12 ms·

The Amazon 'Personal Games' Policy

255 points by wyldfire 5y ago

swiley 5y ago
>All work on my Personal Game will be performed outside of my regular working hours. What? Why exactly is Amazon involved at all then?
- denimnerd42 5y ago
  Do many aws/amazon engineers even have regular working hours? I'd imagine there is no 9-12,1-6 at Amazon.
  - Guest42 5y ago
    Perhaps this is what Bezos meant when he said that rather than talking about work-life balance, he’d rather think of things as a circle.
    - mataug 5y ago
      Bezos is quoted frequently using the term "Work Life harmony"[1]. Having previously worked at Amazon, I learned that "harmony" meant, if I'm not working, I should be preparing my mind and body to work better the next day. Bezos also believes that workers are inherently lazy[2]. [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/09/what-jeff-bezos-does-instead-of-work-life-balance.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/09/what-jeff-bezos-does-instead... [2]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based-jeff-bezos-belief-all-workers-are-lazy-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based-jeff-be...
  - mataug 5y ago
    A lucky few do have regular hours, but that could change anytime with a change in manager, skip-level, or even few senior engineers.
  - johnqpub 5y ago
    I do. I'm a 2-year-in-a-row top tier rated senior SDE. I work 8:30 to 5:30 every day. If I work later it's because I'm working on something interesting to me personally and it's my choice. I'll admit I have good management. That makes a huge difference. I also give reasonable estimates for project timelines up front.
    - denimnerd42 5y ago
      do you choose that time by choice? or if you didn't have a meeting at 8:30 or until 5:30 would you have to really work that hour? That's more what I mean. Not that the hours can't be reasonable. On my team sometimes I work till 4, others I work till 5 kind of thing.
    - NBJack 5y ago
      Tell that to the non-senior SDEs whom either (1) don't have the clout with management yet, (2) don't know any better, or (3) have drunk the the lines of "work hard, have fun, make history" a little too deeply. Enjoy your seniority; you're harder to replace. But don't apply that experience liberally to the rest of Amazon SDEs.
dreyfan 5y ago
> 2. I will not use or incorporate Amazon resources or information in the development, release, or marketing of my Personal Game... > 6. To help Amazon improve its products and services, I will use Amazon's publicly available products and services in the development and release of my Personal Game wherever possible... Amazon must have had entirely separate teams write these reps.
- gdsdfe 5y ago
  euh no they don't contradict each other ... resources are not products so meaning in 2. you can't reference some Amazon doc in your stuff but in 6. you gonna need to use AWS for example. at least that's my understanding.
- krapp 5y ago
  The former is referring to using company time and resources only available to employees, the latter to Amazon's consumer-facing products and services.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- freedomben 5y ago
  IANAL, but I think point 2 is talking about private stuff that is only available to internal people, while point 6 is talking about public stuff that is available to anyone (like AWS). I think most of it is uncomfortable but reasonable until point 8, at which point I tell them "thanks but no thanks" for the job.
- paxys 5y ago
  2 is for resources available to you as an employee to do your day to day work – laptop, office, internet connection, internal software. 6 is for publicly available services – mainly AWS.
  - binarymax 5y ago
    While it can be inferred, that is most certainly not clear, and any lawyer worth their salt would tear these two conflicting clauses to pieces.
tenith 5y ago
1-4 is pretty standard but then 5-8 are just increasingly terrible
carbine 5y ago
This is, to put it mildly, insane.
jahabrewer 5y ago
> 9. If a minor dependent collaborates on my Personal Game as allowed in term 8, I agree to the following: Given that said minor dependent may hold partial copyright power for my Personal Game, I relinquish said minor dependent into the care of Amazon in perpetuity. I understand that I will still be responsible for said minor dependent's financial maintenance.
- hartator 5y ago
  > I relinquish said minor dependent into the care of Amazon in perpetuity Lol I am reading this as Amazon will take care of my kid in perpetuity.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    I think that's exactly their point (it's a joke)
    - hathawsh 5y ago
      Well, jahabrewer is saying Amazon's lawyers seem almost evil enough to take kids from parents, while hartator is expressing possible interest in offering a child to Amazon. I'm thinking hartator's kid is going to grow up someday soon and find his parent's posts on HN. When said child finds this post, it will be an interesting day... ;-)
      - hartator 5y ago
        Yes, exactly. I was seeing this as a net positive. :)
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  actually believed this was quoted from the ToS by the time i got to #8
- II2II 5y ago
  It sounds like point #8 is intended to ensure Amazon can exert their other claims, rather than being intended control over the employee. The outcome may be the same so it does not make it right, but it does not support suggestions of devious ulterior motives.
mckoss 5y ago
Am employee is not a slave. You owe your employer the work for which they have hired you, and no more. These kinds of employee agreements should be illegal; what I do with my own time and resources is none of my employer's business.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Edit: Removed
- thisisnico 5y ago
  I couldn't agree more.
- katrotz 5y ago
  Unless it impacts your performance during working hours
  - TheCapn 5y ago
    I'd say you have to be more specific on that. I broke my leg once playing paintball, my personal time hobbies impacted my performance during work hours for a couple months due to mobility issues + appointment followups. Is it in my employer's purview to tell me I can't play sports?
    - Jolter 5y ago
      Sometimes. A previous employer of mine fired a colleague for breaking his leg in a football game. Well, actually, they fired him for calling in sick with a supposed fever and going off to play football. The broken leg was just a smoking gun.
    - samatman 5y ago
      Under some circumstances, yes, under most, no. Actors will sometimes have clauses which prevent them from doing dangerous stuff they like to do (skiing, race car driving) while they're shooting a film. An actor becoming unavailable is very expensive. For any given worker, losing their contribution costs more than just their share. There's always a certain amount of working around the gap in the roster. But that's priced-in, if you will: people go on vacation, take sick leave, parental leave, and they quit outright. So I don't consider it ethical for employers to add that sort of clause under normal circumstances, as indeed, they don't tend to. I do consider it ethical in specific circumstances, however, such as the one I just described.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Wow man yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. Fairly certain the ridiculous parts wouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny, but still, this isn't really that far off of reifying the old joke about signing over your first-born.
- mataug 5y ago
  I agree, most of these wouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny. That also means that someone has to test that in court, which is incredibly expensive, especially since Amazon has some of the best lawyers who will likely drag this out until the plaintiff gives up, or is willing to settle. Since most employees don't have resources to do that, this likely not going to get challenged unless it becomes a PR nightmare.
VLM 5y ago
Can anyone find the unique amazon specific definition of "Personal Game" complete with peculiar capitalization? My guess is we're seeing the stick with all mention of any carrot very carefully edited out. I would further guess Amazon is providing some kind of interesting carrot, perhaps a great big pile of free AWS time or free marketing. I mean, fine, if push comes to shove, I wrote something I choose to define as a realistic fluid dynamics simulator based helicopter flight simulator, not define as per the unknown Amazon definition of a "Personal Game".
- sbarre 5y ago
  It specifically says you are responsible for all fees associated with using AWS.
  - VLM 5y ago
