):
not rehearse folks, I just layit out. I got obviously got a
lot of content to share withyou. I'm reading every day. So
I'll do the same thing tomorrowand day after that, and just
continue to bring this to you tobe informative, and because I
don't care. So I'm just tryingto help you out. Hope you enjoy
it. I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks. If you'd like theemployees to have a guide, I
(17:54):
really encourage you to leave areview. We try really hard to
produce information to youthat's informative, that's
timely that you can actually useand solve problems on your own
and at your employment. So ifyou like to leave a review
anywhere you listen to ourpodcasts, please do so. And
leave five stars becauseanything less than five is
really not as good right? I'llkeep it up. I'll keep up the
(18:16):
standards up. I'll keep theinformation flowing out you. If
you'd like to send me an emailand ask me a question. I'll
actually review it and post iton there. You can send it to M
car UI at ca PC law.com That'scat claw.com
Hey, it's Mark here and welcome to the next edition of
the Employee Survival Guide,where I tell you as always, what
your employer does definitelynot want you to know about, and
a lot more. Hey, it's mark hereand welcome back to the employee
Survival Guide. Today, I'm gonnado something different. And
every day this week, I'm tryingto muscle something out have
having do a daily podcast foryou on a different topic. I read
(00:33):
voraciously every day, trying tokeep current to basically keep
you current came across anarticle in the Wall Street
Journal today, but it came outon the 16th of March. And the
title of the article was worriedabout layoffs. What files can
you take with you and how to doit. And so a pretty familiar
(00:56):
topic to me. And I wanted toshare some helpful and
insightful information to allowyou to figure out what your
manager is not telling you andyour HR departments not telling
you so that you're protected,and also how you can deal with
that. property issues orpersonal property issues on your
(01:18):
computers cuz everything's oncomputers these days, of course,
and but what happens if you makemistakes and you take
information you shouldn't? Andso I'll try to to exhaust this
topic very quickly for you. Andso what what can you take with
you, as you are among the socalled 100,000 employees in the
(01:43):
tech sector who've been laid offin 2023, according to layoffs
dot FYI, where the article didmention that, but there's
probably close to two and 1000plus layoffs occurring. And
obviously, there's also peoplegetting rehired. But
nonetheless, you've been workingat your company, for whatever
(02:04):
length of time, you haveinformation that you worked on
projects you worked on, youknow, current information you
want to use to bring your nextemployer, let's say you want to
use it to, I don't know fromanything from the directly
compete with your employer,because the Federal Trade
Commission is going to ban noncompetes to whatever, to just
(02:26):
simply, hey, I liked thatspreadsheet that was using or
that project or that deck,whatever that was, I want to use
that but not necessarily takethat information. But I want to
use it for idea making and mynext job because that's what I
do. So can you take let's saythe slide deck? Can you take the
(02:47):
spreadsheet? Can you take thatinformation that was on that
computer? Or you're about toleave your job? Can you save it
and download it onto yourpersonal computer? The answer is
depends. That's not helping youright? So I'm not trying to be
difficult. But the strong answeris no. Whatever your company has
(03:11):
you do as a work for hire.
Overall, you're basically givingthem every access to everything
you create for them, that'swhat's called work for hire is
you'll see that, and sometimesan offer letter, you'll see that
in nondisclosure agreements. Andwhat work for hire means is
simply it's it sounds like it isyou work for them you produce
whatever it is you produce forthem while you're working at
will, then the company owns yourIP that you created for them.
(03:34):
That's a simple rule. So whatdoes that mean? It means your
spreadsheet your deck your emailthe row to your colleague,
moments before you are fired.
