8 ms·

I "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 informe

I "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 ago
Problem 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 ago
  Microsoft 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 ago
      Conflict 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.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        Even if your company works on a direct competitor to Linux?
    - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      By asking?
      - tialaramex 8y ago
        This. I have it in my contracts or a rider if they don't like amending the contract itself. I write code, when I stop working for you for the day I still write code. Yes it's lucky that I can get paid to do the main thing I enjoy, but you aren't paying me for the stuff I do off the clock. I will let you know about any major pieces of software I write (not like twenty line Python scripts for managing my music) and if you detect a conflict that's the moment to object, if you do then I'll work on something else, otherwise I own it outright and that's fair. Good employers don't want to abuse you, and in turn don't want to get abused, drawing a line is something they can understand and their lawyers can get their heads around. "This is mine, this is yours".
  - rad_gruchalski 8y ago
    Who decides what's the conflict of the interest. Developers?
    - int_19h 8y ago
      Ultimately, if there's a disagreement over this, it would be the courts, since it's in the employment contract.
      - rad_gruchalski 8y ago
        Right, but once the devs release something valuable into the wild, well, the cat is out of the bag. The implications can be seriously damaging to the company. It can be as severe as invalidating patents or infinging patents belonging to other companies. Can be evenvia a dependency. I can’t believe devs make those decisions without any supervision. However, if that is the case, I’d love to know how so one can implement similar processes internally!
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  It may be reasonable for them to do this, but it may also be reasonable for individuals to decide the practice is not worth enduring for them to work at such a place.
- taurath 8y ago
  Not even open source - most googlers I know will not code anything even volunteer community projects outside of work because if they were involved google would claim it was theirs.
- MereInterest 8y ago
  That is entirely possible, but not at all a problem. If something is being done in secret, so that the employee doesn't know that the other division is working on it, then there are no trade secrets that would be divulged by working on something similar. That companies require you to get approval to work on something on your own time is fundamentally absurd. If I were a carpenter, I would not need permission to make a table. If I wrote ads, I would not need permission to write a book. That we think it reasonable for open source contributions to require company approval show that there is a severe overstepping of bounds on the part of the company.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    People outside a company will not believe that employees of the company keep secrets from each other, at least when it suits them to believe otherwise. So like it or not, if it looks like there're a conflict of interest (even if there isn't), people will blame it on the company. So I don't really think it's so bad that they want to know what you're working on, provided that approval is usually granted.
    - MereInterest 8y ago
      Asking for approval, even if that approval is typically granted, still implies that they have the authority to refuse permission. The farthest that the employer's moral authority extends is to ask politely to be informed. Not to require to be informed, and certainly not to require approval.
      - chii 8y ago
        May be the permission should be flipped - the company has to ask the employee for approval to stop the opensource project. It would work by having the employee list their projects, and the company will, when they find a conflict or some shared interest, ask for the employee to volunteer to stop their project. The employee can refuse, but typically won't.
- TheDong 8y ago
  Every company that is based on california, or that employs you in california, is better. No matter what the non-compete says, if you're in CA, you can use your own hardware and non-work time to develop anything that doesn't directly compete with your employer/dayjob and doesn't use trade secrets/IP from the company. Amazon though is mostly based in Washington, where no such law exists, so sweeping non-competes are legal. The above is the reason that there is a difference between various FAANG companies. Even if the company policy requires you to get approval, if it really isn't a work-related piece of code, you can simply tell them to pound sand and CA will have your back.
  - quantumwannabe 8y ago
    This is misleading. While non-competes are enforceable in Washington, employers can not force employees to sign away the rights to inventions produced on their own time without employer resources. Compare https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140 https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140 to the equivalent CA law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=2870 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... . It's essentially the same wording.
