If you’ve been in the job industry for a while, you’ve likely had to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and/or a non-compete agreement (NCA) at some point. They are incredibly common. Usually, they are a mere formality. In some rare cases, though, all of that confidentiality is very useful because it protects companies’ interests and helps them avoid potential backlash.

Some professionals whose NDAs have expired by now took to the r/AskReddit online community to spill the tea about some of the biggest corporate secrets they knew about. Scroll down for their stories and a deep dive into what goes on behind the scenes at some workplaces.

#1

I worked at a cancer charity and half the people would order things for themselves and charge it to the charity. An eye-opening job for a 16 year old.

Image credits: redpaloverde

#2

I worked for a website creation company back in 1999, managing the website for a big brand / large bank that was sponsoring a round-trip paid ticket to the Superbowl. I worked on the website that collected all the entries, and I posted the rules that the company's legal department wrote to describe the rules of the contest.

A random winner was to be selected for the prize, and I wrote a software tool to randomly pick the winner to be used when the contest was over.

When the contest ended, I was told to forget my tool, forget the rules, just look in the database and find someone in South Florida (where the Superbowl was in 1999) so the company wouldn't have to pay for airfare.

Image credits: midnitewarrior

#3

Was never bound to an NDA somehow, but sat in to oversee the technical aspects of Herbalife meetings. We’re talking meetings with the highest level sellers and their board. They spoke about how to manipulate low income and “unintelligent” people to make them millions of dollars. How to teach others to scam others to make them more money. .

Image credits: Babylon4All

You aren’t completely powerless when it comes to (not) signing NDAs, but you’re not exactly in the driver’s seat either. You could, for example, ask your future employer why they feel that you need to sign the contract. You can also ask them to potentially amend the document if there are any parts that are overly vague or uncommonly restrictive.

However, this approach requires two things. For one, you have to have a bit of legal knowledge to understand what exactly your NDA entails. And secondly, it takes a lot of guts to start questioning your future employer. You don’t know how your employer will react if you refuse to sign documents that have become part and parcel of corporate life. That said, it’s still better to clarify things before you sign anything rather than after the fact.

#4

I worked at a grocery store, we had lots of prepackaged produce and other baked goods. I was told to pull off all the expiration date stickers and replace them with new dates because "they still looked good". There were so many things they did that probably could have gotten them fined heavily if I had known better and reported them. They were a local chain that had like 10 stores, apparently they only have one store left now and are very close to going out of business for good according to my parents.

Image credits: pops992

#5

Hasbro has tried to make the following two films:

Stretch Armstrong - a gritty re-imaging staring Taylor Lautner (the wolf from Twilight) with a "Nolan's Batman" feel

CandyLand - A LOTRs style epic for children staring Adam Sandler

Both got pitch packets made before ultimately being shelved. Last I heard the Candyland idea is still kind of alive.

Image credits: Cloberella

#6

Early 2000s I worked in the clothing department at Walmart, and one night I was handed a memo that I was to secretly cut out all the tags on a list of product that said "Made in Myanmar" because the brand was suddenly trying to hide that they were doing business there. I believe it was Hanes.

Image credits: FaeShroom

NDAs are, by design, meant to protect someone’s interests by restricting the type of information that can be shared at work or outside of it. They formalize the (lack of) trust between the employer and the employees.

On the one hand, these documents ensure that the business gets at least some level of protection from potentially malicious actors. On the other hand, if someone feels like the NDAs and NCAs are too restrictive, they might decide to take their numerous highly demanded skills someplace more trusting.

#7

Intel Corporation used to go around to colleges and hold programming contests, and to the winner they'd give a mid-grade laptop and a gaudy trophy. back at Corporate, some of these winning code bases would get tens of millions of dollars poured into them in attempts to get them to product release.

Image credits: theuniversalsquid

#8

I did SEO for Leapforce.

Google is always listening. Always. Listening.

I had to listen to a ton of recordings and identify if they were “accidental” and if what I heard was a command.

I’ve heard everything you can imagine.

Image credits: HonoredBrotherZobius

#9

Danny Devito has a long time agent/manager who unbeknownest to him is a racist. She apparently doesn't realize all the calls are recorded, so there's *years* of her saying some f****d up s**t to people in a certain office.

He, on the other hand, is a really decent chap....

