6 ms·

> Listen, you should know that I'm working on an open-source project that is in the same ballpark as what I'm doing at work. No employer will ever be comfortab

by laureny 12y ago

> Listen, you should know that I'm working on an open-source project that is in the same ballpark as what I'm doing at work. No employer will ever be comfortable with something like this. I write open source on my spare time and I support the idea wholeheartedly but hearing that one of my developers is doing something like this would make me question what exactly she is doing and why. I'm perfectly fine with her working on totally unrelated projects but this smells very dangerous for both parties, starting with the fact that it's probably impossible to make sure the two projects are not leaking into each other, with unforeseen legal and competitive consequences.

jeswin 12y ago
Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. If there was a contract that insisted on it not being so, there is no need to offer the said clause the protection of law. I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. The employee individually isn't obligated to the company any more than the company is obligated to the society collectively. Without the public obeying rules such as copyright, the said company wouldn't even be in business. The west's definition of freedom is confounding. Capitalism has eroded the rights of the individual and left him utterly powerless and subservient. To the extent that many people don't even realize how much of their rights have been ceded.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  > I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. The employee individually isn't obligated to the company The employee and the company are obliged to stand by their agreements with each other. The time to negotiate the terms of the agreement is before you sign it, not after.
  - rmc 12y ago
    There are limitations to the rights you can sign away and agreements you can enter into. For example, you cannot agree to work for less than the minimum wage, and any contract of that form is not binding.
    - jlarocco 12y ago
      Right, but this isn't one of those. Best course of action here is the guy takes it as a lesson learned and reads his future employment contracts closer.
      - WalterBright 12y ago
        Employment contract terms are also negotiable.
        jlarocco 12y ago
        True, most of the time. But in general, for most people, the bigger the company, the less negotiable the contract terms.
        WalterBright 12y ago
        That's a myth, especially for salaried people. Companies aren't going to lose a good hire over a reasonable term change. I've heard the "this is non-negotiable", but when you get up to walk away, it becomes negotiable, as long as what you're asking for is reasonable.
      - rmc 12y ago
        I think this should be one of them. You should not be able to sign away the right to work on other programming projects on your spare time.
  - __david__ 12y ago
    True, but there are also various laws in the different states that determine whether contracts can even cover this point at all. California, I believe, has laws in place that override employee contract clauses that claim ownership of off-the-clock employee inventions. So, if the OP was in California, his employer really had no leg to stand on, regardless of what he may have signed when he started the job.
    - ScottBurson 12y ago
      You're mistaken. The California statute makes an exception for work that relates to the business of the employer. I quote from the addendum to the offer letter I received for my current job: In compliance with prevailing provisions of relevant state statutes, this agreement does not apply to an invention for which no equipment, supplies, facility, or trade secret information of the employer was used and which was developed entirely on the employee's own time, unless (a) the invention relates (i) to the business of the employer, or (ii) to the employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development, or (b) the invention results from any work performed by the employee for the employer. That language is probably straight from the statute, though I didn't check. Anyway, it would have to be written this way, or it would be an invitation to rampant abuse by employees. As it is I think it's very fair. Note especially the word "demonstrably".
- Silhouette 12y ago
  Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. Other things being equal, I would agree with you. But it seems like other things are far from equal in this case, because the project in question is in exactly the field that its author was being paid to work in by his employer. If any related work that (the employee says) happens outside office hours belongs to the employee in that case, what is to stop someone from simply claiming that any good idea they have on the project their employer pays them to work on happened at home after hours, the prototype code they wrote to implement it also happened away from the office, and therefore they assert the rights to it personally and the employer had better pay them whatever they want or be prevented from using exactly the work they are already paying the employee to do for them? I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. So do I, but contracts are two-sided deals. The other side here is that software developers are typically paid a significant amount of money for their work already, and it seems fair to me that the person paying that money would expect clear rights to what they're paying for in return. There is nothing to stop the employer and employee from incorporating some mutually agreeable condition that makes clear how the projects are split and who will get which rights, assuming such a mutually agreeable condition can be found. But as others have noted, for something that is so directly related to what an employee works on by day, there is an obvious conflict of interest.