    - brlewis 8y ago
      Isn't "invention" a patent term? Not all creative work is invention.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > No matter what the non-compete says, if you're in CA, you can use your own hardware and non-work time to develop anything that doesn't directly compete with your employer/dayjob and doesn't use trade secrets/IP from the company. What if you work for a company that happens to have a stake in basically every field of technology?
    - rectang 8y ago
      This is one of two reasons why I work for a small company, and also why I left another small company when it was acquired by a large company -- CA 2870 only offers meaningful protection when your employer isn't active in the relevant field of endeavor. I don't want to compete with my employer, I just want to write some sound software on my own time and to maintain my ability to contribute in open source administration. It offends me that the state of the industry is such that I'm expected to sign away my soul on taking any software development job. (The other main reason I won't work for a big is that I don't want to work 40 hours each week but the bigs won't budge on that.)
- chooseaname 8y ago
  It's entirely possible that the big company's interests could encroach upon my open source project, too. Why do they get a pass?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >Truth is, excepting maybe Netflix, the rest of FAANG requires you to get approvals. Is this really true? In my company (not FAANG, but a big one), you need approval only if what you do in your spare time has overlap with the work you are doing in your job. What the rest of the company is doing is immaterial.
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  VMware requires approvals even for own-time projects. They don't put up artificial barriers in my experience; there's a very simple process for declaring outside projects and approval is quick as long as it's not viewed as competitive. I thought their approach seemed reasonable for a big company with a large IP portfolio. It was not always this way--VMware has become much more open source friendly over the last few years.
clairity 8y ago
that kind of restriction is generally not enforceable in states like california unless you explicitly get some kind of consideration (e.g., compensation) for it.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > unless you explicitly get some kind of consideration (e.g., compensation) for it Is this in addition to the regular salary you are paid, or…
  - clairity 8y ago
    since it’s above and beyond customary work duties, you’d expect extra compensation of some kind to have you refrain from projects unrelated to the job. there are some exceptions of course. security-related government workers could be subject to extra restrictions without extra compensation, for example.
wyldfire 8y ago
> 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. This attitude seems kinda common, unfortunately. The critical issue is probably what the boundaries for 'work for hire' are. CA law [1] offers protections. Spolsky [2] offers detailed real-world context. [1] http://law.justia.com/california/codes/lab/2870-2872.html http://law.justia.com/california/codes/lab/2870-2872.html [2] http://www.brightjourney.com/q/working-company-intellectual-property-rights-stuff-spare-time http://www.brightjourney.com/q/working-company-intellectual-...
cryptonector 8y ago
If the approvals issue in all cases where the project clearly is unrelated to the employer's business, then what's the problem? To some degree review of external work is just the sort of thing a corporate legal department is going to push for, and it's not exactly unreasonable provided that approvals issue except where there is clearly a conflict.
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  I agree with you -- if there's a process and it's easy enough to get an approval, I (personally) have no problems. However, Amazon's game development policy lays out 10ish different requirements you must meet, including not working with others outside of your org, must give up ownership of IP at Amazon's request, must use Amazon services or provide feedback why you couldn't. There's no process by which any of those items can be waived. This basically means you can't do game jams with friends unless they work in your org. And if your game jam is successful, you run the risk of Amazon just taking ownership.
  - cryptonector 8y ago
    Yeah, that's not OK. That's not like any policy I've seen anywhere.
  - tjonker 8y ago
    This is not an accurate representation of Amazon's current policies.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
  The problem is that you need permission. Whether the approval is usually given is irrelevant, what matters is whether they have the option to refuse. Think about it like this: What would be the problem with the employment contract saying that salary can be decided by the company at will if they usually paid a certain acceptable sum every month?
  - cryptonector 8y ago
senderista 8y ago
Not just that, when I was there (2013-2014), you couldn’t even post a line of code on Stack Overflow or participate in any MOOC with coding assignments without prior approval. (The security folks couldn’t do any CTFs either.) I doubt any of their competitors have such extreme policies (except maybe Apple, who knows).