Image credits: happyhedonist

Breaking an NDA doesn’t incur criminal penalties, as it’s a civil contract. However, if you go against the terms of the agreement, your workplace can sue you to make you pay for all the potential damage you may have done to the company’s business interests or reputation.

You can always ask for some time to mull over the documents. If you have anyone with legal expertise in your social circle, they might give you a few pointers. Otherwise, if you’re particularly worried about the NDA, hire a lawyer who specializes in them, so they can give you their professional advice.

#10

I worked at a startup that tracked employee happiness, supposedly so they can make employees happier, but in practice it seemed they were preemptively getting rid of unhappy employees. No need to wait for them to quit...

Image credits: MiyagiJunior

#11

I don't know if I was ever bound by an NDA for this, but I used to work for a contractor for a major US plane manufacturer.

They will literally hire anyone. I'm an ancient historian. I do Roman stuff. My experience in flight is limited to sims and being a passenger.

They have no standard for aeronautics for their teachers. Their techs; I don't know.

Image credits: LegalAction

#12

I worked for a healthcare facility that started collecting private patient information to share with insurance companies in order to secure better contracts. This wasn’t diagnosis data; it was lifestyle data, including spending transactions (they were trying to find ways to obtain that information when I was leaving). When I asked if patients were aware, they always gave a vague answer, which essentially meant no.

Image credits: Objective_Regret2768

Alternatively, if it’s a pretty standard NDA, sign it, and enjoy your new job. It’s not like you should be spilling work-related secrets in the first place. However, if your workplace is doing something that is outright illegal, you can and should get in touch with the authorities ASAP.

Have you ever signed any NDAs, dear Pandas? How restrictive were they? If any of your NDAs have already expired, are there any corporate secrets that you want to get off your chest? Feel free to vent in the comments!

#13

I worked for a company that made DJ equipment, turntables etc. They put a metal plate in their cheaply made turntables so they were the same weight as Technics when in reality they were plastic garbage.

Image credits: SmileAndDeny

#14

The Victoria Secret Fashion show in Shanghai in 2017 was an absolute s**t show of corruption, kickbacks, and f**k ups. The Chinese government took VS for an absolute ride for so much stuff, and that's not including all of the middlemen who wanted to get their beaks wet as well. The amount of money that VS spent to have their fashion show in China was astronomical and got them, at a minimum, investigated by the US government for the amount of bribes they were paying.

Image credits: lordbearhammer

#15

In a tech support role, one manager used to boast his team's average call-times were the lowest in the company.

While average call times were in the 12-17 minute range, his team was constantly under 10 minutes. His team was awarded multiple times and his "strategy" was adopted company-wide to all customer service and technical support teams, including our internal IT teams.

That strategy was under a strict NDA, as we did not want to allow competitors to emulate it. When our call center would go bid on contracts, it became an awesome metric. "Our Customer Satisfaction Scores are on-par but we have call times 20-30% lower than our competitors!"

The dirty secret of the NDA that I was not allowed to disclose? Their "big method?"

Just hang up on people.

Straight up.

Find a way to say "Okay go ahead and do that and call back if it doesn't fix it."

Then hang up. Don't wait for confirmation.

"Okay so reboot your PC and your problem should be solved! Thanks for calling!" *click*

Eventually they came out with more useful metrics that tracked things like First Call Resolution which absolutely *shredded* this company and they went out of business a year or two later.

Image credits: gaqua

#16

I once got hurt at work, a concussion specifically, on Camera. I have a history with concussion-like symptoms. I was 99% sure I hit my head but I lost all memory of the accident. I ended up missing a few weeks of work due to the severity. I wasn't 100% sure if I had some sort of mental breakdown so asked to see the video so that I could confirm my injury.

They flat our refused to let me see the video and told me there was no evidence that I hit my head. I offered to sign away any rights to sue and I wasn't even asking them for hospital bills or paid time off. Long story short, I sued them, I won, and had to sign an NDA. I got my wages and hospital bills paid that I wasn't even asking for, and was finally able to get the video. It was a 100% no-doubt head injury complete with a loud bonking sound effect and me falling down and leaving a dent in the bulkhead that I hit.

After the fact the office staff told me that they were under orders from upper management to lie and saw they didn't see anything on the tape. They said this was standard for anyone who gets hurt... to just lie about it and let it play out in court. I obviously quit soon after.

