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Declaring/Designating and protecting personal IP when joining BigTechCo is standard practice. As long as you are not using tools and internal IP on your projec

Declaring/Designating and protecting personal IP when joining BigTechCo is standard practice. As long as you are not using tools and internal IP on your project and it is not a competing product it is typically fine. This idea that BigTech is hostile to side projects is misplaced. They would actually like it if you succeed because its a PR and branding win for their engineers.

jlokier 5y ago
With one company I worked for, that was completely impractical. The company thought they were doing the right thing by asking me to declare whatever outside works I might be producing, and they would be 100% fine with that so long as it didn't compete with the company's products. In practice, that meant every time I was reading some mailing list and would like to reply to something with a small patch, I would first need to contact my company, add that mailing list's project to the set of outside works, write a bit about the project and get approval. It would turn a 10 minute action into a multi-day administrative action involving managers - completely impractical. The company just didn't have a way to model someone whose idea of outside works was to contribute to countless random projects in small ways every evening, without knowing in advance what those would be. I tried to talk with the company about this problem, and they weren't interested enough to solve it, and didn't see it as a real problem. They thought I was making waves about something unimportant, and perhaps I was misjudging its importance. Perhaps it would all be fine. But I didn't want to accidentally produce things that the company later decided it had a claim on. This was a significant factor in my relief when I was made redundant, as I felt free to finally pursue my interests instead of holding back. I didn't know how much it meant to me until then, but the relief made it obvious that this one issue had been seriously weighing me down throughout the employment, and that I should be more mindful of it in future. If the company had found a good solution to this problem early on, I expect I would have been very much happier working there. Clarity is all that was needed, really. That was before GitHub. I'm guessing companies are a lot more used to their employees doing small outside contributions like that now. I am still wary of doing so without a clear line. Fortunately, all my recent engagements have contracts that limit what the company is interested in, and exist in a context which recognises and even encourages that outside works will take place.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  > I'm guessing companies are a lot more used to their employees doing small outside contributions like that now I've seen a similar contract, but with an explicit exception for open source work.
quantumofalpha 5y ago
Some of big tech are so big and dabble in so many things, that it's not unlikely that some part of your project competes or relates to some part of employer's business, enough to cause IP problems. The process, at least as Google, is to disclose your project to a committee and ask for permission to do it in advance - if they accept they give you IP release waiver and tell you what parts you can and cannot do in your project, for them to not consider it an invasion into Google's interests. My experience with this process was largely negative. Bunch of jerks erring on the employer's side. I can totally see why people with strong interest in their personal projects may not be willing to participate in this circus.

jlokier 5y ago

With one company I worked for, that was completely impractical. The company thought they were doing the right thing by asking me to declare whatever outside works I might be producing, and they would be 100% fine with that so long as it didn't compete with the company's products. In practice, that meant every time I was reading some mailing list and would like to reply to something with a small patch, I would first need to contact my company, add that mailing list's project to the set of outside works, write a bit about the project and get approval. It would turn a 10 minute action into a multi-day administrative action involving managers - completely impractical. The company just didn't have a way to model someone whose idea of outside works was to contribute to countless random projects in small ways every evening, without knowing in advance what those would be. I tried to talk with the company about this problem, and they weren't interested enough to solve it, and didn't see it as a real problem. They thought I was making waves about something unimportant, and perhaps I was misjudging its importance. Perhaps it would all be fine. But I didn't want to accidentally produce things that the company later decided it had a claim on. This was a significant factor in my relief when I was made redundant, as I felt free to finally pursue my interests instead of holding back. I didn't know how much it meant to me until then, but the relief made it obvious that this one issue had been seriously weighing me down throughout the employment, and that I should be more mindful of it in future. If the company had found a good solution to this problem early on, I expect I would have been very much happier working there. Clarity is all that was needed, really. That was before GitHub. I'm guessing companies are a lot more used to their employees doing small outside contributions like that now. I am still wary of doing so without a clear line. Fortunately, all my recent engagements have contracts that limit what the company is interested in, and exist in a context which recognises and even encourages that outside works will take place.

solarkraft 5y ago
> I'm guessing companies are a lot more used to their employees doing small outside contributions like that now I've seen a similar contract, but with an explicit exception for open source work.

quantumofalpha 5y ago

Some of big tech are so big and dabble in so many things, that it's not unlikely that some part of your project competes or relates to some part of employer's business, enough to cause IP problems. The process, at least as Google, is to disclose your project to a committee and ask for permission to do it in advance - if they accept they give you IP release waiver and tell you what parts you can and cannot do in your project, for them to not consider it an invasion into Google's interests. My experience with this process was largely negative. Bunch of jerks erring on the employer's side. I can totally see why people with strong interest in their personal projects may not be willing to participate in this circus.