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Apple allows for participating in CTFs, at least under the usual "in your own time, using your own hardware, representing yourself and not the company".
MRD85 8y ago
Do you have negotiated work contracts in your country? If your old contract didn't limit work then it would mean being acquired wouldn't affect it.
amelius 8y ago
I don't see how that is legally enforceable if they pay you only for 8 hours/day as opposed to 24 hours/day.
- sah2ed 8y ago
  Not that I agree with Amazon's policy for no open source contributions, but imagine that an employee decides to spend the 6-8hrs out of the remaining 24hrs meant for sleep on something other than sleep, what do you think will happen? That employee's productivity during those critical 8hrs of the day that is being paid for by the employer would drop like a rock, because whether we like it or not, we need time to recharge our batteries.
  - cmsj 8y ago
    By that argument they should also prohibit people from playing competitive chess outside of work, because it's mentally challenging.
  - swift532 8y ago
    If someone is badly underperforming, then they can fire them. It's simply ridiculous for a company to own a second of your time outside work hours, excepting things like people on call, of course, but I count that under work hours.
  - pferde 8y ago
    That's... wow. Are you saying that the employers could (or even should) demand that employees do nothing else during their free time except rest, so that they are well rested for their on-the-clock time? No late night TV for you, no early morning pool swimming session, and don't even think about taking up that physically demanding hobby, because we need you 100% focused on the job!
    - sah2ed 8y ago
      No. I specifically said remaining hours. To recap: - 8hrs for work; - 8hrs for leisure (daily commute, family time, hobbies etc); - 8hrs for sleep. Once you take out work time & leisure time all you have left is sleep time. Sleep is unique because it is an exclusive human activity — it can’t be combined with other activities. If someone decides to misallocate rest time, then s/he will become sleep deprived leading to low productivity. This is true regardless of whether you perform physically demanding work like farming or sit all day at a desk doing knowledge work. A self-inflicted impairment like this is no different from abusing hard drugs or consuming too much alcohol (on or off the clock), but it is vastly different from low productivity resulting from falling ill, which is beyond any employee’s control. Whether you like it or not, paid employment demands a certain monopoly of your time. The only way to opt out is to work for yourself.
paulie_a 8y ago
Typically that sort of thing can't just be informed to you. There needs to be an agreement made, ie you get paid for the new circumstances. A former employer realized that continued employment doesn't count. Even in an at will state, both parties need to get something out of the change.
chooseaname 8y ago
> ... I had to get prior permission to do ANY open source contributions even on my own hardware on my own time Why do we put up with this!? The foundations of our industry go back to how much early developers share with one another!
- hugs 8y ago
  > Why do we put up with this!? The tyranny of a stable paycheck.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >The tyranny of a stable paycheck. In this case, it is the "tyranny" of a large paycheck and equity from the wealthiest public company in the world.
dwmw2 8y ago
It's a big company, and I don't know how long ago your experience is or what your position was. My experience, in my part of the company, in 2019, is that stuff I do outside "work" is my own business. I contribute to open source projects all over the place. As long as I actually do my day job during the daytime, woe betide anyone (other than my wife and family) who tells me what I should be doing with my non-work hours, on unrelated software projects. They even let me release my skunkworks Pidgin Linux client for Chime under LGPL (although I did have to ask permission for that one as I did a bunch of it during the day). In fact even for work hours when I'm working on Linux, we've made progress. Once upon a time you had to file a ticket to legal for every patch series that was submitted upstream. Now we have a policy (again, in our part of the company) that your internal code review submission must have a comment on the upstream status of your patch — is it already upstream, is it going upstream, and if not, WHY NOT? And all you need in the way of permission to do so is to get the nod from myself or a number of other people right there in that code review. Is it perfect? No. Do we still have to catch up and make it as easy for other projects (like Xen, in my day-to-day work) as it is for Linux? Yes. Is it a massive improvement on what it was like before? Hell yes.
- spectre256 8y ago
  My experience is from early 2013. I guess that is 6 years ago now :) Glad to hear things have improved a bit.
  - zootm 8y ago
    I've worked at Amazon since 2007 and I can confirm it has gotten a lot better over that time, especially more recently. I have, in the deep deep past, experienced serious strife with the older policies, and obviously nothing is perfect, but it's gotten to the point where I don't really think about the policy.