  - worklogin 12y ago
    So you must also support non-compete clauses. If I work for Google, I shouldn't be able to quit and work for Microsoft, right? How dare I take all my knowledge and apply it elsewhere? The implications are the same, and in both cases, I am on the side of the employee.
    - Silhouette 12y ago
      So you must also support non-compete clauses. Why would you think that? It's a completely different situation. For the record, I have no problem with restricting someone from using trade secrets or disclosing other confidential information they learned as part of one job for the benefit of another (probably competing) employer. I do have a problem with saying if you quit one job you can't then even work in the same industry for some period afterwards, unless a suitable amount of consideration is given in return.
- crag 12y ago
  Actually, it's not the code that matters. It's the ideas; the thinking process. It's virtually impossible to sit down and approach the same problem in completely different ways. Sure, you can use different tools (languages, frameworks, etc, etc) but the process is still the same. Especially when your day AND night jobs produce the same competing app. It's not about personal freedom. It's about (and no insult intended) appearances. And this is damn sloppy. As an employer I'd be suspect too.
  - ThomPete 12y ago
    But that is a wrong way to think about it. Most often lots of the thinking is done before joining the company. In fact many times people are hired because their thinking in the field. In fact the company hiring me themselves benefit from the knowledge I might have acquired at another company. So that whole "we own your brain and ideas" is simply wrong in every sense of the way. As an employer you have a product that product consist of some code. If you can show that employer X took code y and implemented it into their project then you have a case, if not you don't really have a case IMHO (although I am sure it doesn't stop wealthy employers from doing so anyway) P.S. I used to be an employer of 70 people myself.
- biturd 12y ago
  I am near certain I have read Appple taking entire projects away from employees who made apps at home, and these apps were unrelated. For example, a game versus working in Apple's iMessage department.
  - mncolinlee 12y ago
    That's very ironic when you consider where the Apple came from. (An HP employee's free time.)
- microcolonel 12y ago
  Must you politicize everything? These terms aren't binding, they're agreed upon. Neither party is liable for them, but they are part of the agreement. An agreement is held in good faith, and this faith was misplaced on the employer's part, and abused by the employee. No "rights" were "signed away", nobody here is beholden. I wouldn't enter into a personal agreement like this, then make it a lie by doing something other than what was agreed upon, that's just a dick move. It's equivalent to breaking a promise to a friend.
- btilly 12y ago
  Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. If there was a contract that insisted on it not being so, there is no need to offer the said clause the protection of law. You are speaking on a matter of what you feel is moral right, not what is law. As a matter of law, I know that New York State a decade ago was set up so that, by default, a professional employee (ie anyone who doesn't punch a clock and isn't a contractor) is considered "always at work". The default is that everything you do is owned.
- laureny 12y ago
  > Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. That's a very naïve view and provably wrong in a lot of countries. Check with your local labor laws, you'll be surprised.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
"... hearing that one of my developers is doing something like this would make me question what exactly she is doing and why." When someone is working on something 'outside' there can be a number of motivations. As a manager I'm thrilled if they are learning new skills or packages, I can't always come up with projects that keep people interested, and side projects can help with people keeping technically alert. I also love to hear about what they have learned "Hey Chuck, Chef does this much better than we do." Or "Hey we can use this new Meteor framework to build cool stuff." On the other hand if they say "I'm working on an entirely new way to crawl the web, but it isn't at all like our crawler." I'm going to talk to them about switching to our crawler, after all if that is where there interest has taken them, I'd rather it help both of us company and employee. If they don't want to do that because of personality issues, or some other structural issue which has been lingering, as a manager I want to know about that and try to fix it. Bottom line is if your working off hours to charge your technical batteries, its great. If you're working at those hours because of some problem at work, I want to fix that. If you are working on something because you don't want to work here anymore, I'd like to know that too and make the transition smoother for everyone.
tptacek 12y ago
We're totally comfortable with things like that. We have different parameters (steering well clear of client conflicts), but we also (a) care very deeply about IP and (b) don't have problems with people doing off-hours work. My previous employer (Arbor Networks): roughly the same way. People had side/off-hours projects that involved network instrumentation. I think you're overgeneralizing. That's important because if you weren't, and virtually all employers would have a problem with these kinds of side projects, the risk/reward for asking permission would be different.