    Good point, although Amazon is a huge company with their finger in every pie. Given those fingers in every pie, they have some kind of carrot to go with this carefully edited stick? I recall the horrific fad maybe ten years ago of forcing "employees" to come in and work on their free time for hackathon and maker type events to generate corporate PR. Perhaps, this "Personal Game" policy is a legacy from some awful corporate hackathon event from back in 2012 that nobody even remembers anymore, but the legal paperwork remains in the air like a bad smell. I suppose until the censorship is removed and we find out the precise legal definition of "Personal Game" we can only wonder and do the usual "big company always bad" thing.
    - insomniacity 5y ago
      I wouldn't call this censorship. There is likely a paragraph right above "To develop or release a Personal Game..." that carefully defines it - but it wouldn't really add anything to the article to include that when it can be summarised as covering the output of an "indie game developer". Contract terms like that are often defined then given Initial Capitals. We should assume good faith on the part of James Liu and Robert Adams unless you have evidence to the contrary. To your point about carrot and stick - yes, the carrot here is likely excellent financial compensation for doing the main job, and the experience on the resume, same as all your colleagues. Amazon aren't going to pay you extra because your hobbies are impacted by their policy - at junior to mid levels it's take it or leave it.
mutatio 5y ago
"If I work on machine learning at my day job, it should be fine to ask for patent rights on any ML related work I do outside of it, but asking for copyright ownership of a video game I make on the side is absurd." – James Liu I don't understand the reasoning, why is it OK to hand over patent rights for work done outside of contractually defined hours simply if it's the same discipline? Hard to reconcile.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  If you're there to develop novel machine learning tools, and you sit there thinking about machine learning tools all day, then go home, publish it, and take the patent for yourself, that's a bit much.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    Well they provided the environment for you to think, but that gives them the right to own your thoughts? It's possible, and even common in universities for the organization to have the right to use but not own your discoveries. If that makes a business non-viable, it's really not our problem.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      If I pay you to invent something, and you invent it, I expect to get it. I'm not paying you for the privilege of inviting you to my office. I'm paying you for the output of specific thoughts you have.
      - tehjoker 5y ago
        It's cool I get to repost this twice in a row: "Very cool and healthy that people on this website instinctively imagine themselves as the boss of random commenters on a website."
        spywaregorilla 5y ago
_hao 5y ago
And people a couple of days ago downvoted me because I expressed an opinion of why I would not use Open 3D Engine even if it's open source... Fuck Amazon
fitblipper 5y ago
The fact that they even allow development of any software without reserving the right to claim ownership puts it leaps and bounds ahead of Google's policies they force on their employees. They used to have a ridiculously heavy handed process where you submit your personal project for review by a group of people who would respond with "No, we want ownership of this project, it is ours now" or "you may work on it and we probably wont claim ownership unless the project varies at all from what you described or we change our mind".
- chippy 5y ago
  They do reserve the right to claim ownership, effectively. "I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game"
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    If they claimed ownership, you couldn't do what you wanted with the IP after you leave the company--they would own it. They can do what they want with the IP after you quit--they require a very broad license--but so can you. And that is the difference.
raphlinus 5y ago
I saw this on Twitter yesterday. As a datapoint, Google's policies on this stuff are quite enlightened by comparison. There are two paths people can take. One is to create an open source project. I started a game (then got distracted by other things), and A/B Street[1] also took that path. The other major route is the IARC program[2], in which the game author owns the copyright. A friend of mine did The Shepherds Rock under that policy. All this is to say that the policies around these things vary widely even within FAANG. [1]: https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet [2]: https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dontTellBezos 5y ago
  Does Google even make games? This policy only applies to developers under the games division. Non-games developers have significantly more freedom.
  - indymike 5y ago
    Jumping T Rex can answer this. Also, probably one of the most popular titles in existence.
  - paxys 5y ago
    They used to (for Stadia), but recently laid off their entire game development studio before they could release a single game.
  - throwawayiarc 5y ago
    Yes; Google's IARC Official Policy has a section on guidance for gaming personal projects, which boils down to "don't spam us about low-tech games, but high-tech stuff is very much on the plate". According to rumors, historically it was also used to curb on googlers working on private android games when android was young.
  - Guidii 5y ago
sidewndr46 5y ago
From the article: > I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game and my Personal Game development. So their personal games policy is Amazon owns it? That's a very poorly named policy.
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  Owning the rights and licensing the rights are different things. This policy is horribly restrictive, but if you grant Amazon a perpetual license as described, they can do what they want, even after you quit. But you can do what you want also. If they demanded ownership, you still couldn't do what you wanted after you quit.
  - Spoom 5y ago
    I figure that if Amazon thought the game could be profitable enough, they could just take everything in it, including the source code (which they have a license to and conveniently access since you were required to use their repository services), change the name (to avoid trademark concerns), deny you access to publish it anywhere (which they can do because you're contractually obligated to use their services and their services alone), and publish it themselves. Sure, they don't own it. But it comes damn close.
    - compiler-guy 5y ago
      This ignores the post employment situation. You don’t have those obligations after you leave the company.
      - Spoom 5y ago
        I suppose it doesn't say that the obligations survive termination of employment. But the perpetual license certainly does, and if you have a family etc., you're not likely to quit your main source of income to go all in on your personal game.
thrower123 5y ago
I was under the impression that this class of language was standard boilerplate that is included in all software employment contracts. It's been a long time, but I think my offer letter had some bullshit about the company owning any IP I developed on my own initiative if it could be tied in any way to company resources. The bits about using AWS services and making your game available on the Amazon Games Store, whatever that is, are slightly odd, but not really enforceable.
- kadoban 5y ago
  This covers things that don't have anything to do with company resources. The entire point of this seems to be to allow hobbies on the side, but then requires you don't work on it with anyone not at Amazon, and no matter what you do, Amazon just about owns it (gets unlimited license). Doesn't really make a lot of sense in total.
hatsunearu 5y ago
The best part is, this applies to not only the corporate people, but also the people working at the warehouses.
sosuke 5y ago
Let's say you get this offer with a yearly salary of $104,350. With 2087 hours as the full-time expectation that would be $50 an hour. However since they want to own all of your creations that might happen while not at work I wonder if they would accept a counter offer. Would you accept this counter offer? At $50 an hour, 8760 hours in the year, my expected full-time salary would be $438,000. Before you suggest I cut out sleep time what if the idea or solution comes to me in a dream? I think that is a good compromise. I have the expectation of being "in office" 2087 hours out of the year while also collecting on all of the chance ideas that happen the rest of the time. Edit: I like this idea. A clause. I collect $104,350 a year. But if Amazon claims ownership over a personal project I create then the rest of the hours uncollected over my employment are owed retroactively. So I work there for 5 years before I have a successful personal project that Amazon wants. They then owe me $1,668,250. Pennies to them but a good chunk of change to me.
