In my company, side projects are divided into two groups: products or toys. Both can be done during work hours without problem (if you continue to deliver your

In my company, side projects are divided into two groups: products or toys. Both can be done during work hours without problem (if you continue to deliver your sprints, of course). Your work should always be deletable (you should keep version control somewhere non local) and your peers should always be able to see your code (asking or not, If it is in a company computer, everyone in the company has access to it). We also incentivize presentation on new technology or topics that emerged from the projects and usually people pitch each other their projects for new contributors. Projects considered products (that the programmer has started expecting profits at some point) should consider our non compete policy: if the product is in the same field as one of our products, our company has the right to be the first investor, with a minimum of 5% and cap of 15%. The valuation process is a bit dense to explain here, but several ex coworker are now partners with their own companies. The system works well but we have to watch out for talent retention. Usually the new companies are SaaS that replace part of our needed logic and cost us less to use than our ex coworker salary.