Law and policy is the stick, while trust and education is the carrot. As others are pointing out, it’s nearly impossible to implement a technical solution witho

Law and policy is the stick, while trust and education is the carrot. As others are pointing out, it’s nearly impossible to implement a technical solution without draconian measures that may cost more than they save. The main defense you have is legal, and the main offense you have is the opportunity to earn employee loyalty. It may be worth asking what scenarios cause you real damage. Someone using un-runnable snippets of code they themselves wrote just to get another job is unlikely to cause any harm to your company. If this is a concern, why not allow it and implement an exit-interview review of assets they’d like to use for job-hunting? You could offer to let employees who leave take some of their code snippets with them, as long as you can review it before they go. This way it’s allowed and you have some control over what’s shared instead of the alternative no control. Someone posting a custom/secret algorithm is subject to being sued. If posted to Github, you also have the legal right to request removal from Github. If they take it to another company, you can sue the other company. A common proactive defense against this is patenting the algorithm in question so there’s no question where it came or whether other companies can use it.