- ctvo 5y ago
  Are you writing fan fiction? Not sure I follow.
  - sosuke 5y ago
    More of a thought experiment. What would satisfy me to accept an agreement where every thought I have while employed is owned by my employer. Trying to come up with some compromise that would justify them giving a yearly full-time salary (2087 hours) while at the same time they expect to cash in on all of my non-work hours.
- jbay808 5y ago
  Good luck with your negotiations.
  - sosuke 5y ago
    Yes it quite the fantasy but also feels reasonable to me. I don't think an employer would feel the same way.
- 5y ago
phkahler 5y ago
>> I will own my Personal Game. However, Amazon will not be constrained in its development of games or incur any liabilities by allowing me to develop and release Personal Games. Accordingly, I hereby grant the following license to Amazon to ensure that Amazon wilt never be liable to me for any Amazon work on games: I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game and my Personal Game development. WTF? No.
- dweekly 5y ago
  "Amazon wilt [sic]..." this typo in the putative official contract quoted here and in the OP actually makes me suspicious that this is a true cut and paste of an official contract. Lawyers are many things but typo-prone is not generally one of them.
  - ntrz 5y ago
    I also noticed the numerous typos in the contract; a couple within a single clause here: > if its (sic) a PC game made available for sale, I will submit it for sate (sic) on the Amazon platform I don't know if that's really evidence it's not a genuine Amazon contract, though. It could be that this was typed up based on a hard copy or something like that.
    - stordoff 5y ago
      It was originally shared on Twitter as an image[1], and that version doesn't appear to include any typos I can spot (the "wilt", "its", and "sate" typos are certainly missing). I'm assuming TechRaptor OCRed the image, and that introduced the errors. OCRing it via https://www.onlineocr.net/ https://www.onlineocr.net/ produces some similar typos ("if its a PC game made available for sate, I will submit it for sate on the Amazon platform"; "Amazon wilt not [...] Amazon wilt never be liable"), so I'm guessing this or a similar tool was used and not fully cleaned up. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5pZWdNUcAAEc96?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5pZWdNUcAAEc96?format=jpg Edit: combined duplicate comment and added onlineocr.net
r053bud 5y ago
I interviewed with Twitch back in the day (right after Amazon acquisition) and asked my normal question to them which has never been a problem anywhere else I've work: "Can I contribute to open source projects?". The answer was that all of my contributions had to make it through an Amazon review first to ensure it was a "quality contribution". Granted this was not a contribution to an Amazon-owned piece of software. I decided not to continue interviewing with them...
Hamuko 5y ago
>To help Amazon improve its products and services, I will use Amazon's publicly available products and services in the development and release of my Personal Game wherever possible Does this mean you're not allowed to use Unity because Amazon Lumberyard / Open 3D Engine exists?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
  In theory if the two engines had feature parity it looks like that is the case. I suspect in practice it would look like you would at least have to provide some justification why it was not possible to use Open3D over Unity for your use case (perhaps some missing feature, however minor).
monksy 5y ago
I am not a lawyer nor am I looking to give advice. Not all of that is legal. In IL others cannot claim ownership of the work you produce outside of company time and resources. Additionally claiming a world wide right won't fly. I don't know what nations wouldn't allow for it with the conditions it was created in, but I am confident there are nations that would look at that contract and invalidate it or not accept it since Amazon did not develop or assist in developing it. Theres another point in the agreement that would fall through: Amazon doesn't claim any kind of responsibility for the product made, but Amazon also claims priviledges to work not compensated for. (It's either/or .. a product violates other's rights and gets sued.. which one is it? You can't have someone that party owns it and is complete unreasonable for it) Additionally the nature of the contract is a labor agreement. The labor being agreed upon is employment and has expectations. TL;DR I hope someone comes after them legally in an agressive manner for this. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
rcoumet 5y ago
At this point, is anybody even surprised Amazon is acting in such a way ?
bilalq 5y ago
Ironically, this is actually the improved policy. It actually used to be even more locked down and pretty much disallowed you from doing any game development at all. Source: I previously worked at Amazon for many years.
gentleman11 5y ago
My last job just claimed to own all copyright I produced period while I held that job. If I wrote a short story or a secret note to my family, they would own it. I left the company largely because it made me so uncomfortable
- Anunayj 5y ago
  Well you should have atleast written some really nice wattapad fanfiction.
cableshaft 5y ago
Welp, glad I saw this. I have an application in with Amazon and a code assessment they sent me I was planning to complete in the next few days. But I also make little video games in my spare time. Time to retract my application.
- LadyCailin 5y ago
  Go through the whole process, and then when they give you the contract, ask for an exception, then if they don’t grant it, withdraw. The interview process for you will be good experience, and they’ll learn that they’re losing lots of good candidates with the stupid rule.
  - Verdex 5y ago
    This is the advice of "Never say no, say yes with conditions." Of course if the whole thing gives you a bad taste in your mouth and you basically never want to work for Amazon, I'm going to echo LadyCailin's advice. It does send a message, but it also allows you get in some more interviewing experience. Something that will hopefully make your next interview go even smoother. Also, if you really want to send a message as well as get in some practice asking for absurd things ... Say yes, but ask for the exception AND ask for indemnity from any legal action that Amazon (or anyone else) takes against you with respect to any software you develop on your own time AND ask that $50,000 be put in escrow that you're allowed to use in the event that Amazon gets cold feet in paying for your legal defense. I can't really imagine that anyone would ever say yes to that, but it means that the next time you ask something that's a bit of a reach for an employer that you actually might want to work for, then you'll have had some experience asking for things that feel like a lot.
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      I'm not really that desperate for more interview experience. I'm already juggling interviews with 7 other companies right now, two of them already at the final stage and another one close, and I'm expecting to get 2-3 offers within a couple of weeks. It's taken up most of my free time just keeping up with all of the assessments and interviews and correspondence as it is, I don't feel the need to spend another 2.5-10+ hours on Amazon (the assessment alone is 2.5 hours) just to give them a data point for why I withdrew that will likely be ignored anyway.
Apocryphon 5y ago
Meanwhile, Apple employees have been barred from developing personal apps for years.
gramontblanc 5y ago
Games are a pretty interesting category of software in that they're possibly the only interactive software a user would voluntarily use for its own sake. Anti-games policies and agreements seem pretty suspiciously like "you can write any software you please as long as nobody ever uses it". Perhaps open source software development was only ever allowed under the assumption that open source software could never build a userbase competing with parent companies. Competition could be pretty broadly scoped -- a hobby game could be dangerous to a tech company if it makes no money and has no special proprietary technology but concentrates enough technical acumen and useful experience in its developers/audience that they could recruit internally to found new companies.
