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> Not related to your employer’s line of work. Um, wait. What’s the definition of related? [...] I don’t know. It’s a big enough ambiguity that you could drive

> Not related to your employer’s line of work. Um, wait. What’s the definition of related? [...] I don’t know. It’s a big enough ambiguity that you could drive a truck through it. No, it's not that ambiguous at all. The courts rarely side with the company, and only in cases where it's quite obvious the work was directly related. If your side project isn't directly related to the work you are doing, then you don't need to worry. Don't let Joel or any other tech CEO scare you into not working on side-projects. Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely.

uiri 10y ago
Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely. This depends heavily on the employer. Google, for instance, is extremely friendly towards both side projects (done entirely on your own time and with your own equipment) and open source contributions done either on or off company time. I wish more employers had the same level of transparency.
- curiouscat321 10y ago
  How is Google so friendly towards them?
  - udkl 10y ago
    It could just be the people that google attracts ? People who are constantly tinkering ... side or hobby projects could well be ingrained in the company culture ....
    - mrottenkolber 10y ago
      According to the comments in this thread google expects you to notify them when you hack on things off the job, and feels entitled to deny you those activities. Sounds quite hostile towards creative people. Nightmarish, even.
  - h4nkoslo 10y ago
    Google currently has more money than God, which alleviates much cultural pressure to extract marginal revenue from, eg, employees' toy mobile apps.
- beambot 10y ago
  This was not the case in my experience at Google. It heavily depends on your specific group, project, and direct management hierarchy. Eg they might let you work on some open source project, but if you wanted to commercialize some side project, it's an entirely different can of worms. (And different clauses I'm your employment contract.)
- mattnewton 10y ago
  I still don't know how it can hurt to keep it a secret. Any assistance you could get taints the project's ownership, so it seems like you have nothing to gain by sharing and a lot to lose.
  - otoburb 10y ago
    Sharing your side project and intentions with your employer satisfies "right of first refusal", which will become much more valuable to have brought up formally on the offchance emplyers attempt to sue for ownership. Also, this formalizes standing on both sides; both parties will know more clearly where each stands. Of course you may proceed without sharing, but might also end up losing more later. Calculated risk.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    I still don't know how it can hurt to keep it a secret. The article alludes to that, albeit from the company's point of view. The same principle applies to you. If you ever want to sell your side project in the future, the buyer will put you through the wringer called "due diligence." If you were employed at XYZ Co. at the time you developed the IP being sold, part of the due-diligence process may require you to prove that XYZ Co. doesn't own the rights to it. If you kept it secret from XYZ, you won't have a signed waiver from them, so you won't be able to do that. Instead, you'll have to go back to XYZ Co., hat in hand, and ask them for a waiver now. That will be an awkward conversation.
zippergz 10y ago
If you ever have aspirations of having one of your side projects turn into something that gets outside investment, or gets acquired by another company, you need to be more careful. Having legal ambiguity (or even the chance of legal trouble that you'd almost surely win) is enough to scare off investors and acquirers.
modeless 10y ago
> If your side project isn't directly related to the work you are doing, then you don't need to worry. I'm going to need more than your word to believe that. It's in pretty direct contradiction to the wording of the law, which states that it's your employer's work, not your work, that matters. Do you have any references to support your view? You say the courts rarely side with the company, I'd love to hear about some example cases where these issues were relevant.
ImTalking 10y ago
You don't quite understand Joel's point. Regardless of whether you are legally right, a larger company could sue you for the sake of suing, and make your life very miserable. And if the fight continues and you run out of money, what then? I had exactly that thing. I was being bought-out and a small client decided (against the contract that they had signed) that the changes we had made to our mortgage broker commission system were their own IP, and that they would suffer damage if those changes were part of the overall IP we were selling to our prospective buyers. And it was absolute nonsense since their changes were just a collection of reports and small features which were part of the public domain since whenever. It took weeks to iron-out the agreement and obviously could have scuttled the buyout. And when I left the company that bought me out to start another project, I made sure that I had a release to say that I'm indemnified against any future legal actions and I started the project the day after I got that release. The old adage is correct: plan for the worst, hope for the best.
- isubkhankulov 10y ago
  I made sure that I had a release to say that I'm indemnified against any future legal actions This is great advice
  - deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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- johnwheeler 10y ago
  > Regardless of whether you are legally right, a larger company could sue you for the sake of suing, and make your life very miserable A company with resources could sue you for a number of bogus reasons if they wanted to be dicks.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - 10y ago
leggomylibro 10y ago
