7 ms·

You are an IBM employee 100% of the time I hope their pay reflects that and is 3x the average.

by papaf 5y ago

anonytrary 5y ago
It's not, I interviewed with them and had an offer. Although it was for a completely different team probably.
kbenson 5y ago
If you signed an employment contract with a company, you are employed by them until the time either of you terminates it. Whether you are actively doing work for them at the moment is irrelevant to that. Either side can stipulate anything they want in that contract, other than what is disallowed by contract and labor laws (and of course your rights). You can, at any time, decide to terminate that contract yourself though (usually?). IBM probably doesn't want what they might consider proprietary code leaking out, and they probably don't want to have to vet every employee contribution considered "personal" to external projects, so their solution is simple, don't allow employees to do so. The solution for employees is equally as simple. Don't work for companies that go this route if you care about that. The market will sort it out (and has, to a large degree. Many companies specifically don't care about this).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gspr 5y ago
  I for one would prefer to have a society where certain things can't be signed over by contract. Like your free time. Or your organs or life.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Signing away your free time is literally what work is. Bit even if we take that you mean the rest of your free time, how do you enforce that without making a hash of it? Am I allowed to work for my company's biggest competitor in my free time? What if I donate that time? I agree some things should be private, but if I'm paid to program, it makes sense in some instances to say I can't sell or give away that skill they are paying for. Enforcing the details is hard, which is also why I don't want the government doing a shit job of it, and the market can sort that out. Let the government define my rights (which is much more encompassing and harder to circumvent anyway), and the market define the details. If I don't like what is being offered, I'll go elsewhere.
    - gspr 5y ago
      Sure. Signing away your free time to make it work is fine. Signing away your free time into some limbo where it's still legally your free time, but your employer claims it's not yours, is not. When free time becomes work, that should also entail a lot of responsibilities on the part of the one paying for the work (such as, for example, paying). Re the market solving it: maybe it does solve it for you and me. The skillset we're likely to have just based on the fact that we're hanging out on HN means we have a lot of relative power. I for one want a society where also the less fortunate (=a looooot of people), and the far less fortunate, can live worthy lives.
      - kbenson 5y ago
        It is your free time, and you can do whatever you want for yourself. The problem is when you market it to someone else, whether for money or donated, if you agreed to such restrictions. Then that free time is work, whether you enjoy it or get paid for it, which is why the employer in this case thought they had a right to restrict it. I too wish there was a sane way to deal with this, but I don't think this is a case that's so simple that that you can pass a law that isn't so narrow as to be useless that also isn't so vague that it takes a hatchet to important legitimate concerns for employers in a way that would be bad overall. Passing a law about rights of a person would be a sane first step, but how do you do that while also protecting IP and trade secrets, etc? That's why I recommend to get mark we t, not because the market gets everything right, but because I'm this case I think it's better than a law that I not only think won't be done well in the end, I'm not even sure it could be done well. And to be clear, many states already have laws that curtail the worst excesses of contracts like these (such as limiting what type of work qualifies based on what you are employed for), and I think expanding those that work to help this to other states is a good thing, as well as small targeted additions. I just don't think it's something we can use legislation alone to fix.
        ksec 5y ago
        Glad there are still some sanity on HN.
        5y ago
- sellyme 5y ago
  > Either side can stipulate anything they want in that contract, other than what is disallowed by contract and labor laws (and of course your rights). Guess what this is disallowed by! You can write "oh yeah by the way we're not going to pay you for ~75% of your working hours because we're cheap bastards" in the contract all you want, that doesn't make it legal. If they want you to work for them 168 hours a week, they need to pay for it.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    That's not what they said, and that's not what I said. They didn't say the personon the clock doing a task for them of the time, they said the person was employed by them of the time. They were. You are employed right now by whoever signs your paychecks (assuming you have an employer). Employment is a contract, not a state you go into and out of on an hourly basis day by day. You may start work and stop work at different times on different days, but you are employed that entire period (this is also why you can't collect unemployment just because you haven't worked because you haven't been scheduled over a weekend). People have been primed to assume some things about the statement presented (as with the root comment), but if you really examine it critically and rationally, you'll see it's not nearly as ludicrous as it sounds. Employers often put things in contracts that we take as obvious and most would agree should be allowed. At it's simplest level this is a non-compete agreement while that person is employed. Whether they are disallowed from offering their services to a competing company, or an open source project, IBM does not want them plying their skills elsewhere while they've contracted to ply them with IBM, and presumably as put that into the contract. Whether it's for an open source project or not is irrelevant, if that's what they agreed to in the contract (let's not act like an open source project can't provide competition, whether or not this one was). I've outlined my thoughts on this in detail other places in this thread. I don't agree with contracts like this, and would attempt to not sign one if it was possible (but maybe if I was paid enough, it would be worthwhile). But I do think this is a case very easily handled by contract law, and better handled by it than some ham-fisted legislation that is easy to work around and has unintended consequences.
    - sellyme 5y ago

You are an IBM employee 100% of the time I hope their pay reflects that and is 3x the average.