smolder 5y ago
If I have to work in some other field to be allowed to retain rights to the work I do outside of work, that's going to be their loss. I couldn't get anything more than extremely vague assurances that my unrelated side work "shouldn't be a problem" from my former employer, while there were IP assignment clauses in the contract. They weren't willing to put anything in writing to exempt it, so development stayed on pause while I worked for them, I resented them for it, and eventually I had to leave because my motivation was sapped. (For that and other reasons, but largely that.) Salaries should buy a job well done and come with some boundaries to protect the company and any IP it has a right to. Salaries shouldn't buy the rights to my first born child nor the thoughts I have in the (24 * 7) - ~40 hours that I'm not working for them every week. I applaud Mr. Liu for walking away, and while I've always ignored the AWS recruiters, this policy ensures I'll never consider them. It's like saying to employees: we'd rather you don't have any external motivators for caring about software development as a topic.
- camgunz 5y ago
  Yeah IP assignment and invention are pretty wild clauses. They're designed at the behest of investors; so your "brilliant" SWEs can't come up with a great idea, leave your company, and get rich on their own. Some jobs are like that, like maybe ML or AR or something--cutting edge tech kind of work. But like, if you're a mobile app dev building a feature, what are you inventing? And if you do invent something (not impossible; game devs invented all kinds of cool stuff for example), there's not a lot to stop you from quitting, "waiting" a month or two (setting up a company quietly), and marketing/building your product. That said, I know people who've had their side projects picked up by their employers under these kinds of clauses. They're serious, and many companies are serious about enforcing them. Don't just wave them off.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Those clauses are just designed to be as broad and all encompassing as possible. Why? Because then there will never been an contention who owns IP. No trial, no arbitrage.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dangus 5y ago
IANAL…I always wondered about how small businesses play into this. By that I mean, if I have an LLC and I assign intellectual property rights of my side project to it and claim that my LLC was the author, can’t that get around restrictions like this? Amazon is employing me as a person, but my LLC wrote the side project software, in the same way that any software I write for my employer is copyrighted by my employer and not me personally. I am pretty sure this is NOT how it works legally but it would be nice if it was. Another idea that might be workable would be to make the source intellectual property worthless to someone without an unwritten secret. Perhaps encryption or obfuscation could be employed. Here you go, here’s your unlimited and perpetual license to my unreadable blob. (Or just don’t work for Amazon)
twirlock 5y ago
It would be morally justifiable to sign the contract and then ignore all that shit.
mimixco 5y ago
This is certainly awful for anyone trying to develop a game outside of Amazon while they work at Amazon. But one has to stop and ask, is that really a thing? If you worked for Coca-Cola, would it be ok to develop a soda that's not theirs? This is an age old HR problem called work for hire. Amazon is ensuring that any work you do on video games while you work there is theirs. In other words, it's work for hire whether you do it at home or not because Amazon is in the video game business. Same goes for working with the other guys. Would Coke be ok with you moonlighting on a Pepsi product? They aren't. The hot word here is that either you work for yourself or you work for someone else. Not both in the same industry simultaneously.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  Yet if you work in a warehouse, this policy apparently (from other commentators) applies to you too. I run the servers for an open source multiplayer video game, one of our frequent contributors used to work in the shipping mines at amazon. So I'd say it's an issue. Also one of our maps had a lot of work on it done by a bioware employee in map design who also created one of the valve sponsored community maps for tf2 (cp_coldfront). The difference between the soda example and the computers example, is that people who do tech work tend to have tech hobbies. Nobody who is a chemist at coke is going to have a hobby creating and random releasing drink recipes on the internet in their spare time. Anti-moonlighting clauses also fail to take into account one thing: If your employer is attempting to control all hours of your life, they should not be allowed to pay less then min wage for those hours. a $125k salary is still less then Seattle's Minimum Wage when you extrapolate it to all 168 hours in a day that amazon apparently wants to be able to control. ($14.30/h).
  - mimixco 5y ago
    Actually, many famous food products, software products, cars, and other things were created by people who did work at their former competitors. It's been the subject of many lawsuits. Reese's were invented by a disgruntled employee at Hershey. No one has ever tried to control all of anyone's hours. All of my arguments are about the nature of the work and the intellectual property components it carries. If you are hauling boxes for Amazon or hauling boxes for Coke, none of this is relevant.
paxys 5y ago
Considering the state of Amazon's entire gaming division, this guy dodged a bullet. It would have been a terrible position even if this policy had not existed.
johnqpub 5y ago
The funny part about this is that it's an "improvement" over the old policy from ~pre-2017 (IIRC): - No working on personal games whatsoever. Full Stop. There's been plenty of complaining about the policy internally. The timing of this is interesting though, it always seemed like the big issue was that Bezos had a personal stick in his ass about this stuff. People are wondering if Jassy will change things up.
NelsonMinar 5y ago
Anyone know if this policy would be enforceable under California law? (I realize Amazon HQ.) I know California has labor protection about non-competes, does it also have protection for people doing work on their own time with their own equipment? I vaguely remember it does but can't find a reference.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Is the policy most places that all your IP belongs to them?
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Not if its on your own time, your own equipment, and using no company IP.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    Is that true? I'm not even a dev but every contract I've signed here (UK) explicitly states this. You can't really prove whether your ideas happen on or off the clock and there is no restriction on this in a contract is there?
ComodoHacker 5y ago
An honest question. What kind of threat Amazon is trying to protect itself from with such policy? What kind of precedent gave birth to it?
rurp 5y ago
Welp this isn't going to help their problem of burning through workers faster than they're being born[0]. Granted that was more about warehouse employees but I imagine they're going to run into some limits finding enough software devs willing to jump in the meat grinder one of these days. [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-worker-shortage-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-wo...
skyzyx 5y ago
When I went to work for Amazon in 2010, I also encountered many internal policies that were very similar to this. I don’t doubt the veracity of this claim one bit.
throwawaysea 5y ago
This is an unacceptable policy and amounts to owning an employee outright, rather than paying them in exchange for specific labor. It should be outlawed and huge fines should be attached for any attempts to hinder outside work. But even leaving that aside, perhaps people should reconsider where they spend their money. A big corporation can do this only because they are wealthy and can afford to reject the few candidates who don't bend the knee and sign the employment contract.
grawprog 5y ago
>All work on my Personal Game will be performed outside of my regular working hours. >I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game and my Personal Game development. So by working for Amazon, you're obligated to give them something you create, that they will not pay you for... This has to be one of the most insane things I've ever seen... I swear every big tech company is so far up it's own ass it can see out it's mouth.