On the first point, big companies clearly feel that they can claim any project that is related to the company's lines of work, not yours. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have arms for hardware design, video game development, web development, close-to-the-metal graphical programming, embedded systems, retail...that's not just big enough to drive a truck through, it's big enough for that platform they truck space shuttles around on! You can say that those companies are unlikely to realistically claim ownership of anything that YOU didn't work closely with, but I can say from experience that these companies have explicit company-wide policies regarding some of those areas, with stricter mandatory reporting guidelines, and even requirements to use that company's technology, separate from their ordinary side project/open source contribution/etc. policies. So I wholeheartedly agree with your second point - what you do off the clock is none of your employer's business, full stop. Just don't use company equipment for it.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Specifically at Google, you must submit work-unrelated open source submissions through Google legal; though they seem to be fairly quick with it.
  - zaphar 10y ago
    Google has a painless and usually very fast process for this. It's done on a project by project basis and gives the developer a certain amount of peace of mind. There is a separate process for non OSS work as well. Or at least there was when I was there a couple of years ago.
    - wfunction 10y ago
      How often do they give it the OK?
      - snoman 10y ago
        It's directly proportional to how unprofitable they think the idea is. [/snark]
bnmillar 10y ago
A contract I was offered had this crap in it. I asked them to clarify in writing what "related to the work" means. They refused so I declined the offer.
- derekp7 10y ago
  I wonder what legal recourse you have, if you don't get that contract until after your starting date (and have already left a previous job)? Even if you ask for all contract information ahead of time before accepting the job offer, and they conveniently leave that one out until after starting?
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    Depends on the state, but many assume you are competent to negotiate these issues before accepting employment.
    - derekp7 10y ago
      Right, but what I'm talking about is a case where they fail to give that form to you until after your start date (and of course, after you've left your previous job). So they have the advantage -- either you sign the form, or you get fired on your first day of work. Too bad that most states won't consider this "signing under duress".
      - zem 10y ago
        or you sign and immediately start looking for another job. if they've truly done this in bad faith, they can pay for your jobhunting time.
      - forgetsusername 10y ago
        >either you sign the form, or you get fired on your first day of work. Why would any company go through the legal and HR hassle to do this? And if they did, why would you want to work for them? Refuse to sign and let their true colours be revealed.
teej 10y ago
I had a colleague who worked on a side project that was no where close to the main business of the company but was related to a "hackathon" type project at the company that he was uninvolved in. His side project took off and he quit to work on it. The company successfully sued him for millions of dollars. This was in the US but not in California.
- ww520 10y ago
  Does the state he was in have similar law as California?
tptacek 10y ago
This is terribly dangerous logic exactly because it's so alluringly close to right. As I said elsewhere on the thread: the worst, most heartbreaking problems a startup can have are the kind that only become apparent after the company is successful. You screw up vesting or grants somehow. You mess up liability in a contract, or don't get any legal review at all. In almost every case, you're fine either way... ... except in that one, 1% case, where your omission almost entirely counterfeits your success, negating the work you put in only after you've navigated the rest of the whitewater rapids of getting traction for a new company. If you're just doing side projects for the hell of it, with no intention of ever starting something commercial with it, I'm almost right there with you, and I think the side project concern is overblown. But if there's even a chance that you're going to commercialize something, you need to be aware that the gravity of your legal fuckups will almost never be apparent until after you're worth caring about, and in most cases --- especially for your first company --- the work and stress you have to put in to reach the point of being "worth caring about" is grueling. If it helps my case at all (it wouldn't for me, since I'm an inveterate bootstrapper): not taking this side-project stuff seriously is going to seriously complicate both fundraising and later M&A stuff, where the warrants and reps process is going to go through this IP stuff in agonizing detail. Just fill out the stupid invention disclosure form thingy your company almost certainly has, and quit if they give you any shit about it. It's too good a job market to take this risk in.
- scaredthrowaway 10y ago
  Yeah, but if you do the invention off the clock, after you started? And you decide to disclose? No one will ever give you a yes or no answer. Never. It's like raising VC, or invading Russia. They will just put everything off until tomorrow. Forever. I worked at That Place In The Valley that is not in Cupertino or Menlo Park. I tried to get "I own the IP" authorization for some side project that didn't matter to the business. I had a meeting every two weeks or so for a year and a half and nothing ever happened. But now they know about it, and could make a claim if it blew up. So that's over.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    If they don't sign off, either don't work on the side project or change jobs. Plowing ahead without clearing up the IP feels empowering, but what you've really done is concede virtually all the power to your employer, and in a way that allows them to retain it even after you leave the job.
gumby 10y ago
> The courts rarely side with the company, and only in cases where it's quite obvious the work was directly related. The courts in California rarely side with the company, (so if you work on billing for Google and decide to do some machine learning on the side, even though Google does a lot of ML work no court would find in their favor -- though I doubt google would go after you anyway). But at the opposite end of the spectrum, a court in Texas have ruled that simply the thoughts in the head of an employee are a company's (DSC) proprietary information -- the ultimate non-compete (non-competes are illegal in CA).
