7 ms·

It was the same at Amazon when I was there. You couldn't even work on your own game on your own time.

by senderista 7y ago

falcolas 7y ago
Being the status quo for technical companies doesn't make it legal, moral, or fair.
- aeonflux 7y ago
  But why is this not legal, moral or fair?
  - falcolas 7y ago
    Because it creates an unreasonable restriction on your life outside of work. Its somewhat unprecedented in the global market as well. Proofreaders are not prohibited from reading books. Concept Artists are not prohibited from creating art. Writers are not prohibited from writing. Teachers from teaching. Workers from volunteering work.
    - aeonflux 7y ago
      As I pointed in other comment - restrictions on life outside work are common and reasonable. Most people can't work competitors after work.
      - patcon 7y ago
        It seems odd to consider "the commons" as a competitor... feels petty, like: "If we can't have it, then you can't even gift it to the human collective."
      - ac29 7y ago
        > Most people can't work competitors after work. Non-compete clauses "are automatically void as a matter of law in California" [0], where Apple is based (though they have offices in other states and countries). I wonder if a ban on open source contributions would fall afoul of this law (I suspect yes, though Apple can afford pretty good lawyers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California
      - BossingAround 7y ago
        How is that fair? Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? Now, disclosing secrets, that's a different matter. If I go to Google to inform them of amazing killer project Apple wants to do within 5 years, that's called corporate espionage. No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. In fact, I don't even see a reason why I should even tell these companies I work for multiple companies.
        umvi 7y ago
        > Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? You can, if you are being paid by the hour. But you probably aren't being paid by the hour, you are probably collecting an annual salary which means you might be expected to work 8-10 hours per day, not work for other companies, and other restrictions.
        BossingAround 7y ago
        Even though my contract states yearly salary, that salary is calculated by $hourly_rate * 8 * $number_of_work_days_in_year. That's specifically stated. My contract also specifically states that I agree to work 40 hours a week. Maybe this is not the case in a typical US employment contract?
        grumple 7y ago
        US contracts usually don't explicitly list policies like this. From my perspective, this means they can't hold you to anything, although the average person seems to think it means the company can do whatever they want. Either way, I'm pretty clear about my relationship with my employer - if you start asking me to do things, and I don't want to do them, I won't. They can decide if they want to live with that arrangement or not. Some of us outside CA do sign non-compete agreements, though, which is another matter entirely.
        jfim 7y ago
        > No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. Many the employment contracts have a "no moonlighting" clause, which basically says that one won't be working for another employer during the employment period.
    - egypturnash 7y ago
      Most big animation studios have contracts that say “we own everything you draw while you work for us”. Or at least they did when I was in the industry around the turn of the century.
      - bigiain 7y ago
        A friend of mine had to put his PhD on hold when his company was acquired by Oracle, who tried to force him into signing "their standard employment contract" which effectively granted them ownership to everything he thought while employed by them. It took 3 or 4 months and 5 or 6 levels of management above his new boss before getting "an extraordinary one-off exemption" to allow him to finish thinking/writing his thesis and allow the university to publish it (as required by the terms of completing the PhD...) Everyone was _pretty_ sure that would have been unenforceable here in Australia - but that there's a serious practical difference between what is and isn't enforceable in contracts, and going up against Oracle's legal team even when they're on the wrong side of the law. So he just "stopped thinking" for several months until he (temporarily) had written permission to think non-Oracle thoughts...
    - jariel 7y ago
