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I left AWS after six years of working there wholly because of their restrictive policies about developing software in your spare time -- especially if you were
by Pfhreak 8y ago
I left AWS after six years of working there wholly because of their restrictive policies about developing software in your spare time -- especially if you were thinking about working on a game.
I recognize this article is about a product offering of AWS, and not their internal policies towards contributing to open source, but the two are linked in my mind and I'm not all surprised to see a headline like this.
- notyourwork 8y agoEvery company has the same attitude in my experience, this ins't unique to Amazon. edit: For those down voting instead of just disagreeing provide a company and their policy. All the companies I've worked at have been the same as Amazon more or less and all my friends have similar employment clauses.
- Pfhreak 8y agoAmazon reserved the right to take ownership of my project and all related IP at any time (including after leaving the company.) I was also forbidden from working with anyone outside of my org on the projects. There were no exceptions allowed. It was considerably more restrictive than any company I've worked at elsewhere.
- notyourwork 8y agoI'm aware of Amazon's policies. Most companies have similar clauses.
- Pfhreak 8y agoI disagree. My research suggested that Amazon's policies about open source and game development were stricter. (For example, I must be willing to disclose any sales data to Amazon. I must use Amazon products when possible. I must make my project available on the Amazon store if possible.) Most companies also have a process to keep copyright if you need/want to. Yes, most companies have approval processes. They might even be onerous approvals processes. Amazon expressly forbid me from participating in game jams with people who were not in my org.
- Galanwe 8y ago>I disagree. My research suggested that Amazon's policies about open source and game development were stricter. Worked at microsoft for 2 years, there are the same policies. It was not contractual though. It's just that there were notes broadcasted saying that whenever you discussed with third parties, you should use microsoft tools if possible. Want to meet someone? Send a Bing Maps link, not Google Maps. Want to share a research? Send a Bing Link, not a Google search. etc. As for the confidentiality clauses, I work in finance, and the rules on IP and personal projects are the same as what you describe.
- MRD85 8y agoToday I learnt that there is a Bing Maps
- rmc 8y agoMicrosoft have been very helpful to OpenStreetMap. Since 2010 they allow the OSM community to trace from the Bing aerial imagery to add things to OSM. Roads, buildings, everything you can see with the aerial imagery. It's fantastically useful. OpenStreetMap database would be a fraction of the size if it wasn't for Microsoft granting us this. As of July 2018, they allow us to use Streetside imagery too. (Alas you can't use the actual maps, just the aerial/satelite imagery) Yahoo allowed tracing from 2007 till 2011.
- rectang 8y agoMicrosoft is big and the contacts I have there tell me that the open source policies vary by department.
- chrisweekly 8y agoMicrosoft has also undergone a massive transformation over the last few years with respect to OSS.
- notyourwork 8y agoMost companies being who exactly? All the people disagreeing with me clearly have not read their terms of employment.
- freedomben 8y agoThe last 4 places I've been, three encouraged us to participate in FOSS. Only one was neutral, but disallowed paid side gigs (open source was ok). It's anecdata, but totally opposite of your experience.
- kerng 8y agoNope, first time ever I hear about something such restrictive. That by itself would be a reason for me to not sign an employment contract with Amazon.
- throwaway1280 8y agoYeah. Amazon loses a small but significant number of potential hires when they learn about the open source clause - often very good people, too. When I left they were actively working on trying to find a solution, as it had been a thorn in the side for years.
- ipsum2 8y agoMost big tech companies that I'm familiar with allow you to program on your free time, as long as you give them a heads up and it doesn't conflict with the company's products. E.g. working on a video game or contributing to open source.
- notyourwork 8y agoPlease name one, they all have the same non-compete language in their job offers and they are at-will positions. It may be allowed by your manager but company policy isn't such.
- Pfhreak 8y agoOther companies have exemption policies, or mechanisms to get approvals. Amazon does not. Your choices were work privately on your own project or leave (or risk being fired for violating the policy.) Amazon was more aggressive (in my opinion) and much stricter than any other company I've ever worked at. Edit: I researched a lot of the other tech companies. Here's Google's documentation, for example, which outlines an exception process: https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/
- ipsum2 8y agoOff the top of my head, there's company policies for employees to work on their own projects at Google, Facebook, and Github.
- 8y ago
- hedora 8y agoCalifornia law expressly prohibits this exact policy. If you want to be able to work on open source (that is unrelated to your job, on your own equipment) on your own time, move to Silicon Valley. Even Amazon employees in CA should be exempt from this policy.
- pvg 8y agoWhat is the law you're referring to?
- yongjik 8y ago...As long as what you work on does not overlap with anything your employer does. ...which is a big problem if you work at Amazon or Google. (Can you think of a single software project that will not intersect any Google project? Are you sure?)
- jenscow 8y ago> "that is unrelated to your job" My OSS project is "software development". My company's main function is "software development".
- mochomocha 8y agoNetflix.
- mcv 8y agoI refuse any contract where my employer claims ownership of code I wrote in my own time on my own machine that has nothing to do with the work I do for the company. Very few contracts have contained such a clause, and I believe at least one removed such a clause when I requested it. These days I'm self-employed and renting myself out to large companies, and this has never been an issue. They only care about the work I do for them, not about what I do in private.