- greggman 10y ago
  That doesn't fit my understanding of the law. Do you have references? The law has this concept of "duty of loyalty" which basically says by being an employee you are promising to do what's best for the company. As one example that means not competing against the company. In otherwords even if it's not related to your specific job you can not work on a product that competes with the company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_loyalty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_loyalty https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/lexispsl/employment/document/393758/5FSH-NKN1-F18B-R4VH-00000-00/Employee+duties+and+restrictions+on+competition%E2%80%94overview https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/lexispsl/employment/document/3...
  - akiselev 10y ago
    This is a complex topic and IANAL but I've been through some legal cases regarding this topic. The most recent ruling about employee duties came in Ransom v Customer Systems Plc in 2012 which cleared up some conflicting precedent and established ground rules. Long story short: employees have no implicit "duty of loyalty" except for directors and fiduciaries who are responsible for reporting accurate facts (without which limited liability entities could not function). Companies can make a variety of responsibilities explicit in the employment contract but the core principal is that the employee must agree to those responsibilities when they sign up. This is why we have noncompetes/circumvents and moonlighting clauses: if it aint on paper, it aint going to hold up in court. The big exception is the criminal code. There are a variety of things an employee can do that arent against their employment contract but could be prosecuted as fraud, creating a virtual duty of loyalty.
deleted 10y ago
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madeofpalk 10y ago
> Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely. On this, my last company had a similar clause, but you could just run a project by the HR team and they would clear any ownership of it. I worked at a media company and I was working on a media-related side project (so definitely "related to your employer’s line of work") and they 'released' any rights to it.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Yeah, if you work somewhere you can easily get clearance, it's definitely worthwhile to do so. Then you don't have to worry. If you don't, it's probably best not to mention it, because it invites trouble and in the general sense (YMMV), it's not very likely that the company will sue you unless you actually are doing something nefarious.
- chris_7 10y ago
  This seems crazy, though. I'm supposed to run some utility script I'm throwing up on Github through an HR team? That'll take more time than actually writing the script!
krschultz 10y ago
"Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely." Early in my career I did this. Now I go the exact opposite tack. Tell your employer. Get it cleared in writing. If you work at a company where that is a problem, then consider your side projects non-commercial for perpetuity, or get a new job.
- random42 10y ago
  > Early in my career I did this. Now I go the exact opposite tack. Tell your employer. What prompted the change?
- zerkten 10y ago
  Any tips for the things that should be covered? Do you actually go into a lot of detail, or do you just suggest that the high-level area, and whether it's a commercial endeavor?
  - krschultz 10y ago
    I just go really high level. Larger companies usually have a process, sometimes it is categorized under "conflicts of interest". My current side projects are non-commercial, so I just put together a 3 sentence description of the project & a link to the GitHub page. Generally if the lawyers have any questions then I answer those, but I don't go overboard providing info. In the end it's better for everyone to have clarity.
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morgante 10y ago
I hope nobody is dissuaded from working on side projects by this post. First of all, restricting contracts to only work related to the company's business is not unheard of (even outside of California). Every company I've worked at has agreed to that. Secondly, it ignores the abundant evidence that people successfully turn side projects into businesses all the time without being sued by their ex-employers. In fact, I'd even posit that the median startup is begun while the founder is still working for someone else. Don't sign draconian contracts and don't be afraid to work on side projects. Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer).
- charlesism 10y ago
  > Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer). Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Spolsky has built his career around promoting a good work environment for developers. After reading his blog for many years, listening to his talks and podcasts... he's either an extremely talented thespian, or one of the most conscientious people in tech. And, while everyone has bias, I seriously doubt Joel and StackOverflow worry, or have any need to worry, about employee side-projects. They seem much more interested in employee retention.
  - morgante 10y ago
    I think Spolsky has done a fantastic job of building a an employer brand that attracts developers. It allows him to attract quality developers at under-market rates. I don't necessarily think this is even a conscious act on his part. It's just that if you spend decades on one side of the table, you inevitable adapt that side's biases. Every employer wants their employees focused solely on their projects.
    - charlesism 10y ago
      I get what you're saying, and with most other CEOs I would agree, but it doesn't really compute in his case. Considering the amount of time he has spent for the past decade+ evangelizing the developer side of things, and how obviously he empathizes with life as a developer... I'm happy to accept whatever he says at face value. He's a good egg. Also, thank you for giving me the opportunity to post something positive about someone in tech! I'm generally the one being cynical and negative, so it's a nice change :)
walshemj 10y ago
Depends if you can afford to enforce those rights
floatboth 10y ago
Couldn't good employers write contracts where instead of > Not related to your employer’s line of work. there's something like "Not a project started at the job"?

