4 ms·

The spare time issue is an interesting one. One one side we have companies saying that they look for programmers who are working on projects after they get off

by bugsy 16y ago

The spare time issue is an interesting one. One one side we have companies saying that they look for programmers who are working on projects after they get off work and on weekends. On the other side we have companies having employees sign a contract claiming that everything they do 24/7 belongs to the company. Often both sides are the same company. It's not an issue for me only because I work for my own firm, something I had to do to get out of such bizarre situations. But it's an issue for many programmers who are told that working on their own projects is stealing time and mental energy from the company. I can certainly sympathize with the talented developer who, told that the company owns all his private projects done in his own time on his own equipment, simply chooses to leave at 5 and spend time with his family rather than have passionate private work seized and shelved by a firm who had nothing to do with its creation. It's really the rational choice if you think about it and something very valuable in a developer is rational thinking.

PlayerJ 16y ago
To be honest everywhere that I have applied as a programmer has either had the 24/7 rule or a contract so unspecific that it leads me to think that they will try to take ownership of something I write if it does indeed lead to a valuable product. As such I am usually working on projects in my free time but I rarely want to tell them about a real project for fear of them trying to take it. It creates a difficult situation in an interview, when I have projects but I dont want to discuss them.
- khafra 16y ago
  Have you tried asking for a written addition to the contract saying work you do on your own time, unrelated in subject to what you do for the company, belongs to you? Contracts aren't always necessarily one-size-fits-all, and if that's the only thing keeping you from a good job it might be an option worth exploring.
perlgeek 16y ago
Since this is a story from a German company... such a 24/7 clause can't be enforced in .de, it's void. The company can claim inventions you made during work hours, and can forbid you to compete with them directly in your free time. That's it.
elai 16y ago
And in some states (like washington), by law, work done on your own time with your own equipment that does not directly compete is yours too. (And the law even says you have to put it in the contract!)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
bioh42_2 16y ago
The spare time issue is as much a bad crutch as the tricky questions are. I work long hours for a company which has the "we own your life" clause. All but one company I've worked at has had that clause, ironically the one exception was a start up! And even if that clause wasn't there, when I leave work I'll be damned if I touch a computer. I guess I'm not a true hard core hacker, elite geek or code ninja, or what ever the latest buzz word is. But I'm not stupid. I myself ask for code samples when I interview people. So I made sure I have two open source projects. They are so old, you can find them on source-forge! The first one is a silly toy application I wrote waaay back in college. And when I started interviewing I was very worried about how trivial it was. But it impressed everyone who saw it. I learned you can always tell who has real programming talent, no matter how small or trivial the project is. This is why I now want code samples from people I interview. My other project came a bit later, it's not my project it's a bunch of patches which were accepted for a large highly complex project. A good chunk of it was just memory leak fixing and comments ranting about destructor shearing. Have I touched either one of those projects in years? Hell no! When I leave a job I plan to work on open source projects, but every time I end up getting a great offer before I'm even out the door. I have to fight to get a few weeks of vacation between jobs, and that's a vacation from computers as well. My advice, is take two weeks, and write a tiny, trivial, open source project, a calendar app, a scrabble app, anything. And then let that be your side project. And if someone is crazy enough to expect everyone with a day job, to also have an active programming hobby, just don't work for them.

by bugsy 16y ago

PlayerJ 16y ago

To be honest everywhere that I have applied as a programmer has either had the 24/7 rule or a contract so unspecific that it leads me to think that they will try to take ownership of something I write if it does indeed lead to a valuable product. As such I am usually working on projects in my free time but I rarely want to tell them about a real project for fear of them trying to take it. It creates a difficult situation in an interview, when I have projects but I dont want to discuss them.

khafra 16y ago
Have you tried asking for a written addition to the contract saying work you do on your own time, unrelated in subject to what you do for the company, belongs to you? Contracts aren't always necessarily one-size-fits-all, and if that's the only thing keeping you from a good job it might be an option worth exploring.

perlgeek 16y ago

Since this is a story from a German company... such a 24/7 clause can't be enforced in .de, it's void. The company can claim inventions you made during work hours, and can forbid you to compete with them directly in your free time. That's it.

elai 16y ago

And in some states (like washington), by law, work done on your own time with your own equipment that does not directly compete is yours too. (And the law even says you have to put it in the contract!)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

bioh42_2 16y ago

The spare time issue is as much a bad crutch as the tricky questions are. I work long hours for a company which has the "we own your life" clause. All but one company I've worked at has had that clause, ironically the one exception was a start up! And even if that clause wasn't there, when I leave work I'll be damned if I touch a computer. I guess I'm not a true hard core hacker, elite geek or code ninja, or what ever the latest buzz word is. But I'm not stupid. I myself ask for code samples when I interview people. So I made sure I have two open source projects. They are so old, you can find them on source-forge! The first one is a silly toy application I wrote waaay back in college. And when I started interviewing I was very worried about how trivial it was. But it impressed everyone who saw it. I learned you can always tell who has real programming talent, no matter how small or trivial the project is. This is why I now want code samples from people I interview. My other project came a bit later, it's not my project it's a bunch of patches which were accepted for a large highly complex project. A good chunk of it was just memory leak fixing and comments ranting about destructor shearing. Have I touched either one of those projects in years? Hell no! When I leave a job I plan to work on open source projects, but every time I end up getting a great offer before I'm even out the door. I have to fight to get a few weeks of vacation between jobs, and that's a vacation from computers as well. My advice, is take two weeks, and write a tiny, trivial, open source project, a calendar app, a scrabble app, anything. And then let that be your side project. And if someone is crazy enough to expect everyone with a day job, to also have an active programming hobby, just don't work for them.