by laureny 12y ago

jeswin 12y ago

Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. If there was a contract that insisted on it not being so, there is no need to offer the said clause the protection of law. I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. The employee individually isn't obligated to the company any more than the company is obligated to the society collectively. Without the public obeying rules such as copyright, the said company wouldn't even be in business. The west's definition of freedom is confounding. Capitalism has eroded the rights of the individual and left him utterly powerless and subservient. To the extent that many people don't even realize how much of their rights have been ceded.

WalterBright 12y ago
> I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. The employee individually isn't obligated to the company The employee and the company are obliged to stand by their agreements with each other. The time to negotiate the terms of the agreement is before you sign it, not after.
- rmc 12y ago
  There are limitations to the rights you can sign away and agreements you can enter into. For example, you cannot agree to work for less than the minimum wage, and any contract of that form is not binding.
  - jlarocco 12y ago
    Right, but this isn't one of those. Best course of action here is the guy takes it as a lesson learned and reads his future employment contracts closer.
    - WalterBright 12y ago
      Employment contract terms are also negotiable.
      - jlarocco 12y ago
        True, most of the time. But in general, for most people, the bigger the company, the less negotiable the contract terms.
        WalterBright 12y ago
        That's a myth, especially for salaried people. Companies aren't going to lose a good hire over a reasonable term change. I've heard the "this is non-negotiable", but when you get up to walk away, it becomes negotiable, as long as what you're asking for is reasonable.
    - rmc 12y ago
      I think this should be one of them. You should not be able to sign away the right to work on other programming projects on your spare time.
- __david__ 12y ago
  True, but there are also various laws in the different states that determine whether contracts can even cover this point at all. California, I believe, has laws in place that override employee contract clauses that claim ownership of off-the-clock employee inventions. So, if the OP was in California, his employer really had no leg to stand on, regardless of what he may have signed when he started the job.
  - ScottBurson 12y ago
    You're mistaken. The California statute makes an exception for work that relates to the business of the employer. I quote from the addendum to the offer letter I received for my current job: In compliance with prevailing provisions of relevant state statutes, this agreement does not apply to an invention for which no equipment, supplies, facility, or trade secret information of the employer was used and which was developed entirely on the employee's own time, unless (a) the invention relates (i) to the business of the employer, or (ii) to the employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development, or (b) the invention results from any work performed by the employee for the employer. That language is probably straight from the statute, though I didn't check. Anyway, it would have to be written this way, or it would be an invitation to rampant abuse by employees. As it is I think it's very fair. Note especially the word "demonstrably".
Silhouette 12y ago
Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. Other things being equal, I would agree with you. But it seems like other things are far from equal in this case, because the project in question is in exactly the field that its author was being paid to work in by his employer. If any related work that (the employee says) happens outside office hours belongs to the employee in that case, what is to stop someone from simply claiming that any good idea they have on the project their employer pays them to work on happened at home after hours, the prototype code they wrote to implement it also happened away from the office, and therefore they assert the rights to it personally and the employer had better pay them whatever they want or be prevented from using exactly the work they are already paying the employee to do for them? I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. So do I, but contracts are two-sided deals. The other side here is that software developers are typically paid a significant amount of money for their work already, and it seems fair to me that the person paying that money would expect clear rights to what they're paying for in return. There is nothing to stop the employer and employee from incorporating some mutually agreeable condition that makes clear how the projects are split and who will get which rights, assuming such a mutually agreeable condition can be found. But as others have noted, for something that is so directly related to what an employee works on by day, there is an obvious conflict of interest.
- worklogin 12y ago
  So you must also support non-compete clauses. If I work for Google, I shouldn't be able to quit and work for Microsoft, right? How dare I take all my knowledge and apply it elsewhere? The implications are the same, and in both cases, I am on the side of the employee.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    So you must also support non-compete clauses. Why would you think that? It's a completely different situation. For the record, I have no problem with restricting someone from using trade secrets or disclosing other confidential information they learned as part of one job for the benefit of another (probably competing) employer. I do have a problem with saying if you quit one job you can't then even work in the same industry for some period afterwards, unless a suitable amount of consideration is given in return.
crag 12y ago
Actually, it's not the code that matters. It's the ideas; the thinking process. It's virtually impossible to sit down and approach the same problem in completely different ways. Sure, you can use different tools (languages, frameworks, etc, etc) but the process is still the same. Especially when your day AND night jobs produce the same competing app. It's not about personal freedom. It's about (and no insult intended) appearances. And this is damn sloppy. As an employer I'd be suspect too.
- ThomPete 12y ago
  But that is a wrong way to think about it. Most often lots of the thinking is done before joining the company. In fact many times people are hired because their thinking in the field. In fact the company hiring me themselves benefit from the knowledge I might have acquired at another company. So that whole "we own your brain and ideas" is simply wrong in every sense of the way. As an employer you have a product that product consist of some code. If you can show that employer X took code y and implemented it into their project then you have a case, if not you don't really have a case IMHO (although I am sure it doesn't stop wealthy employers from doing so anyway) P.S. I used to be an employer of 70 people myself.
biturd 12y ago
I am near certain I have read Appple taking entire projects away from employees who made apps at home, and these apps were unrelated. For example, a game versus working in Apple's iMessage department.
- mncolinlee 12y ago
  That's very ironic when you consider where the Apple came from. (An HP employee's free time.)
microcolonel 12y ago
Must you politicize everything? These terms aren't binding, they're agreed upon. Neither party is liable for them, but they are part of the agreement. An agreement is held in good faith, and this faith was misplaced on the employer's part, and abused by the employee. No "rights" were "signed away", nobody here is beholden. I wouldn't enter into a personal agreement like this, then make it a lie by doing something other than what was agreed upon, that's just a dick move. It's equivalent to breaking a promise to a friend.
btilly 12y ago
Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. If there was a contract that insisted on it not being so, there is no need to offer the said clause the protection of law. You are speaking on a matter of what you feel is moral right, not what is law. As a matter of law, I know that New York State a decade ago was set up so that, by default, a professional employee (ie anyone who doesn't punch a clock and isn't a contractor) is considered "always at work". The default is that everything you do is owned.
laureny 12y ago
> Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. That's a very naïve view and provably wrong in a lot of countries. Check with your local labor laws, you'll be surprised.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