uiri 10y ago

Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely. This depends heavily on the employer. Google, for instance, is extremely friendly towards both side projects (done entirely on your own time and with your own equipment) and open source contributions done either on or off company time. I wish more employers had the same level of transparency.

curiouscat321 10y ago
How is Google so friendly towards them?
- udkl 10y ago
  It could just be the people that google attracts ? People who are constantly tinkering ... side or hobby projects could well be ingrained in the company culture ....
  - mrottenkolber 10y ago
    According to the comments in this thread google expects you to notify them when you hack on things off the job, and feels entitled to deny you those activities. Sounds quite hostile towards creative people. Nightmarish, even.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  Google currently has more money than God, which alleviates much cultural pressure to extract marginal revenue from, eg, employees' toy mobile apps.
beambot 10y ago
This was not the case in my experience at Google. It heavily depends on your specific group, project, and direct management hierarchy. Eg they might let you work on some open source project, but if you wanted to commercialize some side project, it's an entirely different can of worms. (And different clauses I'm your employment contract.)
mattnewton 10y ago
I still don't know how it can hurt to keep it a secret. Any assistance you could get taints the project's ownership, so it seems like you have nothing to gain by sharing and a lot to lose.
- otoburb 10y ago
  Sharing your side project and intentions with your employer satisfies "right of first refusal", which will become much more valuable to have brought up formally on the offchance emplyers attempt to sue for ownership. Also, this formalizes standing on both sides; both parties will know more clearly where each stands. Of course you may proceed without sharing, but might also end up losing more later. Calculated risk.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  I still don't know how it can hurt to keep it a secret. The article alludes to that, albeit from the company's point of view. The same principle applies to you. If you ever want to sell your side project in the future, the buyer will put you through the wringer called "due diligence." If you were employed at XYZ Co. at the time you developed the IP being sold, part of the due-diligence process may require you to prove that XYZ Co. doesn't own the rights to it. If you kept it secret from XYZ, you won't have a signed waiver from them, so you won't be able to do that. Instead, you'll have to go back to XYZ Co., hat in hand, and ask them for a waiver now. That will be an awkward conversation.