That email the the singularelectronic document the the
paper file it all it belongs toyour employer by law, state and
federal. So you can't take itwith you. But people do it all
(03:57):
the time. And especially clientscome to me with a layoff. They
have chosen information theyalready in their possession,
which they have with them,either because they copied on a
printer, whatever it is, or theymoved it over to a private email
address. Whatever they did toprotect themselves in the case
the employer was going to firethem or discriminate or breach
(04:19):
of contract, whatever theywanted to do. So as you can see
a lot information really isowned by the employer. Well
what's not owned by theemployer? Let's think about like
personal photographs. I mean,some employers would be
ridiculous argument to make thatthey would actually own your
photograph because you stuck iton your work computer. It's your
photograph and they can'tacquire your likeness of your
(04:42):
face. So that's an easy one. SoI think when it comes to the not
to segue too far into this topicarea because you can go
different directions but the youshould not be saving information
on your corporate computer.
That's personal in nature. Ifyou have the next invention,
that's gonna make you a lot ofmoney. Don't save it on your
(05:02):
computer. Okay, keep everythingoffline. Let's get into the idea
that ever so many companies nowhave what's called employee
monitoring software at somemagnitude at some level. And
they're monitoring what you do.
And they actually have controls.
And you actually haveexperiences personally, where
you can't go certain areas inthe internet, and you can't do
(05:23):
certain activities, and you'rebarred and for whatever you've
already seen these blockadewalls inside of your own
devices, they also have, that'sa more physical thing that you
can actually see and interactwith. But employers oftentimes
don't show you they're watchingyou, because that's intentional.
So when you want to screenshotsomething, or download an email,
they can see you do that. Andit's all it's all timestamp
(05:47):
records of everything happening.
So let's not be naive thatemployers don't have or can't
see what you're doing, they cansee everything you're doing. So
what can you take with you? Notmuch anything. And there's
certain topics you can do, I'llget to that in a second. A
covered employee monitoring, soyou know what that means. NDAs
(06:12):
non disclosure agreements andtrade secrets, what we're really
talking about is the employerprotecting lawfully what's
theirs. They do to do that underconfidentiality, proprietary
agreements, that in effect, baryou from taking any of their
information. And they'll go toAdd Link degrees to explain in
those documents, all variousnuances of the type of property
(06:36):
belonging to the company, youshould pay attention, because no
Corp is going to say thatthey're incorrect, they have a
right to protect themselves thatagreement. And I don't disagree,
I think those agreements shouldprotect the companies where I
disagree is that the companieshave non compete agreements. And
they use those to extract outeven more things to basically
(06:58):
screw with you and prevent youfrom getting a job when these
proprietary NDAs andconfidentiality agreements, do
their job and do it successfullyto protect the employers
information. Non competes aregoing to go the way of the you
know, whatever example you wantto come up with, but the Federal
Trade Commission is going to banthem for a period of time until
they get some court challenge.
So NDAs trade secrets. Here's ananother federal statute to be
(07:24):
aware of. It's a weird one, andI don't create this stuff. And
so here it is. It's called theDefend Trade Secrets Act. It was
created, because lobbyists foremployers wanting to stop people
from putting stuff and federalcourt proceedings have of
confidential, proprietarynature. the Defend Trade Secrets
(07:45):
Act, you'll probably see in someof your NDAs and proprietary
information agreements, say inessence, that if you want to put
something that is proprietary tothe company, in a public filing
in a court, you have to file itunder seal, they're not saying
you can't include theinformation, you just have to
file it under seal. If youdon't, then you actually can
(08:08):
face criminal and also amonetary penalty. Early statute,
I don't think I have not seen acase they actually somebody got
prosecuted or sued over theissue yet. But now, you know,
the statute exists. And itapplies to this. It applies to
this because you're gonna useall that raw data of like
emails, deck spreadsheets andstuff to help you build your
(08:31):
case. Or let's say you wanted touse it in some other manner. And
you got sued over it. I mean,there's I'll just pause and say
that the statute exists. And Itried to hold myself back from
different topic areas here, butcontact lists, this is a good
one customer lists. customerlists are generally open source
information. I wouldn'tnecessarily try to just cut and
(08:54):
paste an entire list. Becreative, in terms of whatever
it is, but the company will sayits trade secret. It's really
not because you can actually goout and buy the list if you want
to like if you are dealing withpeople in the financial
industry, you can easily findthose names of those companies.