Image credits: Fornico

#17

The private school I worked for was for students identified with giftedness... The owner of the school administered the giftedness test...

Can you pay the tuition? You're gifted!
Can your sibling pay? Them too!
Your cousin? Neighbour? Kid you know across town? You're all gifted!

Image credits: Snuffy1717

#18

I was never under an NDA but the hotel is under new ownership so I guess I can say it now.

The hotel had no internet connection starting around 1 am to 6 am. Like clockwork, every night. Idk if it was just a system fault or if it was cost cutting. But without internet, the security cameras didnt work or record anything. The fire alarm system doesnt work either (the alarms go off but it doesnt call for help). So if we had a fire that started at 3 am for example, then unless someone else thats driving by calls it in, I have no idea whats happening.

One night we had an assault happen in the parking lot. The police needed camera evidence and our cameras didnt record anything because the internet was out. So that was fun explaining to the detectives.

Image credits: blackmobius

#19

Fortune 500, Real Estate, long time ago:
We know about the black mould problem. We always knew. We do not disclose it. We intentionally do not look into. We don't want to know exactly what kind it is, because if it's dangerous then we legally have to spend money to fix it. The only department that is allowed to talk about the black mould problem is Press and PR because only they know how to bury it correctly.

That was not a great work culture.

Image credits: FrisbeeVR

#20

Taco Bell’s cinnamon twists are made with rice pasta, the moisture content is so high, the water in the pasta boils in the fryer puffing them up, then just sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top.

Image credits: SirMild

#21

Call centre employees share bad experiences with each other in a "secret" log by the customer info. They know exactly who the a******s are.

Image credits: LeveCadeirada

#22

In Prince George's County Maryland, county transit bus drivers are instructed following an accident they are not to speak to anyone until a supervisor arrives on the scene. An approved method for not talking, especially to other drivers involved, is to feign injury. There's actually money allotted to pay the fines related to wasting 911 and emergency resources, because analysts determined it was cheaper than costs associated with drivers accidently admitting fault. There's also an entire audit and analysis team related to accidents because of the sheer volume of people who falsely claim to be on a bus during an accident.

Edit: What an incredible response! To clarify the current PG County TheBus transit system is run by a company called RATP. They were hired during covid, which was after I left the state. The company running the busses until 2020 was called Veolia.

Image credits: Sorripto

#23

Worked in technical customer support for a IT/hardware company. We were sold a bad batch of chips from a supplier. The chips caused random 'watchdog' resets which would cause random crashes/reboots. The company got a settlement due to it to remediate it, but the MBA/legal types deemed it too expensive to fix what was already in the field so they 'fixed it in Support'. We had very strict talking points when our customers would report this issue, everyone in the support team knew what the issue was and had each worked several cases of it. but our 'script' made us act stupid like it was a unique case that had never happened before. It is kind of hard to do that when you have replaced multiple units for the same customer in several weeks, but if you diverted from the talking points you got counseled by management. This issue caused several very high level outages/issues at many of our customers, we knew why, and we were told to 'act dumb' and bury it in process/procedures so we didn't take the hit on needing to replace the known faulty hardware.

Image credits: labratnc

#24

One surprising secret is how many products marketed as "handmade" or "artisanal" are actually mass-produced in factories overseas. Brands rely on clever wording to sell the image of small-batch craftsmanship, but behind the scenes, it's often a far cry from what’s advertised.

Image credits: Valuable-Local5650

#25

Tesla and Rivian electrical components are made in the same facility by a large electronic manufacturer and even share personnel.



This once caused Elon to throw a fit and threatened to take the contract somewhere else.



The solution?



For the next visit the company separated the lines by a wall and told Elon they had ended the Rivian contract.



They still produce both and also the components for the new Ford electric models.

Image credits: -DictatedButNotRead

#26

The lady who owns Columbia sportswear neglects her animals to the point of death. And then she just buys more. I was supposed to be a caretaker for them but there weren't even basic med supplies like Bute and swat or vet wrap. She wouldn't call the vet for almost anything. Two goats died of malnutrition, another its entire hoof fell off, 12 chickens died, two mini donkeys died, the Guinea pig was keep alone in a hamster cage, and she kept her late husband's dog Monty locked in a dog run. Her dogs were permitted out but not Monty, even on leash. Initially he was allowed out and I got with him great shape taking walks everyday. But one day she stopped allowing even that. I quit when she started talking about getting 30+ sheep and pigs. It was a miserable place, her mansion. I only worked there a year and brought in my own supplies to treat what I could but it'll always break my heart I couldn't do more. I called animal control multiple times and they never helped, even with the goats who looked like walking skeletons. Rich people can do whatever they want to living things. .

