7 ms·

"You are an IBM employee 100% of the time" What a joke - hope the salary makes this indentured servitude worth it.

by arthurcolle 6y ago

ulfw 6y ago
IF that reply is genuine it’s scary. Sounds more like a cult than a job.
- jldugger 6y ago
  I suspect this is driven less by an overpossessive engineering management team than a legal team. I'd love to know more about what general counsel is afraid of since I know a lot of people under the same restriction and it meshes with the story Spoolsky tells[1] on side projects: > Because they might try to take an investment, and the investor would say, “prove to me that you’re not going to get sued by some disgruntled ex-employee who claims to have invented the things that you’re selling.” The company wants to be able to pull out a list of all current and past employees, and show a contract from every single one of them assigning inventions to the company. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
AmVess 6y ago
He's also not allowed to use his personal Gmail account for hobbies. The people in charge are sociopaths.
- acdha 6y ago
  That sounds a lot more like “you are not allowed to use your personal email address for the same things you work on and call it a hobby”. Not a great conversation but it sounds like what happens when someone tries to rules-lawyer a large corporation which has tons of real lawyers and experience with, for example, patent and other IP lawsuits.
userbinator 6y ago
"Then pay me for 24 hours a day."
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > "Then pay me for 24 hours a day." That’s what a combination of salaried employment with pay and job duties qualifying for FLSA exemption is, in effect.
- smabie 6y ago
  I mean, salaried jobs do pay you for 24 hours a day.
  - arthurcolle 6y ago
    Not typically. Imagine if you make 130k a year but then your boss adds a mandatory meeting at 1:30am your relative time to triage support issues. That might be OK within the parameters of their delusional mindset, but it's still fucked up and should not be allowed.
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      I have a feeling you would be shocked at the percentage of people in wealthy country's who would wake up at 1:30am every day for a meeting for 130k. Fucked up is very strong language.
      - arthurcolle 6y ago
        I'd prefer a 1:30am meeting compared to a 9:30am meeting lol, I was just trying to appeal to what is most preferred, i.e. normal 9am to 6pm "working hours" I was gearing my response in terms of what seems reasonable to expect... but yeah I'm sure everyone would try to stretch themselves to absorb more capital.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      Working in backbone operations for a mid sized ISP, we sure don't have 1:30 meetings, but we do have scheduled 1:30 maintenance events (planned several weeks in advance), and people on the on-call list are expected to be available for middle of the night emergencies. Catastrophic fiber cuts and equipment failures like a roof failing and pouring water onto a DWDM chassis have the tendency to occur at fun times like 0330 in the morning on a holiday. It is expected and known that if you do something like respond to a 0130 in the morning emergency and work the issue until 0430, then go to sleep, that you're going to sleep until whenever you wake up in the mid afternoon and probably not be useful for any other tasks that day. I should point out that the salaried employees expected to respond to such things are compensated appropriately, and the general practice is to have a group of people so that each person is only on-call for some portion of each month. The rank and file NOC employees and fiber splicers, field crews, field technicians are hourly employees and get overtime for incidents as described above. Depending on the state and labor laws they're also paid an hourly rate simply for being on-call, even if nothing happens, for the duration of their on-call rotation week(s).
adrr 6y ago
Thats not legal in California.
- YeBanKo 6y ago
  What exactly do you mean?
  - slver 6y ago
    In practice it means at most they should've called him on the phone and not leave an email trail. You do what your boss wants, or you're out of a job. Outside California and inside California.
  - m463 6y ago
    I believe California employment law is pretty pro-employee. Mostly if you develop something in your spare time, without using company resources in any way, it is yours. I think that's why there are lots of startups in california. In other states, employers in some cases can own everything, up to and including ideas in your head. I don't know an example state that is the other side of the coin, pro-employer, but maybe texas? (uneducated guess)
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      This provision is useless if you work for a large company, because it carves out an exception for anything that could be related to your employer’s business.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Non competes are illegal in California. But while you are employed by a company I believe that most contracts require that even outside of work the company owns your IP unless otherwise stated - that's why there's a bit in your contract where you can specify prior inventions and whatnot, I believe. Every company I've worked for has had it this way.
  - 6y ago
hummusandsushi 6y ago
Sounds like a statement that would constitute a violation of worker's rights in many countries.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
greyface- 6y ago
If the employee is working for IBM on a visa, it may be more than salary at risk.
dboreham 6y ago
To not act contrary to the interests of your employer (unless, I suppose you are whistle-blowing on some illegal activity...) is a universally expected norm, no?
addicted 6y ago
Like others have mentioned this definitely sounds like the last of a long chain of emails. And it really has the tone of just because you do it on your own time, with your own personal email as a “hobby” doesn’t mean you can use it as a loophole to get around restrictions IBM employees might have. So, for example, if IBM isn’t allowed to contribute to a specific project for legal or contractual reasons, an employee doing so “in their own time” would not be a defensible argument.
- sitkack 6y ago
  It still has ramifications for personal contributions on their own time. We are our own persons, with our own desires and choices not to be dictated by our employers. I work for a corporation that says they own every piece of executable code that comes out of my fingertips and I think it is utter bullshit. If I want to fix a bug in an esoteric Scheme implementation OR a bug in a JDK or PHP I have to ask for permission even though it is on my own time. I already volunteer more time than I am paid to my employer, but I have to ask for permission for something they have literally no interest in. This is bullshit.
  - userbinator 6y ago
    One way around that is to never put your real name on stuff outside of/owned by your employer. Keep your work and personal life as separated as possible.
    - paranoidrobot 6y ago
      Trying to do an end-run around legal issues by using pseudonyms is something you should only do after careful consideration of what might happen if that pseudonym becomes known. It's not unreasonable to review and modify the proposed contract that an employer offers. As skilled employees who's services are in demand, you've got a good chance of them coming to the table on that.
      - arthurcolle 6y ago
geofft 6y ago
This is an IBM-maintained driver for an IBM-owned architecture. You are subject to IBM trade secret law 100% of the time. Just because you only get paid for 8 hours of work a day doesn't mean you can use your 9th hour to tell people all about trade secrets. You are, in fact, paid to adhere to the terms of your employment contract 24/7.
- miga 6y ago
  Contract with IBM is never a "law". As it has been noted, labour laws are always above the contracts.
NikolaNovak 6y ago
I mean, strictly speaking that's true, right? I happen to be an IBM employee. I don't WORK 24x7 (well, not most weeks... ;), but "an IBM employee" is a state flag permanently assigned to me until explicitly changed:). I don't even feel it's debatable from a strictly semantic point of view. (I am many other things as well, FWIW:) Hopefully starting from point of agreement, if at 9pm I log on to hacker news and start singing praises to IBM or complaining about its work or musing on its share price or revealing insider information, it would be a relevant disclosable piece of information that "I'm an IBM employee", no?
murph-almighty 6y ago
Hopefully he gets to be an IBM employee 0% of the time and work somewhere else where his contributions to OSS would be appreciated. And IBM can continue to kick themselves at losing a contributor and wonder why they're just a consulting firm now.