zippergz 10y ago

If you ever have aspirations of having one of your side projects turn into something that gets outside investment, or gets acquired by another company, you need to be more careful. Having legal ambiguity (or even the chance of legal trouble that you'd almost surely win) is enough to scare off investors and acquirers.

modeless 10y ago

> If your side project isn't directly related to the work you are doing, then you don't need to worry. I'm going to need more than your word to believe that. It's in pretty direct contradiction to the wording of the law, which states that it's your employer's work, not your work, that matters. Do you have any references to support your view? You say the courts rarely side with the company, I'd love to hear about some example cases where these issues were relevant.

ImTalking 10y ago

You don't quite understand Joel's point. Regardless of whether you are legally right, a larger company could sue you for the sake of suing, and make your life very miserable. And if the fight continues and you run out of money, what then? I had exactly that thing. I was being bought-out and a small client decided (against the contract that they had signed) that the changes we had made to our mortgage broker commission system were their own IP, and that they would suffer damage if those changes were part of the overall IP we were selling to our prospective buyers. And it was absolute nonsense since their changes were just a collection of reports and small features which were part of the public domain since whenever. It took weeks to iron-out the agreement and obviously could have scuttled the buyout. And when I left the company that bought me out to start another project, I made sure that I had a release to say that I'm indemnified against any future legal actions and I started the project the day after I got that release. The old adage is correct: plan for the worst, hope for the best.

isubkhankulov 10y ago
I made sure that I had a release to say that I'm indemnified against any future legal actions This is great advice
- deleted 10y ago
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johnwheeler 10y ago
> Regardless of whether you are legally right, a larger company could sue you for the sake of suing, and make your life very miserable A company with resources could sue you for a number of bogus reasons if they wanted to be dicks.
- deleted 10y ago
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- 10y ago

leggomylibro 10y ago

On the first point, big companies clearly feel that they can claim any project that is related to the company's lines of work, not yours. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have arms for hardware design, video game development, web development, close-to-the-metal graphical programming, embedded systems, retail...that's not just big enough to drive a truck through, it's big enough for that platform they truck space shuttles around on! You can say that those companies are unlikely to realistically claim ownership of anything that YOU didn't work closely with, but I can say from experience that these companies have explicit company-wide policies regarding some of those areas, with stricter mandatory reporting guidelines, and even requirements to use that company's technology, separate from their ordinary side project/open source contribution/etc. policies. So I wholeheartedly agree with your second point - what you do off the clock is none of your employer's business, full stop. Just don't use company equipment for it.

microcolonel 10y ago
Specifically at Google, you must submit work-unrelated open source submissions through Google legal; though they seem to be fairly quick with it.
- zaphar 10y ago
  Google has a painless and usually very fast process for this. It's done on a project by project basis and gives the developer a certain amount of peace of mind. There is a separate process for non OSS work as well. Or at least there was when I was there a couple of years ago.
  - wfunction 10y ago
    How often do they give it the OK?
    - snoman 10y ago
      It's directly proportional to how unprofitable they think the idea is. [/snark]

bnmillar 10y ago

A contract I was offered had this crap in it. I asked them to clarify in writing what "related to the work" means. They refused so I declined the offer.

