Accept a Job at any Silicon Valley company, and chances are someone will ask you to sign a nondisclosure agreement. These documents, dubbed “contracts of silence” by academics, were once only required of senior managers, but today they are as common in the tech world as fleece vests.
At companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon, every low-level employee or contractor is expected to sign an NDA, and so are vendors and visitors. The contracts typically don’t specify a dollar figure for violating the terms, but they do make one thing clear: Anyone who talks too much—about anything from their salaries to their manager’s weird behavior—may be sued.
NDAs have played a central role in a number of recent tech industry controversies, raising new questions about their proliferation and scope. While businesses insist the agreements are necessary, critics say they scare people from talking about the darker sides of the industry.
When sexual harassment allegations roiled companies, including Uber, some tech workers blamed the agreements for preventing victims from speaking out. When employees at blood-testing startup Theranos grew suspicious about potential fraud by executives, they feared sounding the alarm publicly.
In February, tech-news site the Verge published an article about how Facebook moderators earning $15 a hour felt traumatized after trying to cleanse the service of porn, violent threats, and harassment. None would agree to reveal their real names, citing their NDAs.
It wasn’t always this way. According to Orly Lobel, a University of San Diego law professor who studies the agreements, NDAs became common in the 1970s as a way for tech firms to protect trade secrets, and that remains their main stated objective. Since then, however, they’ve morphed into an all-purpose cudgel to control employees and suppress criticism.
In recent years, Lobel says, companies have even started using them to prevent employees from publicly disclosing their salaries—a subtle attempt to cap wages. The muzzle could also thwart women and minorities from exposing unequal pay, a problem that many tech companies have, until recently, downplayed.
“The companies are trying to signal to employees that everything is off-limits and is proprietary,” says Lobel.
This situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. While legal experts suggest judges would declare many broad NDAs unenforceable, and federal laws protect employees’ right to discuss working conditions, the issue has barely been tested in court. The reason is obvious enough.