"You are an IBM employee 100% of the time" What a joke - hope the salary makes this indentured servitude worth it.

ulfw 6y ago

IF that reply is genuine it’s scary. Sounds more like a cult than a job.

jldugger 6y ago
I suspect this is driven less by an overpossessive engineering management team than a legal team. I'd love to know more about what general counsel is afraid of since I know a lot of people under the same restriction and it meshes with the story Spoolsky tells[1] on side projects: > Because they might try to take an investment, and the investor would say, “prove to me that you’re not going to get sued by some disgruntled ex-employee who claims to have invented the things that you’re selling.” The company wants to be able to pull out a list of all current and past employees, and show a contract from every single one of them assigning inventions to the company. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

AmVess 6y ago

He's also not allowed to use his personal Gmail account for hobbies. The people in charge are sociopaths.

acdha 6y ago
That sounds a lot more like “you are not allowed to use your personal email address for the same things you work on and call it a hobby”. Not a great conversation but it sounds like what happens when someone tries to rules-lawyer a large corporation which has tons of real lawyers and experience with, for example, patent and other IP lawsuits.

userbinator 6y ago

"Then pay me for 24 hours a day."

dragonwriter 6y ago
> "Then pay me for 24 hours a day." That’s what a combination of salaried employment with pay and job duties qualifying for FLSA exemption is, in effect.
smabie 6y ago
I mean, salaried jobs do pay you for 24 hours a day.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  Not typically. Imagine if you make 130k a year but then your boss adds a mandatory meeting at 1:30am your relative time to triage support issues. That might be OK within the parameters of their delusional mindset, but it's still fucked up and should not be allowed.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    I have a feeling you would be shocked at the percentage of people in wealthy country's who would wake up at 1:30am every day for a meeting for 130k. Fucked up is very strong language.
    - arthurcolle 6y ago
      I'd prefer a 1:30am meeting compared to a 9:30am meeting lol, I was just trying to appeal to what is most preferred, i.e. normal 9am to 6pm "working hours" I was gearing my response in terms of what seems reasonable to expect... but yeah I'm sure everyone would try to stretch themselves to absorb more capital.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    Working in backbone operations for a mid sized ISP, we sure don't have 1:30 meetings, but we do have scheduled 1:30 maintenance events (planned several weeks in advance), and people on the on-call list are expected to be available for middle of the night emergencies. Catastrophic fiber cuts and equipment failures like a roof failing and pouring water onto a DWDM chassis have the tendency to occur at fun times like 0330 in the morning on a holiday. It is expected and known that if you do something like respond to a 0130 in the morning emergency and work the issue until 0430, then go to sleep, that you're going to sleep until whenever you wake up in the mid afternoon and probably not be useful for any other tasks that day. I should point out that the salaried employees expected to respond to such things are compensated appropriately, and the general practice is to have a group of people so that each person is only on-call for some portion of each month. The rank and file NOC employees and fiber splicers, field crews, field technicians are hourly employees and get overtime for incidents as described above. Depending on the state and labor laws they're also paid an hourly rate simply for being on-call, even if nothing happens, for the duration of their on-call rotation week(s).