So contact lists generally arenot protected as trade secrets.
(09:16):
A covered work emails,definitely
yes. Template spreadsheets toall definitely yes. What about a
cover work for hire already andpersonal photos have already
been discussed. Let me talkabout a topic that you haven't
seen coming yet in thisconversation. And that is your
(09:40):
personal intellectual propertywhere you actually have personal
intellectual property that youyou own. Think about this for a
second. You do. Let's say you'vebeen working in the financial
industry and you're been therefor about 1520 years and you are
(10:00):
I don't know, you've createdthis protocol of whatever it is
of method, and you want to go tothe next employer because you
just got fired and laid off. Andyou want to use it to your next
employers benefit. Or let's sayyou want to become a consultant
like a McKinsey type or Deloitteand Touche, and you want to use
that, to sell the idea. And, canyou and use in the personal and
(10:27):
intellectual property is youryears of experience of doing
something, perfecting it theways and means of how to do it.
So think about the open sourcenature of industry practice, or
whatever that is. But you havethis different personal way of
how you do it, or you havesomething that is just novel
enough, that makes it somethingof your own adventure, but not
(10:50):
necessarily invention, orsomebody would file with the
patent trademark office, butit's just a different way. And
you have basically theintellectual knowledge and
experience that makes it yourpersonal IP. So that's what you
really describe when you'reworking experience is really
your personal IP. This isactually serious. I do put this
in executive contracts, I do tryto carve out this personal,
(11:13):
intellectual property IP as muchas I possibly can. When
employers are trying tooverstate their control of what
is proprietary information withan executive, because the
companies don't own your priorexperience. That makes sense.
And so that's what personalintellectual property is.
(11:33):
Companies want to trample on it.
I mean, we're talking over thetop trample on it, you'll see it
come in the form of languagelike this, where in the
inventions agreement, you wantto call it generically, the
proprietary confidentialityagreements, you'll see a
paragraph that says yet, yougive your consent and waiver to
assigning the company, anattorney, in fact, to do these
(11:57):
things, had you known they wouldhappen, they don't need your
consent. And what it really istrying to say to you all that
legal crap that they're tryingto throw at you is that we're
going to basically fake you outmake you sign this agreement
that you probably didn't read.
He gotta read your agreements,folks, because that's why I'm
here to explain it. But read theagreements, because the employer
(12:20):
can fake you out and no quarterlaw can kind of retool what,
once you give it away? Can youstop them from doing this? Well,
yeah, you can negotiate thoseagreements, you can put in an
addendum to the agreement andsaying, you know, in essence,
you don't owe my personal IP,that's mine. It's my work
experience. You can't, you can'tadopt it. And companies try to
(12:42):
do that. So this really is theencapsulation of the topic of
when you leave a job, what canyou take from away with you? And
you've now discovered that well,email, spreadsheets, decks,
things of that nature, reallybelong to the company? are the
(13:02):
ways to get it out? Yeah, youcan use screenshots on your
phone, you can try to forwardinformation to your personal
email addresses. And people dothat all the time. I'm trying to
tell you that that informationon your personal computer that
you forwarded actually stillbelongs to the company, but
there's no way companies and andthis is real time information.
There's no way I've never seencompanies go through a process
(13:25):
and some court of saying afterthe person sign their severance
agreement, and then try to getback their information. They say
in the agreement, when you signa severance agreement, if you
enter in one that you gave allyour information back, well,
what if he kept some? Well, thenyou're in risk of breach of the
severance agreement? Well, whatif you didn't have a severance
agreement, and you just werefired. And that happens a lot.