derekp7 10y ago
I wonder what legal recourse you have, if you don't get that contract until after your starting date (and have already left a previous job)? Even if you ask for all contract information ahead of time before accepting the job offer, and they conveniently leave that one out until after starting?
- kasey_junk 10y ago
  Depends on the state, but many assume you are competent to negotiate these issues before accepting employment.
  - derekp7 10y ago
    Right, but what I'm talking about is a case where they fail to give that form to you until after your start date (and of course, after you've left your previous job). So they have the advantage -- either you sign the form, or you get fired on your first day of work. Too bad that most states won't consider this "signing under duress".
    - zem 10y ago
      or you sign and immediately start looking for another job. if they've truly done this in bad faith, they can pay for your jobhunting time.
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      >either you sign the form, or you get fired on your first day of work. Why would any company go through the legal and HR hassle to do this? And if they did, why would you want to work for them? Refuse to sign and let their true colours be revealed.

teej 10y ago

I had a colleague who worked on a side project that was no where close to the main business of the company but was related to a "hackathon" type project at the company that he was uninvolved in. His side project took off and he quit to work on it. The company successfully sued him for millions of dollars. This was in the US but not in California.

ww520 10y ago
Does the state he was in have similar law as California?

tptacek 10y ago

This is terribly dangerous logic exactly because it's so alluringly close to right. As I said elsewhere on the thread: the worst, most heartbreaking problems a startup can have are the kind that only become apparent after the company is successful. You screw up vesting or grants somehow. You mess up liability in a contract, or don't get any legal review at all. In almost every case, you're fine either way... ... except in that one, 1% case, where your omission almost entirely counterfeits your success, negating the work you put in only after you've navigated the rest of the whitewater rapids of getting traction for a new company. If you're just doing side projects for the hell of it, with no intention of ever starting something commercial with it, I'm almost right there with you, and I think the side project concern is overblown. But if there's even a chance that you're going to commercialize something, you need to be aware that the gravity of your legal fuckups will almost never be apparent until after you're worth caring about, and in most cases --- especially for your first company --- the work and stress you have to put in to reach the point of being "worth caring about" is grueling. If it helps my case at all (it wouldn't for me, since I'm an inveterate bootstrapper): not taking this side-project stuff seriously is going to seriously complicate both fundraising and later M&A stuff, where the warrants and reps process is going to go through this IP stuff in agonizing detail. Just fill out the stupid invention disclosure form thingy your company almost certainly has, and quit if they give you any shit about it. It's too good a job market to take this risk in.

scaredthrowaway 10y ago
Yeah, but if you do the invention off the clock, after you started? And you decide to disclose? No one will ever give you a yes or no answer. Never. It's like raising VC, or invading Russia. They will just put everything off until tomorrow. Forever. I worked at That Place In The Valley that is not in Cupertino or Menlo Park. I tried to get "I own the IP" authorization for some side project that didn't matter to the business. I had a meeting every two weeks or so for a year and a half and nothing ever happened. But now they know about it, and could make a claim if it blew up. So that's over.
- tptacek 10y ago
  If they don't sign off, either don't work on the side project or change jobs. Plowing ahead without clearing up the IP feels empowering, but what you've really done is concede virtually all the power to your employer, and in a way that allows them to retain it even after you leave the job.

gumby 10y ago

> The courts rarely side with the company, and only in cases where it's quite obvious the work was directly related. The courts in California rarely side with the company, (so if you work on billing for Google and decide to do some machine learning on the side, even though Google does a lot of ML work no court would find in their favor -- though I doubt google would go after you anyway). But at the opposite end of the spectrum, a court in Texas have ruled that simply the thoughts in the head of an employee are a company's (DSC) proprietary information -- the ultimate non-compete (non-competes are illegal in CA).

greggman 10y ago
That doesn't fit my understanding of the law. Do you have references? The law has this concept of "duty of loyalty" which basically says by being an employee you are promising to do what's best for the company. As one example that means not competing against the company. In otherwords even if it's not related to your specific job you can not work on a product that competes with the company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_loyalty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_loyalty https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/lexispsl/employment/document/393758/5FSH-NKN1-F18B-R4VH-00000-00/Employee+duties+and+restrictions+on+competition%E2%80%94overview https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/lexispsl/employment/document/3...
- akiselev 10y ago
  This is a complex topic and IANAL but I've been through some legal cases regarding this topic. The most recent ruling about employee duties came in Ransom v Customer Systems Plc in 2012 which cleared up some conflicting precedent and established ground rules. Long story short: employees have no implicit "duty of loyalty" except for directors and fiduciaries who are responsible for reporting accurate facts (without which limited liability entities could not function). Companies can make a variety of responsibilities explicit in the employment contract but the core principal is that the employee must agree to those responsibilities when they sign up. This is why we have noncompetes/circumvents and moonlighting clauses: if it aint on paper, it aint going to hold up in court. The big exception is the criminal code. There are a variety of things an employee can do that arent against their employment contract but could be prosecuted as fraud, creating a virtual duty of loyalty.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