      It's definitely not an unreasonable restriction for most, and those who don't like the policy don't have to work there. Your examples aren't helpful because the don't address the issue, which is risk. In the examples provided there's really nothing about the 'personal work' that puts the employers position at risk. Which is why, by the way, schools don't generally defy teachers from teaching on the side. Or proofreaders etc.. In fact such limitations are rare outside industries with IP issues. Apple is a $1T company and all of that valuation is up for grabs by litigious people of various kinds who can use any kind of side-show tactic interpretation of the law to make money. So imagine someone 'working from home' on the 'same computer' that they use for work. What counts as 'work time' vs. 'personal time' when flipping back and forth between activities? How will a judge view this? Then you have competitive problems: you work on 'iMovie' for 1 hour, then you work on 'MyMovie' (personal) the hour. This creates ugly conflicts of interest. Then you have liability issues if Apple is seen to be contributing to an OSS without the right legal bits in place. It doesn't matter that it 'shouldn't' be a problem, what matters is that a bad actor + a lawyer can possibly make enough of a fuss to convince a judge that there's a problem 'Apple's contribution to this OSS code materially affected my business and it was no clear in the liscencing' etc.. As we've seen with Google/Uber, this stuff is very expensive, very strategic, can be very ambiguous, which is bad. There's so much grey in the equation, and so much at risk, it's simply not worth it for Apple and Amazon. So if you want to work there, that's it, you can't make games. It'd be nice if there were some kind of regulatory issues around it, but it'd have to be clear. I also think they should be nice enough to 'wave' people's rights to do certain things, like work on specific OSS projects.
    - nemothekid 7y ago
      I feel like everyone is focusing on the wrong part of the Invention Assignment Agreement. The problem isn't that employers want to force you to not work on anything else (Apple might). The problem is, if you go home, and work on a work related problem, who owns that work. The obtuse case is I work for your company as the lead engineer making TVs. All the TVs can't display blue. I then go home have an epiphany, and develop a method for making TVs blue. We fix the problem and call it day. Later still, I leave the company and sue you for infringement because I technically came up with the solution outside of work and therefore I own that code. This is the situation most companies are trying to avoid. If you solve this problem without having the company own everything the programmer does in and out of work, then you can have stricter walls between work and home projects.
    - jedberg 7y ago
      > Writers are not prohibited from writing. Most are actually. If you're employed as a writer, you can't just go and write what you want without permission from your employer. They usually get the right of first refusal, meaning that you have to show it to them first and if they want to publish it then they get to do so.
Twirrim 7y ago
It changed a bunch when I was there (2013-2016). You were allowed to when I joined, but you had to get permission and the process was a complete pain in the arse and took forever to navigate. By the time I left, you still had to get permission but the process was extremely quick and simple, as long as it wasn't on competing technology. The one hard exception was game dev which remained a firm no-go, for reasons that never really made sense (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!)
- onion2k 7y ago
  (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!) https://amazongames.com/ https://amazongames.com/ make games and a game engine called Lumberyard https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ that's based on CryEngine.
  - solarkraft 7y ago
    Sure. But why does that conflict with Amazon devs making their own games? If anything it seems like the engines could benefit from it.
    - abj 7y ago
      Not defending Amazon, I'm an indie game dev who wants to own his off work hours side project. But Amazon Game Studios is releasing a game called "New World" this year. [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game)
- mabbo 7y ago
  I'm still here. The process now is "don't ask, just read the policy and follow it in however you interpret it, but we'll sue you later if we disagree with your interpretation".
  - vkou 7y ago
    That's how Amazon handles non-competes as well. Are they going to enforce your non-compete? Who knows, just sign on the dotted line, and don't ask any questions.

