Let's talk about confidentiality and non-disclosure

Confidentiality and NDA agreements have been a constant throughout my career; something I never questioned nor challenged. It should go without saying that as you are being paid for a service, that service becomes the property of your employer and should remain private.

As a contractor having to attend job interviews, I often find myself facing a very difficult choice: on the one hand, I have to respect the privacy of my previous employer, while on the other I have to answer questions from the potential future employer. Why is this difficult? Because when it comes to assessing my previous experience, the interviewer is always asking for fine details as: number of people in the department, the technical stack and infrastructure, security models implemented, number of ongoing projects, the methodology they adopted, rate of delivery, etc. (this is a great way to get some free consultancy, but more about this in a future blog). As much as I know answering these questions helps with my job application, I just can't do it; it's not only (sometimes) illegal, but it's just not right. I am getting better at avoiding answering, and deflecting the focus of the conversation onto something else, but for now, it is something I have to deal with. If you have any advice for me that would help, I would greatly appreciate the guidance.

I wish interviewers stopped doing this. Or maybe this is a test; maybe, they ask me all these questions because they want to see whether I can keep my work private. - this would be the only acceptable scenario.

Peter.