3 ms·

It would be easy enough to firewall your activities based on location. If you are in the office at your place of work, do the work you are paid to do, if you ar

It would be easy enough to firewall your activities based on location. If you are in the office at your place of work, do the work you are paid to do, if you are planning on doing activities that relate to job hunting/ creating a new business, do it after you leave or while at lunch. If the guy's last couple month's productivity goes through the floor and he has dozens of hour+ long phone calls to his lawyer's office, he might be in trouble.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> It would be easy enough to firewall your activities based on location. ...if you work from home?
- lostlogin 7y ago
  At work computer versus at own. Or even VPN on, versus off VPN, though that’s harder if you don’t use one.
  - codyb 7y ago
    Even accounts could be a reasonable separation. If you absolutely had to use your personal computer for a full time gig I can’t imagine how having a clean slate and user namespace wouldn’t be beneficial. Discreet SSH keys, directories, downloads, etc.
    - trickstra 7y ago
      I work from home and even when I have no startup plans I still keep two separate browser profiles, ssh keys, directories etc, exactly for the benefits you mentioned. Things like autocomplete suddenly become "smarter" if they know I'm looking for something work related.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Switch from your work computer to your own computer. If you don't have on the clock vs. off the clock, then I think you could make the argument that you were doing work stuff and then moved to your own computer to do your own stuff.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  I have two accounts on my home workstation to create a separation.
  - unnouinceput 7y ago
    10+ years freelancer. I have virtual machines for each client, and a personal one where i test my stuff. Currently ~10 machines sitting on my PC hard, plus 20+ backed up on a separate backup hdd specially made for this. And all are backed also in the cloud, on encrypted volumes, under different providers with thousands of accounts each, all managed by a password manager (I made my own pwd manager for my own needs). This setup allows me full separation for each client plus my own stuff. Personally I think this is the best solution. Only downside is that requires a good internet connection, which in my country is a non-issue
bcrosby95 7y ago
Makes things trickier if you work remotely. Probably a good reason for having a personal computer and a work computer.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  Oh, absolutely they should be firewalled by device if you are a salaried employee, especially since most employees work on computers that are the property of their company. But can't my employer assert that they bought all my time when I signed up to be an exempt employee? The moonlighting laws in CA seem to give them leway to so if they are in a related area to my project, which for AmaGoopleSoft is potentially everything that can be done with software these days.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    But can't my employer assert that they bought all my time when I signed up to be an exempt employee? No, that would be illegal in pretty much every state, except possibly the worker-hostile US Deep South. The moonlighting laws in CA seem to give them leway to so if they are in a related area to my project, which for AmaGoopleSoft is potentially everything that can be done with software these days. This is backwards. CA's laws are one of the few in the country that actually let you do this type of thing. Most states let companies have extremely permissive claims to products/IP created by their workers, even off the clock. CA is one of the few states that strongly protects workers' individual creations produced off the clock. In a nutshell, unless you're an executive, material employee, or significant owner of the company, the stuff you make in your free time is yours unless it's directly within the scope of the Company's business activities. And generally, even in those situations CA law provides procedures to protect the workers' independently created IP. Note: off the clock for these purposes roughly means that you're (a) not in the office/facility and (b) not working on a specific task or project for the company. I'm not going into all of the nuances in this comment.
    - bigiain 7y ago
      >> But can't my employer assert that they bought all my time when I signed up to be an exempt employee? > No, that would be illegal in pretty much every state, except possibly the worker-hostile US Deep South. A friend of mine had to put his PhD on-hold when the company he worked for was acquired by Oracle, while his lawyer and their lawyers argued over whether the "standard employment contract" he was being asked to sign prevented him from publishing his thesis as required by the university to complete his PhD... A face value reading pretty much claimed "everything you think while employed by Oracle becomes IP exclusively owned by Oracle", and his new manager, their manager, and several levels up the corporate hierarchy all stuck to that interpretation for months before granting what was desc ribed to them as an "extremely unusual one-time-only expemtion which you musty not disclose to any colleagues".

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> It would be easy enough to firewall your activities based on location. ...if you work from home?

lostlogin 7y ago
At work computer versus at own. Or even VPN on, versus off VPN, though that’s harder if you don’t use one.
- codyb 7y ago
  Even accounts could be a reasonable separation. If you absolutely had to use your personal computer for a full time gig I can’t imagine how having a clean slate and user namespace wouldn’t be beneficial. Discreet SSH keys, directories, downloads, etc.
  - trickstra 7y ago
    I work from home and even when I have no startup plans I still keep two separate browser profiles, ssh keys, directories etc, exactly for the benefits you mentioned. Things like autocomplete suddenly become "smarter" if they know I'm looking for something work related.
Hamuko 7y ago
Switch from your work computer to your own computer. If you don't have on the clock vs. off the clock, then I think you could make the argument that you were doing work stuff and then moved to your own computer to do your own stuff.
jacques_chester 7y ago
I have two accounts on my home workstation to create a separation.
- unnouinceput 7y ago
  10+ years freelancer. I have virtual machines for each client, and a personal one where i test my stuff. Currently ~10 machines sitting on my PC hard, plus 20+ backed up on a separate backup hdd specially made for this. And all are backed also in the cloud, on encrypted volumes, under different providers with thousands of accounts each, all managed by a password manager (I made my own pwd manager for my own needs). This setup allows me full separation for each client plus my own stuff. Personally I think this is the best solution. Only downside is that requires a good internet connection, which in my country is a non-issue

bcrosby95 7y ago

Makes things trickier if you work remotely. Probably a good reason for having a personal computer and a work computer.

mattnewton 7y ago
Oh, absolutely they should be firewalled by device if you are a salaried employee, especially since most employees work on computers that are the property of their company. But can't my employer assert that they bought all my time when I signed up to be an exempt employee? The moonlighting laws in CA seem to give them leway to so if they are in a related area to my project, which for AmaGoopleSoft is potentially everything that can be done with software these days.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  But can't my employer assert that they bought all my time when I signed up to be an exempt employee? No, that would be illegal in pretty much every state, except possibly the worker-hostile US Deep South. The moonlighting laws in CA seem to give them leway to so if they are in a related area to my project, which for AmaGoopleSoft is potentially everything that can be done with software these days. This is backwards. CA's laws are one of the few in the country that actually let you do this type of thing. Most states let companies have extremely permissive claims to products/IP created by their workers, even off the clock. CA is one of the few states that strongly protects workers' individual creations produced off the clock. In a nutshell, unless you're an executive, material employee, or significant owner of the company, the stuff you make in your free time is yours unless it's directly within the scope of the Company's business activities. And generally, even in those situations CA law provides procedures to protect the workers' independently created IP. Note: off the clock for these purposes roughly means that you're (a) not in the office/facility and (b) not working on a specific task or project for the company. I'm not going into all of the nuances in this comment.
  - bigiain 7y ago
    >> But can't my employer assert that they bought all my time when I signed up to be an exempt employee? > No, that would be illegal in pretty much every state, except possibly the worker-hostile US Deep South. A friend of mine had to put his PhD on-hold when the company he worked for was acquired by Oracle, while his lawyer and their lawyers argued over whether the "standard employment contract" he was being asked to sign prevented him from publishing his thesis as required by the university to complete his PhD... A face value reading pretty much claimed "everything you think while employed by Oracle becomes IP exclusively owned by Oracle", and his new manager, their manager, and several levels up the corporate hierarchy all stuck to that interpretation for months before granting what was desc ribed to them as an "extremely unusual one-time-only expemtion which you musty not disclose to any colleagues".