by papaf 5y ago

You are an IBM employee 100% of the time I hope their pay reflects that and is 3x the average.

anonytrary 5y ago

It's not, I interviewed with them and had an offer. Although it was for a completely different team probably.

kbenson 5y ago

If you signed an employment contract with a company, you are employed by them until the time either of you terminates it. Whether you are actively doing work for them at the moment is irrelevant to that. Either side can stipulate anything they want in that contract, other than what is disallowed by contract and labor laws (and of course your rights). You can, at any time, decide to terminate that contract yourself though (usually?). IBM probably doesn't want what they might consider proprietary code leaking out, and they probably don't want to have to vet every employee contribution considered "personal" to external projects, so their solution is simple, don't allow employees to do so. The solution for employees is equally as simple. Don't work for companies that go this route if you care about that. The market will sort it out (and has, to a large degree. Many companies specifically don't care about this).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gspr 5y ago
I for one would prefer to have a society where certain things can't be signed over by contract. Like your free time. Or your organs or life.
- kbenson 5y ago
  Signing away your free time is literally what work is. Bit even if we take that you mean the rest of your free time, how do you enforce that without making a hash of it? Am I allowed to work for my company's biggest competitor in my free time? What if I donate that time? I agree some things should be private, but if I'm paid to program, it makes sense in some instances to say I can't sell or give away that skill they are paying for. Enforcing the details is hard, which is also why I don't want the government doing a shit job of it, and the market can sort that out. Let the government define my rights (which is much more encompassing and harder to circumvent anyway), and the market define the details. If I don't like what is being offered, I'll go elsewhere.
  - gspr 5y ago
    Sure. Signing away your free time to make it work is fine. Signing away your free time into some limbo where it's still legally your free time, but your employer claims it's not yours, is not. When free time becomes work, that should also entail a lot of responsibilities on the part of the one paying for the work (such as, for example, paying). Re the market solving it: maybe it does solve it for you and me. The skillset we're likely to have just based on the fact that we're hanging out on HN means we have a lot of relative power. I for one want a society where also the less fortunate (=a looooot of people), and the far less fortunate, can live worthy lives.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      It is your free time, and you can do whatever you want for yourself. The problem is when you market it to someone else, whether for money or donated, if you agreed to such restrictions. Then that free time is work, whether you enjoy it or get paid for it, which is why the employer in this case thought they had a right to restrict it. I too wish there was a sane way to deal with this, but I don't think this is a case that's so simple that that you can pass a law that isn't so narrow as to be useless that also isn't so vague that it takes a hatchet to important legitimate concerns for employers in a way that would be bad overall. Passing a law about rights of a person would be a sane first step, but how do you do that while also protecting IP and trade secrets, etc? That's why I recommend to get mark we t, not because the market gets everything right, but because I'm this case I think it's better than a law that I not only think won't be done well in the end, I'm not even sure it could be done well. And to be clear, many states already have laws that curtail the worst excesses of contracts like these (such as limiting what type of work qualifies based on what you are employed for), and I think expanding those that work to help this to other states is a good thing, as well as small targeted additions. I just don't think it's something we can use legislation alone to fix.
      - ksec 5y ago
        Glad there are still some sanity on HN.
      - 5y ago
sellyme 5y ago
> Either side can stipulate anything they want in that contract, other than what is disallowed by contract and labor laws (and of course your rights). Guess what this is disallowed by! You can write "oh yeah by the way we're not going to pay you for ~75% of your working hours because we're cheap bastards" in the contract all you want, that doesn't make it legal. If they want you to work for them 168 hours a week, they need to pay for it.
- kbenson 5y ago
  That's not what they said, and that's not what I said. They didn't say the personon the clock doing a task for them of the time, they said the person was employed by them of the time. They were. You are employed right now by whoever signs your paychecks (assuming you have an employer). Employment is a contract, not a state you go into and out of on an hourly basis day by day. You may start work and stop work at different times on different days, but you are employed that entire period (this is also why you can't collect unemployment just because you haven't worked because you haven't been scheduled over a weekend). People have been primed to assume some things about the statement presented (as with the root comment), but if you really examine it critically and rationally, you'll see it's not nearly as ludicrous as it sounds. Employers often put things in contracts that we take as obvious and most would agree should be allowed. At it's simplest level this is a non-compete agreement while that person is employed. Whether they are disallowed from offering their services to a competing company, or an open source project, IBM does not want them plying their skills elsewhere while they've contracted to ply them with IBM, and presumably as put that into the contract. Whether it's for an open source project or not is irrelevant, if that's what they agreed to in the contract (let's not act like an open source project can't provide competition, whether or not this one was). I've outlined my thoughts on this in detail other places in this thread. I don't agree with contracts like this, and would attempt to not sign one if it was possible (but maybe if I was paid enough, it would be worthwhile). But I do think this is a case very easily handled by contract law, and better handled by it than some ham-fisted legislation that is easy to work around and has unintended consequences.
  - sellyme 5y ago