adrr 6y ago

Thats not legal in California.

YeBanKo 6y ago
What exactly do you mean?
- slver 6y ago
  In practice it means at most they should've called him on the phone and not leave an email trail. You do what your boss wants, or you're out of a job. Outside California and inside California.
- m463 6y ago
  I believe California employment law is pretty pro-employee. Mostly if you develop something in your spare time, without using company resources in any way, it is yours. I think that's why there are lots of startups in california. In other states, employers in some cases can own everything, up to and including ideas in your head. I don't know an example state that is the other side of the coin, pro-employer, but maybe texas? (uneducated guess)
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    This provision is useless if you work for a large company, because it carves out an exception for anything that could be related to your employer’s business.
staticassertion 6y ago
Non competes are illegal in California. But while you are employed by a company I believe that most contracts require that even outside of work the company owns your IP unless otherwise stated - that's why there's a bit in your contract where you can specify prior inventions and whatnot, I believe. Every company I've worked for has had it this way.
- 6y ago

hummusandsushi 6y ago

Sounds like a statement that would constitute a violation of worker's rights in many countries.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

greyface- 6y ago

If the employee is working for IBM on a visa, it may be more than salary at risk.

dboreham 6y ago

To not act contrary to the interests of your employer (unless, I suppose you are whistle-blowing on some illegal activity...) is a universally expected norm, no?

addicted 6y ago

Like others have mentioned this definitely sounds like the last of a long chain of emails. And it really has the tone of just because you do it on your own time, with your own personal email as a “hobby” doesn’t mean you can use it as a loophole to get around restrictions IBM employees might have. So, for example, if IBM isn’t allowed to contribute to a specific project for legal or contractual reasons, an employee doing so “in their own time” would not be a defensible argument.

sitkack 6y ago
It still has ramifications for personal contributions on their own time. We are our own persons, with our own desires and choices not to be dictated by our employers. I work for a corporation that says they own every piece of executable code that comes out of my fingertips and I think it is utter bullshit. If I want to fix a bug in an esoteric Scheme implementation OR a bug in a JDK or PHP I have to ask for permission even though it is on my own time. I already volunteer more time than I am paid to my employer, but I have to ask for permission for something they have literally no interest in. This is bullshit.
- userbinator 6y ago
  One way around that is to never put your real name on stuff outside of/owned by your employer. Keep your work and personal life as separated as possible.
  - paranoidrobot 6y ago
    Trying to do an end-run around legal issues by using pseudonyms is something you should only do after careful consideration of what might happen if that pseudonym becomes known. It's not unreasonable to review and modify the proposed contract that an employer offers. As skilled employees who's services are in demand, you've got a good chance of them coming to the table on that.
    - arthurcolle 6y ago

geofft 6y ago

This is an IBM-maintained driver for an IBM-owned architecture. You are subject to IBM trade secret law 100% of the time. Just because you only get paid for 8 hours of work a day doesn't mean you can use your 9th hour to tell people all about trade secrets. You are, in fact, paid to adhere to the terms of your employment contract 24/7.

miga 6y ago
Contract with IBM is never a "law". As it has been noted, labour laws are always above the contracts.

NikolaNovak 6y ago

I mean, strictly speaking that's true, right? I happen to be an IBM employee. I don't WORK 24x7 (well, not most weeks... ;), but "an IBM employee" is a state flag permanently assigned to me until explicitly changed:). I don't even feel it's debatable from a strictly semantic point of view. (I am many other things as well, FWIW:) Hopefully starting from point of agreement, if at 9pm I log on to hacker news and start singing praises to IBM or complaining about its work or musing on its share price or revealing insider information, it would be a relevant disclosable piece of information that "I'm an IBM employee", no?

murph-almighty 6y ago

Hopefully he gets to be an IBM employee 0% of the time and work somewhere else where his contributions to OSS would be appreciated. And IBM can continue to kick themselves at losing a contributor and wonder why they're just a consulting firm now.