255 points by wyldfire 5y ago

>All work on my Personal Game will be performed outside of my regular working hours. What? Why exactly is Amazon involved at all then?

denimnerd42 5y ago
Do many aws/amazon engineers even have regular working hours? I'd imagine there is no 9-12,1-6 at Amazon.
- Guest42 5y ago
  Perhaps this is what Bezos meant when he said that rather than talking about work-life balance, he’d rather think of things as a circle.
  - mataug 5y ago
    Bezos is quoted frequently using the term "Work Life harmony"[1]. Having previously worked at Amazon, I learned that "harmony" meant, if I'm not working, I should be preparing my mind and body to work better the next day. Bezos also believes that workers are inherently lazy[2]. [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/09/what-jeff-bezos-does-instead-of-work-life-balance.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/09/what-jeff-bezos-does-instead... [2]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based-jeff-bezos-belief-all-workers-are-lazy-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based-jeff-be...
- mataug 5y ago
  A lucky few do have regular hours, but that could change anytime with a change in manager, skip-level, or even few senior engineers.
- johnqpub 5y ago
  I do. I'm a 2-year-in-a-row top tier rated senior SDE. I work 8:30 to 5:30 every day. If I work later it's because I'm working on something interesting to me personally and it's my choice. I'll admit I have good management. That makes a huge difference. I also give reasonable estimates for project timelines up front.
  - denimnerd42 5y ago
    do you choose that time by choice? or if you didn't have a meeting at 8:30 or until 5:30 would you have to really work that hour? That's more what I mean. Not that the hours can't be reasonable. On my team sometimes I work till 4, others I work till 5 kind of thing.
  - NBJack 5y ago
    Tell that to the non-senior SDEs whom either (1) don't have the clout with management yet, (2) don't know any better, or (3) have drunk the the lines of "work hard, have fun, make history" a little too deeply. Enjoy your seniority; you're harder to replace. But don't apply that experience liberally to the rest of Amazon SDEs.

dreyfan 5y ago

> 2. I will not use or incorporate Amazon resources or information in the development, release, or marketing of my Personal Game... > 6. To help Amazon improve its products and services, I will use Amazon's publicly available products and services in the development and release of my Personal Game wherever possible... Amazon must have had entirely separate teams write these reps.

gdsdfe 5y ago
euh no they don't contradict each other ... resources are not products so meaning in 2. you can't reference some Amazon doc in your stuff but in 6. you gonna need to use AWS for example. at least that's my understanding.
krapp 5y ago
The former is referring to using company time and resources only available to employees, the latter to Amazon's consumer-facing products and services.
deleted 5y ago
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freedomben 5y ago
IANAL, but I think point 2 is talking about private stuff that is only available to internal people, while point 6 is talking about public stuff that is available to anyone (like AWS). I think most of it is uncomfortable but reasonable until point 8, at which point I tell them "thanks but no thanks" for the job.
paxys 5y ago
2 is for resources available to you as an employee to do your day to day work – laptop, office, internet connection, internal software. 6 is for publicly available services – mainly AWS.
- binarymax 5y ago
  While it can be inferred, that is most certainly not clear, and any lawyer worth their salt would tear these two conflicting clauses to pieces.

tenith 5y ago

1-4 is pretty standard but then 5-8 are just increasingly terrible

carbine 5y ago

This is, to put it mildly, insane.

jahabrewer 5y ago

> 9. If a minor dependent collaborates on my Personal Game as allowed in term 8, I agree to the following: Given that said minor dependent may hold partial copyright power for my Personal Game, I relinquish said minor dependent into the care of Amazon in perpetuity. I understand that I will still be responsible for said minor dependent's financial maintenance.

hartator 5y ago
> I relinquish said minor dependent into the care of Amazon in perpetuity Lol I am reading this as Amazon will take care of my kid in perpetuity.
- freedomben 5y ago
  I think that's exactly their point (it's a joke)
  - hathawsh 5y ago
    Well, jahabrewer is saying Amazon's lawyers seem almost evil enough to take kids from parents, while hartator is expressing possible interest in offering a child to Amazon. I'm thinking hartator's kid is going to grow up someday soon and find his parent's posts on HN. When said child finds this post, it will be an interesting day... ;-)
    - hartator 5y ago
      Yes, exactly. I was seeing this as a net positive. :)
jareklupinski 5y ago
actually believed this was quoted from the ToS by the time i got to #8
II2II 5y ago
It sounds like point #8 is intended to ensure Amazon can exert their other claims, rather than being intended control over the employee. The outcome may be the same so it does not make it right, but it does not support suggestions of devious ulterior motives.

mckoss 5y ago

Am employee is not a slave. You owe your employer the work for which they have hired you, and no more. These kinds of employee agreements should be illegal; what I do with my own time and resources is none of my employer's business.

slownews45 5y ago
Edit: Removed
thisisnico 5y ago
I couldn't agree more.
katrotz 5y ago
Unless it impacts your performance during working hours
- TheCapn 5y ago
  I'd say you have to be more specific on that. I broke my leg once playing paintball, my personal time hobbies impacted my performance during work hours for a couple months due to mobility issues + appointment followups. Is it in my employer's purview to tell me I can't play sports?
  - Jolter 5y ago
    Sometimes. A previous employer of mine fired a colleague for breaking his leg in a football game. Well, actually, they fired him for calling in sick with a supposed fever and going off to play football. The broken leg was just a smoking gun.
  - samatman 5y ago
    Under some circumstances, yes, under most, no. Actors will sometimes have clauses which prevent them from doing dangerous stuff they like to do (skiing, race car driving) while they're shooting a film. An actor becoming unavailable is very expensive. For any given worker, losing their contribution costs more than just their share. There's always a certain amount of working around the gap in the roster. But that's priced-in, if you will: people go on vacation, take sick leave, parental leave, and they quit outright. So I don't consider it ethical for employers to add that sort of clause under normal circumstances, as indeed, they don't tend to. I do consider it ethical in specific circumstances, however, such as the one I just described.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Wow man yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. Fairly certain the ridiculous parts wouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny, but still, this isn't really that far off of reifying the old joke about signing over your first-born.

mataug 5y ago
I agree, most of these wouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny. That also means that someone has to test that in court, which is incredibly expensive, especially since Amazon has some of the best lawyers who will likely drag this out until the plaintiff gives up, or is willing to settle. Since most employees don't have resources to do that, this likely not going to get challenged unless it becomes a PR nightmare.