(13:47):
And the company, there's reallyno mechanism, and I don't see
companies going after employeesto recover the one email, you
know, that was sent to so and soon a project. The companies
knows this, they're not going tobend over backwards to do
because it's a waste of money,for what value one email that
they already have it saved andbacked up, they don't know what
(14:08):
they already know what it is.
And it's kind of a giganticdeterrent effect. You know, if
you create an impression thatthe employer is this giant ogre,
and going to come out and justhaunt the corners of your life,
and then mess with you in thefuture, but some companies try
to do well, in fact, they do.
And they they do this becausethey don't they lack the means
(14:30):
financially to go after everysingle employee to collect all
their data, and then police itafter that. There's no system
out there, folks. It doesn'texist. It's it's a mere
psychological threat. And solong as some companies or if a
lot of companies behave in thismanner, and you believe it,
you've created a fiction thatthey have some way to catch you,
(14:51):
but there's really no way tocatch you. So I just want to
share that, that insight withyou. I don't experience those
cases, all I'm doing isemployment law, I don't have
people contacting me becausethey've been sued by their
former employer, because theyhave taken spreadsheets and
decks. I mean, these caseshappen occasionally. Rarely. I
(15:14):
mean, you know, 1000s of peopleI've dealt with, I mean, we're
talking like 1%. That's howminuscule this is, and how large
the transformation of data fromcorporate to personal occurs
every day. This get problem getseven murkier, when you have
people who now work, whetheryou're working in the office or
(15:37):
remote work, using their ownpersonal devices. And let's say
my office, I, in my office, Ibought a laptop and maintain the
laptop for all employees,because I'm not trying to
control you know, control thesecurity and cybersecurity. And
so that's normal employers do.
Some employers don't do that.
And they force employees to usetheir own devices, because
(16:00):
employers are cheap, okay?
They're cheap folks. And youshould actually ask your
employer to, you know, give youa device, because they're
getting, basically free use ofyour device and all its
maintenance. But it's, it's,it's lousy corporate,
cybersecurity, if you want toask me, but that's the risk. But
here's the problem. You're usingyour own personal computer, and
(16:21):
you're going on their platform,and you're storing information
on your computer. Whose is it?
It's on your computer, they tookthe rest of let it out there on
your personal computer. And thenyou get the murky area, what
happens when the person's letgo? And do they kind of send you
a certified receipt and saying,give it back to me? Well, they
(16:44):
tried to, but it's still outthere. So a lot of devices are
being used personally andprofessionally, that have a lot
of information belonging tocorporations. And there's really
no way for the corporations topolice it. And they are using
software to monitor it. Maybethey keep tabs but they're not
doing anything to to affect thatoutcome and get it back from
(17:05):
you. A lot of threats and a lotof just older behavior by
employers, the same old same olyou're used to, okay, you're
used to being beaten out downand beaten the shit out of and
by employers, and no one'sstanding up for you and telling
you what to do until me Well,that's what I do. Because I
don't really give shit anymorefor a long time. So that
concludes today's topic that Iwanted to bring to you. This is
(17:28):
not rehearse folks, I just layit out. I got obviously got a
lot of content to share withyou. I'm reading every day. So
I'll do the same thing tomorrowand day after that, and just
continue to bring this to you tobe informative, and because I
don't care. So I'm just tryingto help you out. Hope you enjoy
it. I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks. If you'd like theemployees to have a guide, I
(17:54):
really encourage you to leave areview. We try really hard to
produce information to youthat's informative, that's
timely that you can actually useand solve problems on your own
and at your employment. So ifyou like to leave a review
anywhere you listen to ourpodcasts, please do so. And
leave five stars becauseanything less than five is
really not as good right? I'llkeep it up. I'll keep up the
(18:16):
standards up. I'll keep theinformation flowing out you. If
you'd like to send me an emailand ask me a question. I'll
actually review it and post iton there. You can send it to M
car UI at ca PC law.com That'scat claw.com
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