I studied Electronic Systems Engineering, and particularly enjoyed my classes in circuit design, including writing a basic CPU in Verilog and deploying it to an

I studied Electronic Systems Engineering, and particularly enjoyed my classes in circuit design, including writing a basic CPU in Verilog and deploying it to an FPGA. My summer jobs in university were for software companies, because it's easier for software devs to make something useful in a couple of months, and I was more interested in the company's location than the type of work. I think I want to get back into hardware. I just transferred with my boss from a spin-off to a parent company, and the large company has absurd policies that bother me. Everything done during working hours belongs to the company, so all my side projects are on hold. They don't keep me busy with company projects though, so I'm really bored a lot of the time (and end up here on Hacker News). The side projects (e.g. Chinese learning) are totally unrelated to the company's business (control systems for microSD testing equipment), but it's futile to oppose the policy. What's it like on the hardware side? If I get a job doing hardware, but have idle time in the office, am I allowed to pursue my own side projects and publish those on Github? That would encourage me to make the leap.