VLM 5y ago

Can anyone find the unique amazon specific definition of "Personal Game" complete with peculiar capitalization? My guess is we're seeing the stick with all mention of any carrot very carefully edited out. I would further guess Amazon is providing some kind of interesting carrot, perhaps a great big pile of free AWS time or free marketing. I mean, fine, if push comes to shove, I wrote something I choose to define as a realistic fluid dynamics simulator based helicopter flight simulator, not define as per the unknown Amazon definition of a "Personal Game".

sbarre 5y ago
It specifically says you are responsible for all fees associated with using AWS.
- VLM 5y ago
  Good point, although Amazon is a huge company with their finger in every pie. Given those fingers in every pie, they have some kind of carrot to go with this carefully edited stick? I recall the horrific fad maybe ten years ago of forcing "employees" to come in and work on their free time for hackathon and maker type events to generate corporate PR. Perhaps, this "Personal Game" policy is a legacy from some awful corporate hackathon event from back in 2012 that nobody even remembers anymore, but the legal paperwork remains in the air like a bad smell. I suppose until the censorship is removed and we find out the precise legal definition of "Personal Game" we can only wonder and do the usual "big company always bad" thing.
  - insomniacity 5y ago
    I wouldn't call this censorship. There is likely a paragraph right above "To develop or release a Personal Game..." that carefully defines it - but it wouldn't really add anything to the article to include that when it can be summarised as covering the output of an "indie game developer". Contract terms like that are often defined then given Initial Capitals. We should assume good faith on the part of James Liu and Robert Adams unless you have evidence to the contrary. To your point about carrot and stick - yes, the carrot here is likely excellent financial compensation for doing the main job, and the experience on the resume, same as all your colleagues. Amazon aren't going to pay you extra because your hobbies are impacted by their policy - at junior to mid levels it's take it or leave it.

mutatio 5y ago

"If I work on machine learning at my day job, it should be fine to ask for patent rights on any ML related work I do outside of it, but asking for copyright ownership of a video game I make on the side is absurd." – James Liu I don't understand the reasoning, why is it OK to hand over patent rights for work done outside of contractually defined hours simply if it's the same discipline? Hard to reconcile.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
If you're there to develop novel machine learning tools, and you sit there thinking about machine learning tools all day, then go home, publish it, and take the patent for yourself, that's a bit much.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  Well they provided the environment for you to think, but that gives them the right to own your thoughts? It's possible, and even common in universities for the organization to have the right to use but not own your discoveries. If that makes a business non-viable, it's really not our problem.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    If I pay you to invent something, and you invent it, I expect to get it. I'm not paying you for the privilege of inviting you to my office. I'm paying you for the output of specific thoughts you have.
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      It's cool I get to repost this twice in a row: "Very cool and healthy that people on this website instinctively imagine themselves as the boss of random commenters on a website."
      - spywaregorilla 5y ago

_hao 5y ago

And people a couple of days ago downvoted me because I expressed an opinion of why I would not use Open 3D Engine even if it's open source... Fuck Amazon

fitblipper 5y ago

The fact that they even allow development of any software without reserving the right to claim ownership puts it leaps and bounds ahead of Google's policies they force on their employees. They used to have a ridiculously heavy handed process where you submit your personal project for review by a group of people who would respond with "No, we want ownership of this project, it is ours now" or "you may work on it and we probably wont claim ownership unless the project varies at all from what you described or we change our mind".

chippy 5y ago
They do reserve the right to claim ownership, effectively. "I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game"
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  If they claimed ownership, you couldn't do what you wanted with the IP after you leave the company--they would own it. They can do what they want with the IP after you quit--they require a very broad license--but so can you. And that is the difference.

raphlinus 5y ago

I saw this on Twitter yesterday. As a datapoint, Google's policies on this stuff are quite enlightened by comparison. There are two paths people can take. One is to create an open source project. I started a game (then got distracted by other things), and A/B Street[1] also took that path. The other major route is the IARC program[2], in which the game author owns the copyright. A friend of mine did The Shepherds Rock under that policy. All this is to say that the policies around these things vary widely even within FAANG. [1]: https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet [2]: https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/

deleted 5y ago
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dontTellBezos 5y ago
Does Google even make games? This policy only applies to developers under the games division. Non-games developers have significantly more freedom.
- indymike 5y ago
  Jumping T Rex can answer this. Also, probably one of the most popular titles in existence.
- paxys 5y ago
  They used to (for Stadia), but recently laid off their entire game development studio before they could release a single game.
- throwawayiarc 5y ago
  Yes; Google's IARC Official Policy has a section on guidance for gaming personal projects, which boils down to "don't spam us about low-tech games, but high-tech stuff is very much on the plate". According to rumors, historically it was also used to curb on googlers working on private android games when android was young.
- Guidii 5y ago

sidewndr46 5y ago

From the article: > I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game and my Personal Game development. So their personal games policy is Amazon owns it? That's a very poorly named policy.

compiler-guy 5y ago
Owning the rights and licensing the rights are different things. This policy is horribly restrictive, but if you grant Amazon a perpetual license as described, they can do what they want, even after you quit. But you can do what you want also. If they demanded ownership, you still couldn't do what you wanted after you quit.
- Spoom 5y ago
  I figure that if Amazon thought the game could be profitable enough, they could just take everything in it, including the source code (which they have a license to and conveniently access since you were required to use their repository services), change the name (to avoid trademark concerns), deny you access to publish it anywhere (which they can do because you're contractually obligated to use their services and their services alone), and publish it themselves. Sure, they don't own it. But it comes damn close.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    This ignores the post employment situation. You don’t have those obligations after you leave the company.
    - Spoom 5y ago
      I suppose it doesn't say that the obligations survive termination of employment. But the perpetual license certainly does, and if you have a family etc., you're not likely to quit your main source of income to go all in on your personal game.

thrower123 5y ago

I was under the impression that this class of language was standard boilerplate that is included in all software employment contracts. It's been a long time, but I think my offer letter had some bullshit about the company owning any IP I developed on my own initiative if it could be tied in any way to company resources. The bits about using AWS services and making your game available on the Amazon Games Store, whatever that is, are slightly odd, but not really enforceable.

kadoban 5y ago
This covers things that don't have anything to do with company resources. The entire point of this seems to be to allow hobbies on the side, but then requires you don't work on it with anyone not at Amazon, and no matter what you do, Amazon just about owns it (gets unlimited license). Doesn't really make a lot of sense in total.

hatsunearu 5y ago

The best part is, this applies to not only the corporate people, but also the people working at the warehouses.

sosuke 5y ago

Let's say you get this offer with a yearly salary of $104,350. With 2087 hours as the full-time expectation that would be $50 an hour. However since they want to own all of your creations that might happen while not at work I wonder if they would accept a counter offer. Would you accept this counter offer? At $50 an hour, 8760 hours in the year, my expected full-time salary would be $438,000. Before you suggest I cut out sleep time what if the idea or solution comes to me in a dream? I think that is a good compromise. I have the expectation of being "in office" 2087 hours out of the year while also collecting on all of the chance ideas that happen the rest of the time. Edit: I like this idea. A clause. I collect $104,350 a year. But if Amazon claims ownership over a personal project I create then the rest of the hours uncollected over my employment are owed retroactively. So I work there for 5 years before I have a successful personal project that Amazon wants. They then owe me $1,668,250. Pennies to them but a good chunk of change to me.