Image credits: P3pp3rJ6ck

#27

Helped a buddy who owned a restaurant do a street fair beer cart one time. We had Coors for $5 and a specialty brew for $6. They were both Coors.

Image credits: twankyfive

#28

I was told by my line manager to 'half fill' large fries at maccies..


And I didn't even have to sign an nda.

Image credits: MonstrousRichard

#29

I worked at Verizon and we were told we had to use special offers to try and “save” customers. And elderly man called to have his wife’s phone disconnected after her death and I didn’t do any of the “saves”. Got called in for QA overview and got written up.

Image credits: KuchiKopi-Nightlight

#30

Every single cooking competition show you watch is rigged. The judges have no say over who wins. The winner is chosen prior to filming by the executive producer(s), and then the show is crafted around that winner to mimic a story or journey they can sell to audiences.

Image credits: IHaveAutismAndADD

#31

Microsoft is fine with video games ‘being a bit crashy’ but if a title so much as mentions Sony in the credits or accidentally displays PlayStation controller iconography, it’s an immediate quality assurance testing fail.

#32

Manipulation of Data to give false impressions of reliability was something I saw quite blatantly utilised with little repercussions. My company was struggling to meet on time delivery schedules and for numerous years was as embarrassingly low as 40%... A new manager comes in and within months we are now boasting an on time delivery rate on a brilliant 95%. Turns out all he did was change what constituted an on time delivery: each time we knew a product would be late, we'd notify the customer of the delay and ask them to confirm they still wanted the order; if they still wanted the product, the on time delivery would be recorded against the new expected date as opposed to the original promised date. Company literature was being sent out boasting of our 95% on time delivery (now amongst the highest in the industry) when in fact we were by that point meeting less than 30% of initial delivery schedule targets. It was so simple that I'm sure numerous companies are getting away with such underhand tricks.

#33

At my old job, Pam helped me reallocate my client’s ad scheduling so I can invoice out a little extra for the last month of December 2014, helping me hit my yearly budget.

I got let go two weeks after that and I believe the original plan was to fire me under the justification of missing my yearly budget. Instead I got a severance of $15,000. I believe Pam knew or heard what the lay of the land was and helped me out.

Appreciate you, Pam!

#34

I briefly worked at a university in South Florida in the late 90's and early 00's. I was chosen to be on an Academic Integrity team, basically reviewing claims of plagiarism and cheating and deciding between the five of us whether it is valid or not. We were made to sign NDA's when we accepted the invite to be a part of the team.

There were three instances where an employee that was taking classes there clearly cheated, and the issue was brought to our attention. Those three times, the cheating was blatant. All three times, we were told to let it go, as it would look bad for the university to have it get out.

I'm not sure if this is common for other universities, but at the time, I was under the impression that it was common practice everywhere. It was ultimately one of the main reasons I ended up quitting. I was and still am disgusted by it.

#35

IT-Consultant of many, many winters:

The most critical applications in banking, insurance and finance run on badly outdated machines hold together by duct tape, prayers and compressend dust, standing in dark, wet corners in mostly forgotten basements. Also those systems are written in the most obscure and long dead programming languages (or even directly in assembler for a certain chip set), written by code-wizzards in their own idiosyncratic dialects, who are now long retired or even dead. Backups / Backup Systems are mostly non-existent or the Data-Tapes are worn down to basically transparent tape. (Even had a case -around 2020- where a cleaning tape from '99 was still in the bay, due to the robot being faulty).

If a cleaner or janitor pulls the wrong plug to find an outlet for their vacuum, there is a decent chance that whole branches or even institutions begins to crumble.

Most of those system will also never be updated, due to their "legacy" status, aka. "We don't know what this is, is doing or even HOW it is doing, what it is doing, but it is a critical part of our whole infrastructure and nobody dares to touch it, but we will never invest the necessary sums to analyse those systems, write documentation or even replace them."

Edit:

NDAs for companies I did projects for are long gone, but some of them are currently in an investigation process for fraud and tax evasion, so I won't disclose exact informations.