Bahamut 8y ago

Problem 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 ago
Microsoft 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 ago
    Conflict 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.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Even if your company works on a direct competitor to Linux?
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    By asking?
    - tialaramex 8y ago
      This. I have it in my contracts or a rider if they don't like amending the contract itself. I write code, when I stop working for you for the day I still write code. Yes it's lucky that I can get paid to do the main thing I enjoy, but you aren't paying me for the stuff I do off the clock. I will let you know about any major pieces of software I write (not like twenty line Python scripts for managing my music) and if you detect a conflict that's the moment to object, if you do then I'll work on something else, otherwise I own it outright and that's fair. Good employers don't want to abuse you, and in turn don't want to get abused, drawing a line is something they can understand and their lawyers can get their heads around. "This is mine, this is yours".
- rad_gruchalski 8y ago
  Who decides what's the conflict of the interest. Developers?
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Ultimately, if there's a disagreement over this, it would be the courts, since it's in the employment contract.
    - rad_gruchalski 8y ago
      Right, but once the devs release something valuable into the wild, well, the cat is out of the bag. The implications can be seriously damaging to the company. It can be as severe as invalidating patents or infinging patents belonging to other companies. Can be evenvia a dependency. I can’t believe devs make those decisions without any supervision. However, if that is the case, I’d love to know how so one can implement similar processes internally!
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
It may be reasonable for them to do this, but it may also be reasonable for individuals to decide the practice is not worth enduring for them to work at such a place.
taurath 8y ago
Not even open source - most googlers I know will not code anything even volunteer community projects outside of work because if they were involved google would claim it was theirs.
MereInterest 8y ago
That is entirely possible, but not at all a problem. If something is being done in secret, so that the employee doesn't know that the other division is working on it, then there are no trade secrets that would be divulged by working on something similar. That companies require you to get approval to work on something on your own time is fundamentally absurd. If I were a carpenter, I would not need permission to make a table. If I wrote ads, I would not need permission to write a book. That we think it reasonable for open source contributions to require company approval show that there is a severe overstepping of bounds on the part of the company.
- skybrian 8y ago
  People outside a company will not believe that employees of the company keep secrets from each other, at least when it suits them to believe otherwise. So like it or not, if it looks like there're a conflict of interest (even if there isn't), people will blame it on the company. So I don't really think it's so bad that they want to know what you're working on, provided that approval is usually granted.
  - MereInterest 8y ago
    Asking for approval, even if that approval is typically granted, still implies that they have the authority to refuse permission. The farthest that the employer's moral authority extends is to ask politely to be informed. Not to require to be informed, and certainly not to require approval.
    - chii 8y ago
      May be the permission should be flipped - the company has to ask the employee for approval to stop the opensource project. It would work by having the employee list their projects, and the company will, when they find a conflict or some shared interest, ask for the employee to volunteer to stop their project. The employee can refuse, but typically won't.
TheDong 8y ago
Every company that is based on california, or that employs you in california, is better. No matter what the non-compete says, if you're in CA, you can use your own hardware and non-work time to develop anything that doesn't directly compete with your employer/dayjob and doesn't use trade secrets/IP from the company. Amazon though is mostly based in Washington, where no such law exists, so sweeping non-competes are legal. The above is the reason that there is a difference between various FAANG companies. Even if the company policy requires you to get approval, if it really isn't a work-related piece of code, you can simply tell them to pound sand and CA will have your back.
- quantumwannabe 8y ago
  This is misleading. While non-competes are enforceable in Washington, employers can not force employees to sign away the rights to inventions produced on their own time without employer resources. Compare https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140 https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140 to the equivalent CA law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=2870 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... . It's essentially the same wording.
  - brlewis 8y ago
    Isn't "invention" a patent term? Not all creative work is invention.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > No matter what the non-compete says, if you're in CA, you can use your own hardware and non-work time to develop anything that doesn't directly compete with your employer/dayjob and doesn't use trade secrets/IP from the company. What if you work for a company that happens to have a stake in basically every field of technology?
  - rectang 8y ago
    This is one of two reasons why I work for a small company, and also why I left another small company when it was acquired by a large company -- CA 2870 only offers meaningful protection when your employer isn't active in the relevant field of endeavor. I don't want to compete with my employer, I just want to write some sound software on my own time and to maintain my ability to contribute in open source administration. It offends me that the state of the industry is such that I'm expected to sign away my soul on taking any software development job. (The other main reason I won't work for a big is that I don't want to work 40 hours each week but the bigs won't budge on that.)
chooseaname 8y ago
It's entirely possible that the big company's interests could encroach upon my open source project, too. Why do they get a pass?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
BeetleB 8y ago
>Truth is, excepting maybe Netflix, the rest of FAANG requires you to get approvals. Is this really true? In my company (not FAANG, but a big one), you need approval only if what you do in your spare time has overlap with the work you are doing in your job. What the rest of the company is doing is immaterial.
hodgesrm 8y ago
VMware requires approvals even for own-time projects. They don't put up artificial barriers in my experience; there's a very simple process for declaring outside projects and approval is quick as long as it's not viewed as competitive. I thought their approach seemed reasonable for a big company with a large IP portfolio. It was not always this way--VMware has become much more open source friendly over the last few years.