ctvo 5y ago
Are you writing fan fiction? Not sure I follow.
- sosuke 5y ago
  More of a thought experiment. What would satisfy me to accept an agreement where every thought I have while employed is owned by my employer. Trying to come up with some compromise that would justify them giving a yearly full-time salary (2087 hours) while at the same time they expect to cash in on all of my non-work hours.
jbay808 5y ago
Good luck with your negotiations.
- sosuke 5y ago
  Yes it quite the fantasy but also feels reasonable to me. I don't think an employer would feel the same way.
5y ago

phkahler 5y ago

>> I will own my Personal Game. However, Amazon will not be constrained in its development of games or incur any liabilities by allowing me to develop and release Personal Games. Accordingly, I hereby grant the following license to Amazon to ensure that Amazon wilt never be liable to me for any Amazon work on games: I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game and my Personal Game development. WTF? No.

dweekly 5y ago
"Amazon wilt [sic]..." this typo in the putative official contract quoted here and in the OP actually makes me suspicious that this is a true cut and paste of an official contract. Lawyers are many things but typo-prone is not generally one of them.
- ntrz 5y ago
  I also noticed the numerous typos in the contract; a couple within a single clause here: > if its (sic) a PC game made available for sale, I will submit it for sate (sic) on the Amazon platform I don't know if that's really evidence it's not a genuine Amazon contract, though. It could be that this was typed up based on a hard copy or something like that.
  - stordoff 5y ago
    It was originally shared on Twitter as an image[1], and that version doesn't appear to include any typos I can spot (the "wilt", "its", and "sate" typos are certainly missing). I'm assuming TechRaptor OCRed the image, and that introduced the errors. OCRing it via https://www.onlineocr.net/ https://www.onlineocr.net/ produces some similar typos ("if its a PC game made available for sate, I will submit it for sate on the Amazon platform"; "Amazon wilt not [...] Amazon wilt never be liable"), so I'm guessing this or a similar tool was used and not fully cleaned up. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5pZWdNUcAAEc96?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5pZWdNUcAAEc96?format=jpg Edit: combined duplicate comment and added onlineocr.net

r053bud 5y ago

I interviewed with Twitch back in the day (right after Amazon acquisition) and asked my normal question to them which has never been a problem anywhere else I've work: "Can I contribute to open source projects?". The answer was that all of my contributions had to make it through an Amazon review first to ensure it was a "quality contribution". Granted this was not a contribution to an Amazon-owned piece of software. I decided not to continue interviewing with them...

Hamuko 5y ago

>To help Amazon improve its products and services, I will use Amazon's publicly available products and services in the development and release of my Personal Game wherever possible Does this mean you're not allowed to use Unity because Amazon Lumberyard / Open 3D Engine exists?

SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
In theory if the two engines had feature parity it looks like that is the case. I suspect in practice it would look like you would at least have to provide some justification why it was not possible to use Open3D over Unity for your use case (perhaps some missing feature, however minor).

monksy 5y ago

I am not a lawyer nor am I looking to give advice. Not all of that is legal. In IL others cannot claim ownership of the work you produce outside of company time and resources. Additionally claiming a world wide right won't fly. I don't know what nations wouldn't allow for it with the conditions it was created in, but I am confident there are nations that would look at that contract and invalidate it or not accept it since Amazon did not develop or assist in developing it. Theres another point in the agreement that would fall through: Amazon doesn't claim any kind of responsibility for the product made, but Amazon also claims priviledges to work not compensated for. (It's either/or .. a product violates other's rights and gets sued.. which one is it? You can't have someone that party owns it and is complete unreasonable for it) Additionally the nature of the contract is a labor agreement. The labor being agreed upon is employment and has expectations. TL;DR I hope someone comes after them legally in an agressive manner for this. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.

rcoumet 5y ago

At this point, is anybody even surprised Amazon is acting in such a way ?

bilalq 5y ago

Ironically, this is actually the improved policy. It actually used to be even more locked down and pretty much disallowed you from doing any game development at all. Source: I previously worked at Amazon for many years.

gentleman11 5y ago

My last job just claimed to own all copyright I produced period while I held that job. If I wrote a short story or a secret note to my family, they would own it. I left the company largely because it made me so uncomfortable

Anunayj 5y ago
Well you should have atleast written some really nice wattapad fanfiction.

cableshaft 5y ago

Welp, glad I saw this. I have an application in with Amazon and a code assessment they sent me I was planning to complete in the next few days. But I also make little video games in my spare time. Time to retract my application.

LadyCailin 5y ago
Go through the whole process, and then when they give you the contract, ask for an exception, then if they don’t grant it, withdraw. The interview process for you will be good experience, and they’ll learn that they’re losing lots of good candidates with the stupid rule.
- Verdex 5y ago
  This is the advice of "Never say no, say yes with conditions." Of course if the whole thing gives you a bad taste in your mouth and you basically never want to work for Amazon, I'm going to echo LadyCailin's advice. It does send a message, but it also allows you get in some more interviewing experience. Something that will hopefully make your next interview go even smoother. Also, if you really want to send a message as well as get in some practice asking for absurd things ... Say yes, but ask for the exception AND ask for indemnity from any legal action that Amazon (or anyone else) takes against you with respect to any software you develop on your own time AND ask that $50,000 be put in escrow that you're allowed to use in the event that Amazon gets cold feet in paying for your legal defense. I can't really imagine that anyone would ever say yes to that, but it means that the next time you ask something that's a bit of a reach for an employer that you actually might want to work for, then you'll have had some experience asking for things that feel like a lot.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    I'm not really that desperate for more interview experience. I'm already juggling interviews with 7 other companies right now, two of them already at the final stage and another one close, and I'm expecting to get 2-3 offers within a couple of weeks. It's taken up most of my free time just keeping up with all of the assessments and interviews and correspondence as it is, I don't feel the need to spend another 2.5-10+ hours on Amazon (the assessment alone is 2.5 hours) just to give them a data point for why I withdrew that will likely be ignored anyway.

