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I do work in tech, in fact I am on the employer side. Our contracts contain clauses to prevent employees from using company property in whatever they do outside

by cygned 8y ago

I do work in tech, in fact I am on the employer side. Our contracts contain clauses to prevent employees from using company property in whatever they do outside work but I would never had the idea to claim their after hour inventions.

umanwizard 8y ago
How do you define “after hours”? I’ve never worked at a job that had defined “work hours”.
- cygned 8y ago
  With an on-site contract, "working hours" refers to all times on the premises of the employer (us) except for break time. For people working remotely, this is more difficult, there’s no clear definition. Eventually, I don’t see a problem there anyway, given we measure by output and prohibit engineers from reusing our stuff in their private projects. We do not employ people we don’t trust so we never had issues so far.
  - x0x0 8y ago
    Also an employer. I would generally define this as not during work hours. Work hours are flexible, but don't be stupid: just don't interleave work stuff and personal project stuff and use your own equipment and you'll be fine. ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. And ditto re: trust. The way to solve not trusting your employees is to fire them and hire trustworthy ones. As a concrete example: we have had to implement a lot of data table stuff in javascript. If an employee copied that (functionality, not our code) and productized it, I wouldn't care. We'd probably even license it. I would want a discount on that license :) This generally only applies in CA, and also to companies that are heavily invested in keeping the goodwill of their employees. Personally, I don't pick fights I can't win, and having valued eng leave is definitely not a win.
    - jkaplowitz 8y ago
      > ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. That works well enough for employees who work 8 uninterrupted hours per day 5 days per week as their work week. (Even for them, sometimes copyrightable personal projects are different enough to serve the same mentally restorative purpose during the workday that browsing the Internet can, like if it's poetry or designing a sweater.) But not everyone performs best or happiest like that. What about the employees that typically work 11-2, go for a gym break 2-4, work 4-6, go for dinner and time with their family, and then work 8pm-2am... but mix some personal side projects into the 8pm-2am part and think up advances on those personal projects while at the gym, plus do extra work for both personal and employer purposes on weekends? Yes, these patterns are consistent with people I know in the industry. (I'm combining multiple people for anonymity.) Notice those hours added up to well more than 8 work hours per day and more than 40 per week. If such people can't interleave personal and work stuff, they'll probably spend less time on work stuff overall and give less productivity to the company (if they don't switch to a more permissive employer).
      - x0x0 8y ago
        bluntly, not every employee is for every employer. And this is also for the protection of the employee. I'm a founder, and I can make pretty durable promises, but even my promises aren't 100% durable. If we get bought, or we don't perform and I get fired, my promises no longer matter. The employee doesn't want to be in a situation where he or she has built something valuable, I'm no longer in a position to keep my commitment, and the new owners want a piece. I see that you're SRE/ops so your work is naturally more bursty, so that may color your perspective. For my company, I'm not sure how we would deal with that, except we don't really keep people on call outside of hours. We hired ops living in E Europe so they come on as we go to bed. edit: given your suggestions of poetry or sweaters, sure, knock yourself out. I still won't be stoked about working a different business during my hours.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  In jobs like what you describe, one approximation of "after hours" would be "when you're not working or at the office and are not in violation of a reasonable expectation/policy to be doing one of those things." At some employers this would also include "present at the office at a time when you're not expected to do work." In reality, it would be up to the judge, jury, arbitrator, or hearing officer to apply this phrase to the facts or circumstances of any dispute (possibly with deference to on-point precedential or persuasive case law).

by cygned 8y ago

umanwizard 8y ago

How do you define “after hours”? I’ve never worked at a job that had defined “work hours”.

cygned 8y ago
With an on-site contract, "working hours" refers to all times on the premises of the employer (us) except for break time. For people working remotely, this is more difficult, there’s no clear definition. Eventually, I don’t see a problem there anyway, given we measure by output and prohibit engineers from reusing our stuff in their private projects. We do not employ people we don’t trust so we never had issues so far.
- x0x0 8y ago
  Also an employer. I would generally define this as not during work hours. Work hours are flexible, but don't be stupid: just don't interleave work stuff and personal project stuff and use your own equipment and you'll be fine. ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. And ditto re: trust. The way to solve not trusting your employees is to fire them and hire trustworthy ones. As a concrete example: we have had to implement a lot of data table stuff in javascript. If an employee copied that (functionality, not our code) and productized it, I wouldn't care. We'd probably even license it. I would want a discount on that license :) This generally only applies in CA, and also to companies that are heavily invested in keeping the goodwill of their employees. Personally, I don't pick fights I can't win, and having valued eng leave is definitely not a win.
  - jkaplowitz 8y ago
    > ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. That works well enough for employees who work 8 uninterrupted hours per day 5 days per week as their work week. (Even for them, sometimes copyrightable personal projects are different enough to serve the same mentally restorative purpose during the workday that browsing the Internet can, like if it's poetry or designing a sweater.) But not everyone performs best or happiest like that. What about the employees that typically work 11-2, go for a gym break 2-4, work 4-6, go for dinner and time with their family, and then work 8pm-2am... but mix some personal side projects into the 8pm-2am part and think up advances on those personal projects while at the gym, plus do extra work for both personal and employer purposes on weekends? Yes, these patterns are consistent with people I know in the industry. (I'm combining multiple people for anonymity.) Notice those hours added up to well more than 8 work hours per day and more than 40 per week. If such people can't interleave personal and work stuff, they'll probably spend less time on work stuff overall and give less productivity to the company (if they don't switch to a more permissive employer).
    - x0x0 8y ago
      bluntly, not every employee is for every employer. And this is also for the protection of the employee. I'm a founder, and I can make pretty durable promises, but even my promises aren't 100% durable. If we get bought, or we don't perform and I get fired, my promises no longer matter. The employee doesn't want to be in a situation where he or she has built something valuable, I'm no longer in a position to keep my commitment, and the new owners want a piece. I see that you're SRE/ops so your work is naturally more bursty, so that may color your perspective. For my company, I'm not sure how we would deal with that, except we don't really keep people on call outside of hours. We hired ops living in E Europe so they come on as we go to bed. edit: given your suggestions of poetry or sweaters, sure, knock yourself out. I still won't be stoked about working a different business during my hours.
jkaplowitz 8y ago
In jobs like what you describe, one approximation of "after hours" would be "when you're not working or at the office and are not in violation of a reasonable expectation/policy to be doing one of those things." At some employers this would also include "present at the office at a time when you're not expected to do work." In reality, it would be up to the judge, jury, arbitrator, or hearing officer to apply this phrase to the facts or circumstances of any dispute (possibly with deference to on-point precedential or persuasive case law).