clairity 8y ago

that kind of restriction is generally not enforceable in states like california unless you explicitly get some kind of consideration (e.g., compensation) for it.

saagarjha 8y ago
> unless you explicitly get some kind of consideration (e.g., compensation) for it Is this in addition to the regular salary you are paid, or…
- clairity 8y ago
  since it’s above and beyond customary work duties, you’d expect extra compensation of some kind to have you refrain from projects unrelated to the job. there are some exceptions of course. security-related government workers could be subject to extra restrictions without extra compensation, for example.

wyldfire 8y ago

> 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. This attitude seems kinda common, unfortunately. The critical issue is probably what the boundaries for 'work for hire' are. CA law [1] offers protections. Spolsky [2] offers detailed real-world context. [1] http://law.justia.com/california/codes/lab/2870-2872.html http://law.justia.com/california/codes/lab/2870-2872.html [2] http://www.brightjourney.com/q/working-company-intellectual-property-rights-stuff-spare-time http://www.brightjourney.com/q/working-company-intellectual-...

cryptonector 8y ago

If the approvals issue in all cases where the project clearly is unrelated to the employer's business, then what's the problem? To some degree review of external work is just the sort of thing a corporate legal department is going to push for, and it's not exactly unreasonable provided that approvals issue except where there is clearly a conflict.

Pfhreak 8y ago
I agree with you -- if there's a process and it's easy enough to get an approval, I (personally) have no problems. However, Amazon's game development policy lays out 10ish different requirements you must meet, including not working with others outside of your org, must give up ownership of IP at Amazon's request, must use Amazon services or provide feedback why you couldn't. There's no process by which any of those items can be waived. This basically means you can't do game jams with friends unless they work in your org. And if your game jam is successful, you run the risk of Amazon just taking ownership.
- cryptonector 8y ago
  Yeah, that's not OK. That's not like any policy I've seen anywhere.
- tjonker 8y ago
  This is not an accurate representation of Amazon's current policies.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
The problem is that you need permission. Whether the approval is usually given is irrelevant, what matters is whether they have the option to refuse. Think about it like this: What would be the problem with the employment contract saying that salary can be decided by the company at will if they usually paid a certain acceptable sum every month?
- cryptonector 8y ago

senderista 8y ago

Not just that, when I was there (2013-2014), you couldn’t even post a line of code on Stack Overflow or participate in any MOOC with coding assignments without prior approval. (The security folks couldn’t do any CTFs either.) I doubt any of their competitors have such extreme policies (except maybe Apple, who knows).

saagarjha 8y ago
Apple allows for participating in CTFs, at least under the usual "in your own time, using your own hardware, representing yourself and not the company".