madeofpalk 10y ago

> Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely. On this, my last company had a similar clause, but you could just run a project by the HR team and they would clear any ownership of it. I worked at a media company and I was working on a media-related side project (so definitely "related to your employer’s line of work") and they 'released' any rights to it.

cookiecaper 10y ago
Yeah, if you work somewhere you can easily get clearance, it's definitely worthwhile to do so. Then you don't have to worry. If you don't, it's probably best not to mention it, because it invites trouble and in the general sense (YMMV), it's not very likely that the company will sue you unless you actually are doing something nefarious.
chris_7 10y ago
This seems crazy, though. I'm supposed to run some utility script I'm throwing up on Github through an HR team? That'll take more time than actually writing the script!

krschultz 10y ago

"Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely." Early in my career I did this. Now I go the exact opposite tack. Tell your employer. Get it cleared in writing. If you work at a company where that is a problem, then consider your side projects non-commercial for perpetuity, or get a new job.

random42 10y ago
> Early in my career I did this. Now I go the exact opposite tack. Tell your employer. What prompted the change?
zerkten 10y ago
Any tips for the things that should be covered? Do you actually go into a lot of detail, or do you just suggest that the high-level area, and whether it's a commercial endeavor?
- krschultz 10y ago
  I just go really high level. Larger companies usually have a process, sometimes it is categorized under "conflicts of interest". My current side projects are non-commercial, so I just put together a 3 sentence description of the project & a link to the GitHub page. Generally if the lawyers have any questions then I answer those, but I don't go overboard providing info. In the end it's better for everyone to have clarity.

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morgante 10y ago

I hope nobody is dissuaded from working on side projects by this post. First of all, restricting contracts to only work related to the company's business is not unheard of (even outside of California). Every company I've worked at has agreed to that. Secondly, it ignores the abundant evidence that people successfully turn side projects into businesses all the time without being sued by their ex-employers. In fact, I'd even posit that the median startup is begun while the founder is still working for someone else. Don't sign draconian contracts and don't be afraid to work on side projects. Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer).

charlesism 10y ago
> Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer). Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Spolsky has built his career around promoting a good work environment for developers. After reading his blog for many years, listening to his talks and podcasts... he's either an extremely talented thespian, or one of the most conscientious people in tech. And, while everyone has bias, I seriously doubt Joel and StackOverflow worry, or have any need to worry, about employee side-projects. They seem much more interested in employee retention.
- morgante 10y ago
  I think Spolsky has done a fantastic job of building a an employer brand that attracts developers. It allows him to attract quality developers at under-market rates. I don't necessarily think this is even a conscious act on his part. It's just that if you spend decades on one side of the table, you inevitable adapt that side's biases. Every employer wants their employees focused solely on their projects.
  - charlesism 10y ago
    I get what you're saying, and with most other CEOs I would agree, but it doesn't really compute in his case. Considering the amount of time he has spent for the past decade+ evangelizing the developer side of things, and how obviously he empathizes with life as a developer... I'm happy to accept whatever he says at face value. He's a good egg. Also, thank you for giving me the opportunity to post something positive about someone in tech! I'm generally the one being cynical and negative, so it's a nice change :)

walshemj 10y ago

Depends if you can afford to enforce those rights

floatboth 10y ago

Couldn't good employers write contracts where instead of > Not related to your employer’s line of work. there's something like "Not a project started at the job"?