It was the same at Amazon when I was there. You couldn't even work on your own game on your own time.

falcolas 7y ago

Being the status quo for technical companies doesn't make it legal, moral, or fair.

aeonflux 7y ago
But why is this not legal, moral or fair?
- falcolas 7y ago
  Because it creates an unreasonable restriction on your life outside of work. Its somewhat unprecedented in the global market as well. Proofreaders are not prohibited from reading books. Concept Artists are not prohibited from creating art. Writers are not prohibited from writing. Teachers from teaching. Workers from volunteering work.
  - aeonflux 7y ago
    As I pointed in other comment - restrictions on life outside work are common and reasonable. Most people can't work competitors after work.
    - patcon 7y ago
      It seems odd to consider "the commons" as a competitor... feels petty, like: "If we can't have it, then you can't even gift it to the human collective."
    - ac29 7y ago
      > Most people can't work competitors after work. Non-compete clauses "are automatically void as a matter of law in California" [0], where Apple is based (though they have offices in other states and countries). I wonder if a ban on open source contributions would fall afoul of this law (I suspect yes, though Apple can afford pretty good lawyers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California
    - BossingAround 7y ago
      How is that fair? Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? Now, disclosing secrets, that's a different matter. If I go to Google to inform them of amazing killer project Apple wants to do within 5 years, that's called corporate espionage. No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. In fact, I don't even see a reason why I should even tell these companies I work for multiple companies.
      - umvi 7y ago
        > Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? You can, if you are being paid by the hour. But you probably aren't being paid by the hour, you are probably collecting an annual salary which means you might be expected to work 8-10 hours per day, not work for other companies, and other restrictions.
        BossingAround 7y ago
        Even though my contract states yearly salary, that salary is calculated by $hourly_rate * 8 * $number_of_work_days_in_year. That's specifically stated. My contract also specifically states that I agree to work 40 hours a week. Maybe this is not the case in a typical US employment contract?
        grumple 7y ago
        US contracts usually don't explicitly list policies like this. From my perspective, this means they can't hold you to anything, although the average person seems to think it means the company can do whatever they want. Either way, I'm pretty clear about my relationship with my employer - if you start asking me to do things, and I don't want to do them, I won't. They can decide if they want to live with that arrangement or not. Some of us outside CA do sign non-compete agreements, though, which is another matter entirely.
      - jfim 7y ago
        > No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. Many the employment contracts have a "no moonlighting" clause, which basically says that one won't be working for another employer during the employment period.
  - egypturnash 7y ago
    Most big animation studios have contracts that say “we own everything you draw while you work for us”. Or at least they did when I was in the industry around the turn of the century.
    - bigiain 7y ago
      A friend of mine had to put his PhD on hold when his company was acquired by Oracle, who tried to force him into signing "their standard employment contract" which effectively granted them ownership to everything he thought while employed by them. It took 3 or 4 months and 5 or 6 levels of management above his new boss before getting "an extraordinary one-off exemption" to allow him to finish thinking/writing his thesis and allow the university to publish it (as required by the terms of completing the PhD...) Everyone was _pretty_ sure that would have been unenforceable here in Australia - but that there's a serious practical difference between what is and isn't enforceable in contracts, and going up against Oracle's legal team even when they're on the wrong side of the law. So he just "stopped thinking" for several months until he (temporarily) had written permission to think non-Oracle thoughts...
  - jariel 7y ago
    It's definitely not an unreasonable restriction for most, and those who don't like the policy don't have to work there. Your examples aren't helpful because the don't address the issue, which is risk. In the examples provided there's really nothing about the 'personal work' that puts the employers position at risk. Which is why, by the way, schools don't generally defy teachers from teaching on the side. Or proofreaders etc.. In fact such limitations are rare outside industries with IP issues. Apple is a $1T company and all of that valuation is up for grabs by litigious people of various kinds who can use any kind of side-show tactic interpretation of the law to make money. So imagine someone 'working from home' on the 'same computer' that they use for work. What counts as 'work time' vs. 'personal time' when flipping back and forth between activities? How will a judge view this? Then you have competitive problems: you work on 'iMovie' for 1 hour, then you work on 'MyMovie' (personal) the hour. This creates ugly conflicts of interest. Then you have liability issues if Apple is seen to be contributing to an OSS without the right legal bits in place. It doesn't matter that it 'shouldn't' be a problem, what matters is that a bad actor + a lawyer can possibly make enough of a fuss to convince a judge that there's a problem 'Apple's contribution to this OSS code materially affected my business and it was no clear in the liscencing' etc.. As we've seen with Google/Uber, this stuff is very expensive, very strategic, can be very ambiguous, which is bad. There's so much grey in the equation, and so much at risk, it's simply not worth it for Apple and Amazon. So if you want to work there, that's it, you can't make games. It'd be nice if there were some kind of regulatory issues around it, but it'd have to be clear. I also think they should be nice enough to 'wave' people's rights to do certain things, like work on specific OSS projects.
  - nemothekid 7y ago
    I feel like everyone is focusing on the wrong part of the Invention Assignment Agreement. The problem isn't that employers want to force you to not work on anything else (Apple might). The problem is, if you go home, and work on a work related problem, who owns that work. The obtuse case is I work for your company as the lead engineer making TVs. All the TVs can't display blue. I then go home have an epiphany, and develop a method for making TVs blue. We fix the problem and call it day. Later still, I leave the company and sue you for infringement because I technically came up with the solution outside of work and therefore I own that code. This is the situation most companies are trying to avoid. If you solve this problem without having the company own everything the programmer does in and out of work, then you can have stricter walls between work and home projects.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    > Writers are not prohibited from writing. Most are actually. If you're employed as a writer, you can't just go and write what you want without permission from your employer. They usually get the right of first refusal, meaning that you have to show it to them first and if they want to publish it then they get to do so.

Twirrim 7y ago

It changed a bunch when I was there (2013-2016). You were allowed to when I joined, but you had to get permission and the process was a complete pain in the arse and took forever to navigate. By the time I left, you still had to get permission but the process was extremely quick and simple, as long as it wasn't on competing technology. The one hard exception was game dev which remained a firm no-go, for reasons that never really made sense (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!)

onion2k 7y ago
(Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!) https://amazongames.com/ https://amazongames.com/ make games and a game engine called Lumberyard https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ that's based on CryEngine.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  Sure. But why does that conflict with Amazon devs making their own games? If anything it seems like the engines could benefit from it.
  - abj 7y ago
    Not defending Amazon, I'm an indie game dev who wants to own his off work hours side project. But Amazon Game Studios is releasing a game called "New World" this year. [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game)
mabbo 7y ago
I'm still here. The process now is "don't ask, just read the policy and follow it in however you interpret it, but we'll sue you later if we disagree with your interpretation".
- vkou 7y ago
  That's how Amazon handles non-competes as well. Are they going to enforce your non-compete? Who knows, just sign on the dotted line, and don't ask any questions.