#36

I worked for a company the overseas and enforces (self) regulation for one of the power grids in the United States. My job was to help secure it against cyber attacks and to help write the regulations that enforce those protections...

I had panic attacks on Sunday nights because I knew at work the next morning we'd go over the list of everything not compliant and the lawyers would argue they were, and nothing would get done. Many times the lawyers would tell me that I wasn't "interpreting what was written correctly.", then I'd remind them that I WROTE IT with a committee and if they didn't believe me they could go look at the minutes taken in the meetings. Instead, they would just document their "justifications" for being compliant and not actually secure anything...

The US power system is now so vulnerable to cyber attacks that it is only a matter of time before millions of people have their lives thrown into complete disaster and potentially hundreds of thousands that will die. I just can't even think about how bad things are now.

#37

I've seen an early cut of John Wick 2 where all of the animal handlers were running around on screen in green spandex bodysuits. Running alongside the horses, carrying leads for the dogs, etc. Just all of these people who are invisible to the actors and the rest of their world.

Absolutely surreal.

#38

Not really exposing a secret here but I am disgusted by it. My job requires me to look into the minutes of meetings. One of my clients was a school. During one of the meetings with the board of directors and the parents, they addressed the bullying in the school, one of the parents said "Just leave it, let the weak ones fall out." and that was the end of it.

#39

I used to work in packaging, and there was a big promotion coming up for the ‘18 World Cup.

Basically the beverage company we were working with thought they’d be able sell more of their product if they were able to correctly predict the winning team to use for their promotion when the winner was actually revealed

Obviously if you waited for the champion to be revealed it would be too late, the supply chain has got to start well in advance.

Basically the beverage company *did* correctly guess champion team, and a lot of people involved in this deal had to sign NDAs basically stipulating that they couldn’t go around shouting “I know France are going to win because XYZ company have asked us to print all this France merch in advance etc etc”

You don’t have to be Nostradamus to guess the champion of the World Cup, but it’s the fact the company we were dealing with were *suspiciously* certain of it, along with the secrecy surrounding this knowledge.

#40

Walmart corporate office puts a screensaver on all their workers' computers with a message urging them to donate to an emergency fund for their FT or near-FT warehouse and retail workers. Instead of giving them healthcare or PTO.

Walmart retail nd warehouse workers are kept just below FT so they can't get benefits, and the vast majority receive government benefits. Your taxes are subsidizing millions in benefits for the richest company in America so the richest CEO in america is richer.

Everything in the second paragraph of this post is public knowledge.

#41

Many years ago my Dad was manager of the meat dept at a chain grocery store. A new store manager came in, and told him that whenever steaks started looking a bit grey, rather than mark them down a bit (they were still OK to eat, just older and unappealing in appearance), he was to slice them laterally and position the bright-pink interior up to repackage and keep them the same price. My Dad soon quit over that, as he couldn't in good conscience do it.

#42

My wife used to be an "associate" in a well known multilevel marketing company. I won't say which one.


She dragged me along to one of their "how to get rich in this business" seminars where someone way up in the pyramid was speaking. The speaker at one point was advising the audience on how to commit tax fraud by deducting everything imaginable and then some on your taxes as "business expenses." Some of it was borderline, but a lot of it was just straight up tax evasion.


My wife was still in her true believer phase at that point and thought the secrets of the universe had been revealed to her. We argued about it for a couple weeks afterwards, until she finally agreed to ask our tax guy about it, and he basically said "LOL that's totally fraud. I hope you like the color orange."


Worst part was the reason the speaker was advising everyone to commit tax fraud was "so you can invest more back into your business," which translated from MLM-speak means "Keep pumping money into the pyramid and making us rich, suckers!".

#43

I know of at least three major (and I mean MAJOR, superfund level pollution of very toxic materials) environmental disasters that are completely unknown because they took place on private property and the companies that did it are covering it up. Often, this means that the company owns a tract of land that they keep fenced off and empty. As long as they don't sell it, nobody needs to test the soil.


Having a good understanding of what happens to whistleblowers, regardless of NDA, I won't name the companies. I don't need to get forcibly suicided.

#44

A mortgage company I worked for shut down because they lost Fannie and Freddy backing. The CEO told us it was because of "three loans that shouldn't have resulted in this punishment at all."

