As a freelancer I consider contracts little more than good intentions on client side, especially as soon as you cross borders.

As an European I ain't bothering suing you in the US over few thousands of $, a lawyer would be more expensive than letting it go.

On the other hand I take my obligations quite seriously.

Have to say, never had one bad experience in my life, worst that happened was getting paid 10/14 days late.

Getting customers that mean business is the hardest part, lunatics think I am applying for a full time position and making me go through 2/3 rounds of interviews and asking me to implement Levehnstein distance or something to do QA and write E2Es at their scaleup are out of their mind.

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prasadjoglekar 3 days ago | parent [-]

In general, contracts often are a good leading indicator of how a counterparty thinks and is likely to behave. Do they start with egregious terms and conditions, do they flex on some of those are all good signals.

One example: does the counterparty start with a one-day NDA or a mutual NDA template.

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ska 3 days ago | parent [-]

I presume you meant one way NDA, your overall point is a really good one. Contracts are very useful as a leading indicator of how the counterparty thinks about the relationship.

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baobabKoodaa 3 days ago | parent [-]

I've never seen or even heard of one way NDAs.

	▲	prasadjoglekar 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you go interview at a Facebook office, you'll be asked to sign one before they let you in. Basically - "we'll tell you stuff. That's confidential. You tell us stuff. That's not confidential".