Apocryphon 5y ago

Meanwhile, Apple employees have been barred from developing personal apps for years.

gramontblanc 5y ago

Games are a pretty interesting category of software in that they're possibly the only interactive software a user would voluntarily use for its own sake. Anti-games policies and agreements seem pretty suspiciously like "you can write any software you please as long as nobody ever uses it". Perhaps open source software development was only ever allowed under the assumption that open source software could never build a userbase competing with parent companies. Competition could be pretty broadly scoped -- a hobby game could be dangerous to a tech company if it makes no money and has no special proprietary technology but concentrates enough technical acumen and useful experience in its developers/audience that they could recruit internally to found new companies.

smolder 5y ago

If I have to work in some other field to be allowed to retain rights to the work I do outside of work, that's going to be their loss. I couldn't get anything more than extremely vague assurances that my unrelated side work "shouldn't be a problem" from my former employer, while there were IP assignment clauses in the contract. They weren't willing to put anything in writing to exempt it, so development stayed on pause while I worked for them, I resented them for it, and eventually I had to leave because my motivation was sapped. (For that and other reasons, but largely that.) Salaries should buy a job well done and come with some boundaries to protect the company and any IP it has a right to. Salaries shouldn't buy the rights to my first born child nor the thoughts I have in the (24 * 7) - ~40 hours that I'm not working for them every week. I applaud Mr. Liu for walking away, and while I've always ignored the AWS recruiters, this policy ensures I'll never consider them. It's like saying to employees: we'd rather you don't have any external motivators for caring about software development as a topic.

camgunz 5y ago
Yeah IP assignment and invention are pretty wild clauses. They're designed at the behest of investors; so your "brilliant" SWEs can't come up with a great idea, leave your company, and get rich on their own. Some jobs are like that, like maybe ML or AR or something--cutting edge tech kind of work. But like, if you're a mobile app dev building a feature, what are you inventing? And if you do invent something (not impossible; game devs invented all kinds of cool stuff for example), there's not a lot to stop you from quitting, "waiting" a month or two (setting up a company quietly), and marketing/building your product. That said, I know people who've had their side projects picked up by their employers under these kinds of clauses. They're serious, and many companies are serious about enforcing them. Don't just wave them off.
- refurb 5y ago
  Those clauses are just designed to be as broad and all encompassing as possible. Why? Because then there will never been an contention who owns IP. No trial, no arbitrage.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dangus 5y ago

IANAL…I always wondered about how small businesses play into this. By that I mean, if I have an LLC and I assign intellectual property rights of my side project to it and claim that my LLC was the author, can’t that get around restrictions like this? Amazon is employing me as a person, but my LLC wrote the side project software, in the same way that any software I write for my employer is copyrighted by my employer and not me personally. I am pretty sure this is NOT how it works legally but it would be nice if it was. Another idea that might be workable would be to make the source intellectual property worthless to someone without an unwritten secret. Perhaps encryption or obfuscation could be employed. Here you go, here’s your unlimited and perpetual license to my unreadable blob. (Or just don’t work for Amazon)

twirlock 5y ago

It would be morally justifiable to sign the contract and then ignore all that shit.

mimixco 5y ago

This is certainly awful for anyone trying to develop a game outside of Amazon while they work at Amazon. But one has to stop and ask, is that really a thing? If you worked for Coca-Cola, would it be ok to develop a soda that's not theirs? This is an age old HR problem called work for hire. Amazon is ensuring that any work you do on video games while you work there is theirs. In other words, it's work for hire whether you do it at home or not because Amazon is in the video game business. Same goes for working with the other guys. Would Coke be ok with you moonlighting on a Pepsi product? They aren't. The hot word here is that either you work for yourself or you work for someone else. Not both in the same industry simultaneously.

MrStonedOne 5y ago
Yet if you work in a warehouse, this policy apparently (from other commentators) applies to you too. I run the servers for an open source multiplayer video game, one of our frequent contributors used to work in the shipping mines at amazon. So I'd say it's an issue. Also one of our maps had a lot of work on it done by a bioware employee in map design who also created one of the valve sponsored community maps for tf2 (cp_coldfront). The difference between the soda example and the computers example, is that people who do tech work tend to have tech hobbies. Nobody who is a chemist at coke is going to have a hobby creating and random releasing drink recipes on the internet in their spare time. Anti-moonlighting clauses also fail to take into account one thing: If your employer is attempting to control all hours of your life, they should not be allowed to pay less then min wage for those hours. a $125k salary is still less then Seattle's Minimum Wage when you extrapolate it to all 168 hours in a day that amazon apparently wants to be able to control. ($14.30/h).
- mimixco 5y ago
  Actually, many famous food products, software products, cars, and other things were created by people who did work at their former competitors. It's been the subject of many lawsuits. Reese's were invented by a disgruntled employee at Hershey. No one has ever tried to control all of anyone's hours. All of my arguments are about the nature of the work and the intellectual property components it carries. If you are hauling boxes for Amazon or hauling boxes for Coke, none of this is relevant.

paxys 5y ago

Considering the state of Amazon's entire gaming division, this guy dodged a bullet. It would have been a terrible position even if this policy had not existed.

johnqpub 5y ago

The funny part about this is that it's an "improvement" over the old policy from ~pre-2017 (IIRC): - No working on personal games whatsoever. Full Stop. There's been plenty of complaining about the policy internally. The timing of this is interesting though, it always seemed like the big issue was that Bezos had a personal stick in his ass about this stuff. People are wondering if Jassy will change things up.

NelsonMinar 5y ago

Anyone know if this policy would be enforceable under California law? (I realize Amazon HQ.) I know California has labor protection about non-competes, does it also have protection for people doing work on their own time with their own equipment? I vaguely remember it does but can't find a reference.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Is the policy most places that all your IP belongs to them?

cwkoss 5y ago
Not if its on your own time, your own equipment, and using no company IP.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Is that true? I'm not even a dev but every contract I've signed here (UK) explicitly states this. You can't really prove whether your ideas happen on or off the clock and there is no restriction on this in a contract is there?

ComodoHacker 5y ago

An honest question. What kind of threat Amazon is trying to protect itself from with such policy? What kind of precedent gave birth to it?

rurp 5y ago

Welp this isn't going to help their problem of burning through workers faster than they're being born[0]. Granted that was more about warehouse employees but I imagine they're going to run into some limits finding enough software devs willing to jump in the meat grinder one of these days. [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-worker-shortage-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-wo...

skyzyx 5y ago

When I went to work for Amazon in 2010, I also encountered many internal policies that were very similar to this. I don’t doubt the veracity of this claim one bit.

throwawaysea 5y ago

This is an unacceptable policy and amounts to owning an employee outright, rather than paying them in exchange for specific labor. It should be outlawed and huge fines should be attached for any attempts to hinder outside work. But even leaving that aside, perhaps people should reconsider where they spend their money. A big corporation can do this only because they are wealthy and can afford to reject the few candidates who don't bend the knee and sign the employment contract.

grawprog 5y ago

>All work on my Personal Game will be performed outside of my regular working hours. >I grant to Amazon a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferrable license to any and all of my intellectual property rights associated with the Personal Game and my Personal Game development. So by working for Amazon, you're obligated to give them something you create, that they will not pay you for... This has to be one of the most insane things I've ever seen... I swear every big tech company is so far up it's own ass it can see out it's mouth.