It was his son, it was vastly more than three loans, and it is so bad he has permanently lost his license to be a loan officer.

#45

Worked at a hospital specializing in cancer care. They were doing something new. Actually targeting the type of cancer with the right type of chemo. Most cancer centers do not. So suppose you get cancer C. But the insurance companies / gov mandates you get chemo for cancer A B before treatment for C. As the money increases by like 10 fold. Downside for the patient with cancer C is they have to endure way more bouts of chemo than if they just targeted cancer C. So if you ever find yourself in that really bad boat, make sure your doctors treatment plan is for the right cancer vice for the wrong checkbook.

#46

Not under an NDA but I am not allowed to say this to people.

My employer is an HCM company and the department I work in administers COBRA. For our friends not in the US, COBRA is a law that allows an employee to pay out of pocket to keep benefits they had while they were employed after a separation. This has been a thing since 1986.

In many cases, your employer has to reinstate coverage with the carrier. There is no punishment if they do not. They have to inform you of your eligibility within 45 days or face fines with TAMRA, which is part of the IRS.

We are not allowed to tell you that your former employer hasn't let the carrier know, we have to take the blame. There are some clients where I work where we do inform the carrier, but carriers like Blue Cross, Anthem, and Cigna are right now refusing to accept the reports we send them and your coverage remains inactive. But the majority of the time, the client (employer) is responsible for reporting to the carrier of your COBRA election. There is no maximum time allotted for reinstatement, I've seen cases where the employer (client) has not reinstated benefits for 1 year, until the beneficiary tried to use the coverage and was denied and they had been paying $2500 a month just for their medical. This was not illegal, just irresponsible. Reinstatements are the number 1 issue I deal with and it's daily.

I have tried to get my employer to make an effort to ensure the client reinstated in a timely manner, and they refuse saying they do not want to anger the client. I've also written letters to President Biden and VP Harris explaining this situation and to present policy. An expansion of TAMRA to include reinstatement deadlines would do wonders.

#47

I worked for a very prominent sports broadcast. Hardcore fans would always get so angry when the broadcast was narrative focused but the reality is that majority of viewership metrics aren't that hardcore minority that are so extremely vocal on things like social media and reddit that would complain about narratives etc.

Production meetings weekly were about key words and key narrative lines to essentially "sell" these teams and players to the audience over and over and over because majority of viewers only tune in for a moment or a game so you gotta repeat it to make it stick. And it did work in terms of those narratives actually sticking and building player brands. So much was manufactured and about working together with broadcast and teams to build fandom, that is the number one goal.

Could we go massively indepth on a hardcore level? Yeah and the talent team always wanted to but production had the data and was like: the fandom immediately turns off when we do that.

So I guess the dirty secret is: sports broadcasts, hardcore analytical fans are never the target demographic. Probably not a secret but some sport fans really miss that lol.

#48

Former agent for a driving app here.

I used to handle the driver's part of the app, and that part was rather messed up, because I would often get drivers asking why their accounts were taken down. I stopped being surprised after realizing that for every three drivers that reached out or so, two among them were shut down, either for fraudulent activity or for (mostly sexual) misconduct. Frauds include starting and stopping without the rider, messing with the GPS to charge the rider with surcharges (especially on airports), or attempting to upload bogus or edited documents. About this one, it was disgustingly easy to bypass the docs filter, because there were plenty of countries where the app worked, that didn't run background checks.

On top of that, privacy policies wouldn't let us disclose the cause of the deactivation, either. Thus resulting in drivers often trying to sneak back into action with a duplicate account, only for me to laugh in their faces when finding out they were stonewalled because of their original account.

On the other hand, there were a handful of drivers who presumably didn't do a thing wrong, but then again, policies would leave our hands tied and we had to give out the bad news anyway, if you know what I mean.

#49

I worked for a company who worked for a company who worked for Cisco (networking). Cisco had created a new product for "small business" (basically a cheaper version of their normal routers and switches). When hired, I was one of about 20 people, most of whom had zero networking experience. We were told that it was done that way because they wanted non-techies specifically learning the product (this made no sense to me). We were told that we had to get CCNA certifications before we could go live. We were then given a month of bootcamp training and personal study sessions. It took about 2 months (and a few tries) for everyone to get the certification.