MRD85 8y ago

Do you have negotiated work contracts in your country? If your old contract didn't limit work then it would mean being acquired wouldn't affect it.

amelius 8y ago

I don't see how that is legally enforceable if they pay you only for 8 hours/day as opposed to 24 hours/day.

sah2ed 8y ago
Not that I agree with Amazon's policy for no open source contributions, but imagine that an employee decides to spend the 6-8hrs out of the remaining 24hrs meant for sleep on something other than sleep, what do you think will happen? That employee's productivity during those critical 8hrs of the day that is being paid for by the employer would drop like a rock, because whether we like it or not, we need time to recharge our batteries.
- cmsj 8y ago
  By that argument they should also prohibit people from playing competitive chess outside of work, because it's mentally challenging.
- swift532 8y ago
  If someone is badly underperforming, then they can fire them. It's simply ridiculous for a company to own a second of your time outside work hours, excepting things like people on call, of course, but I count that under work hours.
- pferde 8y ago
  That's... wow. Are you saying that the employers could (or even should) demand that employees do nothing else during their free time except rest, so that they are well rested for their on-the-clock time? No late night TV for you, no early morning pool swimming session, and don't even think about taking up that physically demanding hobby, because we need you 100% focused on the job!
  - sah2ed 8y ago
    No. I specifically said remaining hours. To recap: - 8hrs for work; - 8hrs for leisure (daily commute, family time, hobbies etc); - 8hrs for sleep. Once you take out work time & leisure time all you have left is sleep time. Sleep is unique because it is an exclusive human activity — it can’t be combined with other activities. If someone decides to misallocate rest time, then s/he will become sleep deprived leading to low productivity. This is true regardless of whether you perform physically demanding work like farming or sit all day at a desk doing knowledge work. A self-inflicted impairment like this is no different from abusing hard drugs or consuming too much alcohol (on or off the clock), but it is vastly different from low productivity resulting from falling ill, which is beyond any employee’s control. Whether you like it or not, paid employment demands a certain monopoly of your time. The only way to opt out is to work for yourself.

paulie_a 8y ago

Typically that sort of thing can't just be informed to you. There needs to be an agreement made, ie you get paid for the new circumstances. A former employer realized that continued employment doesn't count. Even in an at will state, both parties need to get something out of the change.

chooseaname 8y ago

> ... I had to get prior permission to do ANY open source contributions even on my own hardware on my own time Why do we put up with this!? The foundations of our industry go back to how much early developers share with one another!

hugs 8y ago
> Why do we put up with this!? The tyranny of a stable paycheck.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >The tyranny of a stable paycheck. In this case, it is the "tyranny" of a large paycheck and equity from the wealthiest public company in the world.

dwmw2 8y ago

It's a big company, and I don't know how long ago your experience is or what your position was. My experience, in my part of the company, in 2019, is that stuff I do outside "work" is my own business. I contribute to open source projects all over the place. As long as I actually do my day job during the daytime, woe betide anyone (other than my wife and family) who tells me what I should be doing with my non-work hours, on unrelated software projects. They even let me release my skunkworks Pidgin Linux client for Chime under LGPL (although I did have to ask permission for that one as I did a bunch of it during the day). In fact even for work hours when I'm working on Linux, we've made progress. Once upon a time you had to file a ticket to legal for every patch series that was submitted upstream. Now we have a policy (again, in our part of the company) that your internal code review submission must have a comment on the upstream status of your patch — is it already upstream, is it going upstream, and if not, WHY NOT? And all you need in the way of permission to do so is to get the nod from myself or a number of other people right there in that code review. Is it perfect? No. Do we still have to catch up and make it as easy for other projects (like Xen, in my day-to-day work) as it is for Linux? Yes. Is it a massive improvement on what it was like before? Hell yes.

spectre256 8y ago
My experience is from early 2013. I guess that is 6 years ago now :) Glad to hear things have improved a bit.
- zootm 8y ago
  I've worked at Amazon since 2007 and I can confirm it has gotten a lot better over that time, especially more recently. I have, in the deep deep past, experienced serious strife with the older policies, and obviously nothing is perfect, but it's gotten to the point where I don't really think about the policy.