- ex_amazon_sde 8y agoI worked for Amazon and various other companies. Most of them did not have those restrictions.
- spectre256 8y agoI "accidentally" worked at amazon for a few weeks when a company I had just joined was acquired by them. I knew it was time to start looking when I was informed that I had to get prior permission to do ANY open source contributions even on my own hardware on my own time. That's just not feasible logistically and above and beyond the general "don't write open source that competes with us or on our our time/hardware without permission" rule most reasonable companies have.
- Bahamut 8y agoProblem is, you could potentially encroach on a big company's interests without knowing so, i.e. they're working in [insert space] in secret, or create an ethical issue for the company. Truth is, excepting maybe Netflix, the rest of FAANG requires you to get approvals.
- int_19h 8y agoMicrosoft doesn't. You're only required to get pre-approval in case of conflicts of interest.
- saagarjha 8y ago> You're only required to get pre-approval in case of conflicts of interest. Given the extremely diverse set of things that Microsoft works on, much of which is likely done without you being disclosed on it, how can you be sure that your project is not a conflict of interest?
- tallanvor 8y agoConflict of interest = something you are directly involved with at work, or potentially worked on for the company previously. For example, if you're on the SQL Server team then contributing to SQLLite would reasonably be considered a conflict of interest, but contributions to the Linux kernel wouldn't be.
- 8y ago
- tanilama 8y agoAmazon is really a frugal company, in a sense they want every penny they spend on you to evetually make it back to their pockets.
- raxxorrax 8y agoAlways judge a company by how they treat their lowest employees. And since people at Amazon having difficulties trying to find time to take a piss, it doesn't really qualify as an employer for me personally. I like their services in AWS-land and they have really good solutions. They probably treat their developers better as long as they can be exploited. But if there is another service with comparable features, I generally don't have to think very long.
- goldenkey 8y agoI worked there too in 2015. The culture is toxic. The most surprising thing was the way all the AWS services are built with a grab bag of different teams with entirely different languages, copying CSS and code all over the place. There were no real standards. I still like AWS but knowing how bad the sausage is made makes me cringe a bit...
- akhilcacharya 8y agoI mean...if it performs well all of that is irrelevant to the customer.
- h1d 8y agoWhile it works.
- michaelt 8y agoAlways judge a company by how they treat their lowest employees. Seems like a policy that gives a big advantage to industries that aren't labour-intensive. Is Costco a worse company than Oracle, because the former has employees making $30,000 and the latter doesn't?
- flukus 8y ago> especially if you were thinking about working on a game Why games especially? That seems to be the one area the would be absolutely free of any conflict of interest with amazon.
- Pfhreak 8y agoAmazon has a game studio producing games. They've publicly announced Breakaway, New World, and Crucible as three titles. Why games are different than other areas (e.g. why aren't web services called out separately with their own policy while games are? I'm not sure.)
- throwaway1280 8y agoYeah, it's really weird. Amazon has other IP-producing divisions, and even though Amazon Studios is very powerful, there's nothing preventing people from making their own video content. I wonder if it's just down to whoever leads that game studio pushing for such a rule.
- Zarel 8y agoI imagine it has to do with Amazon Lumberyard: https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/
- yesenadam 8y agoI just now started reading Merritt's Adventure in Prolog (1990), and the very beginning seems somehow relevant to this thread: "I was working for an aerospace company in the early 1970s when someone got a copy of the original Adventure game and installed it on our mainframe computer. For the next month my lunch hours, evenings and weekends, as well as normal work hours, were consumed with fighting the fierce green dragon and escaping from the twisty little passages. Finally, with a few hints about the plover's egg and dynamite, I had proudly earned all the points in the game. My elation turned to terror as I realized it was time for my performance review. My boss was a stern man, more comfortable with machines than people. He opened up a large computer printout containing a log of hours each programmer spent on the mainframe computer. He said he noticed that recently I had been working evenings and weekends and that he admired that type of dedication in his employees. He gave me the maximum raise and told me to keep up the good work."
- StreamBright 8y agoIn the US, right? You can't do such a thing in the EU.
- troist 8y agoHave you got a source on that? Not questioning that it does sound like an EU thing, but it could come in handy at my current company if there's legislation on that and I can't seem to find any.
- StreamBright 8y agoIt is different country by country. In some countries if it wasn't done on a company equipment regarding your assignments the company cannot do anything about it and they cannot limit you to work on opensource/unpaid projects.
- camtarn 8y agoI worked for Amazon in the EU, and the rule was certainly in force. Whether or not it could be enforced is a different question, but none of us wanted to go up against Amazon's lawyers!
- StreamBright 8y agoAmazon EU companies tend to follow blindly what is coming from the HQ. I personally experienced this. After warned the management about getting the ministry of employment involved they immediately backed down and let us implement something according to the EU law. It is the matter of knowing your position and the law.
- mabbo 8y agoThe policies really used to be extreme. I'm still on the inside and I will say things have dramatically improved in the last couple years.
- glenngillen 8y agoI work at AWS. I have also been working on a game in my spare time. I don't know when you left but there are currently zero issues in these two things co-existing. Pretty standard requirements to make sure there's a clear separation of responsibilities and that you're not working on the game when you're meant to be at work, etc.