The problem was that we were 20 kids, with little to no technical or networking experience, working on a new product that we technically weren't versed in (we were given generic CCNA training and no training on the product itself), and expected to handle all tech support for the entire country. I once had a call to fix a connectivity issue for a chain of banks. The guy who called me admitted to making $450 an hour and asked me to take my time solving his issue. He called the guy making $20 an hour. Believe it or not, it was the classic tech support question: "Is it plugged in?" that solved his issue. He forgot to plug in the power. I'm not sure why this was supposed to be tied to other banks, but I'm guessing that it was at a main hub and something wasn't going out to the branches or something (I didn't ask).

90% of the employees on that team quit within the first 3 months of working there.

#50

A ridiculous percentage of the US bullets are made in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Not just the red boxes, either just about every company has a large amount of bullets made for them there. (Sierra and Nosler being the two exceptions)

The only difference most of the time is the color of the tips.

Wouldn't be so bad, but the equipment is WW vintage and falling apart, security and safety are half a*sed, and they chase off anyone that won't work 70 hour weeks.

#51

Used to work for government. One of the department heads didn’t realize his mic was still on during a meeting break, and said some less-than-flattering things about his colleagues.

He came to me the next day and wanted it removed from the tape. And made it very clear that my career would be limited if I didn’t obliged. I obliged, though I had already made a copy to my personal server earlier that morning, just to have leverage in the future, should I need it.

#52

Feels weird posting this as I'm a big time lurker and not technically under any NDA but I was working for a medical devices company where the financial director was also the production director who instructed the production teams to use a prototype calibration machine for their main product, neonatal ventilators. The electronic engineer who designed the prototype was NOT happy, rightly caused a big fuss and ended up resigning, that guy was an absolute hero, big respect! That company kinda shattered my perspective on "ethical engineering roles" and I ended up changing industry.

#53

There’s a government in East Asia that was or still is running a low key sterilization campaign in central and Eastern Africa. They do it in partnership with a private company I used to work for. I was “sworn in” on the project in September 2013. I was with the company until late 2017, and had to sign an NDA that I wouldn’t say anything. The NDA didn’t specifically mention sterilization but instead the methods used.

The company I worked for with funding from this particular East Asian government set up “Free Clinics” in half a dozen or so African nations and offered free healthcare to the locals. Naturally they went for it because they were getting much better quality of healthcare than they had ever gotten before. They were baited with the quality treatment and then sterilized without their knowledge. The methods used were non surgical and the company I worked for was given a quota of 30,000 to 50,000 sterilizations a year by the government funding the project.

I don’t know if they’re still running the program, the company is still in business, but I don’t know if they’ve still got the contract or if some competitor offered a better deal to that particular East Asian government.

This is as far as I’m willing to go on the details.

#54

I 100% believe everything that was said about the work culture at Blizzard because even the companies they outsourced to had similar issues.

I worked for Clientlogic(later Sitel) when they had the contract for in game customer support for World of Warcraft(AKA a WoW GM). I was at the campaign from around the time Burning Crusade launched until a couple weeks before Wrath of the Lich King was released and it was like the wild west. We were actively encouraged to break workplace norms when it comes to harassment, language, and personal conduct in the name of "desensitizing us to what we will see in game". We were actively told that we could say whatever we wanted, harass whoever we wanted in whatever way we wanted, and as long as nothing got physical nothing would do anything about it.

I was at that campaign from late December 2006 until October of 2008 and I saw more harassment there then all the rest of my life combined, and again we were the outsourced branch of their customer support; I couldn't imagine how bad it must have gotten at Blizzard headquarters where there was no outside influence trying to temper how people were acting.

#55

Food industry: Slaughter house meat production specifically. USDA only employs a handful of people nationwide to inspect and certify safety and quality of production facilities. Slaughter houses kill some 850K cattle, 25M chickens, etc. a day. So you can imagine that if some states have only one inspector, what is the incentive for companies to meet safe production standards behind closed doors? Not only that, these inspectors are backed up months in work but can be easily monetarily exploited because government pay is abysmal. These people have to visually certify individual meat imports/exports shipments. Who has the time? This ineffectiveness is one of the symptoms of why food-born illness recalls are so common, margin for error is gigantic. I had food industry veterans tell me their household rule for meat was: if we don’t hunt it ourselves we don’t eat it.

Let’s not get into the unspoken rule that any “inspector” with any semblance of power over a lucrative industry is always fallible.