I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is: The company owns the code but has given permission to use it as specified in the license. Fortunately, the MIT licen

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is: The company owns the code but has given permission to use it as specified in the license. Fortunately, the MIT license is very permissive. You thus have their permission to do a lot. You don't have rights, you have a license. You may have signed an employment contract that puts limitations on what you can do. I wouldn't hesitate to fork a MIT licensed project, but your other contracts with the owner of the code may complicate things.