"... hearing that one of my developers is doing something like this would make me question what exactly she is doing and why." When someone is working on something 'outside' there can be a number of motivations. As a manager I'm thrilled if they are learning new skills or packages, I can't always come up with projects that keep people interested, and side projects can help with people keeping technically alert. I also love to hear about what they have learned "Hey Chuck, Chef does this much better than we do." Or "Hey we can use this new Meteor framework to build cool stuff." On the other hand if they say "I'm working on an entirely new way to crawl the web, but it isn't at all like our crawler." I'm going to talk to them about switching to our crawler, after all if that is where there interest has taken them, I'd rather it help both of us company and employee. If they don't want to do that because of personality issues, or some other structural issue which has been lingering, as a manager I want to know about that and try to fix it. Bottom line is if your working off hours to charge your technical batteries, its great. If you're working at those hours because of some problem at work, I want to fix that. If you are working on something because you don't want to work here anymore, I'd like to know that too and make the transition smoother for everyone.

tptacek 12y ago

We're totally comfortable with things like that. We have different parameters (steering well clear of client conflicts), but we also (a) care very deeply about IP and (b) don't have problems with people doing off-hours work. My previous employer (Arbor Networks): roughly the same way. People had side/off-hours projects that involved network instrumentation. I think you're overgeneralizing. That's important because if you weren't, and virtually all employers would have a problem with these kinds of side projects, the risk/reward for asking permission would be different.