Every GH employee I've ever met has been very satisfied with their job. They come to meetups and hand out stickers but then they stay and contribute and do presentations about things they are passionate about. Most sponsors show up with a bribe and then do a marketing talk and leave. I'm sure my bar is set lower than some, but it means a lot to me to see happy employees.
Very, very good. It shows the kind of trust in employees that I like to see. Depends a bit on how they will interpret "As long as the work isn’t related to GitHub’s own “existing or prospective” products and services" but I'd assume that it will be very reasonable.
I'm sure this is all idealistic crap, but I'd still love to see someone try it; I'd like to see a well grounded company include "even if it is related to <company>'s own existing and prospective products". A nice competitive taunt "Go ahead, try and compete with us, we dare you." Code is already covered by copyright, so it's not like anyone could take the repository and start a GitHub with it. Even if they could, not many people are going to trust the new fork because it's future is not backed by the same team and community (unless the existing team and community has become toxic, but, ideally, having this threat in place could prevent that from happening in the first place). Code is only part of GitHub's success, recreating the other parts isn't going to happen easily. No single person could know all the ins-and-outs of every important role in the company.
Fwiw, I don't think this is a new thing for GitHub employees, as the headline suggests, this is some best practice that GitHub is releasing for others! At least, I've enjoyed this benefit since I joined GH earlier this year.
Agreed. In my couple years at GitHub side projects have been encouraged, not discouraged. It's been incredibly refreshing. Interestingly enough, I have worked on side projects the least at GitHub because I really enjoy my employment now and get paid a fair wage :)
People keep complaining about how hard and expensive it is to attract top talent. This kind of measure is exactly how you do it. Provide an environment where employees feel trusted and empowered, pay market rate, screen properly instead of having applicants jump through hoops, and you won't have much trouble hiring.
I am no lawyer, but I don't expect that under EU work law anything done outside work can be forbidden in the work contract, in any member country.
The only issue I see from law point of view, is if whatever is being done, in terms of private projects, is related to knowledge acquired during the work activities, sometimes under NDA. Here yes, there can be issues.
Now if the projects are done in technology stacks or business domains completely different from what happens at work, then it isn't enforceable.
It really is sad. The worst part is, employees are treated poorly at many companies. I feel like it's even worse during and after a recession because employers know people are desperate.
I have been working on mplyees.com, a site where employees can share what needs to change publicly and anonymously. Hopefully we can bridge this divide since employee happiness is key to a successful business.
I couldn't care less about IP myself - but the real reason this stuff is pretty standard is that investors are somehow really bullish about IP (the "secret sauce"). Against our own beliefs, we decided for pretty strict contract terms around IP as this topic usually turns out to be one of the standard blockers in any funding and exit negotiations. In former companies, after a financing round people had to sign new terms and that can get pretty complicated.
That's the real reason things are pretty messed up all around protecting IP.
As we've survived without funding so far, we're thinking of relaxing this as well. Kudos to GitHub's investors for staying away from this nonsense.
The real question is how expensive they are. The US has les protections but thus pays a lot more. Soft engineers moving from SF to europe get their income cut by more than 50%. In the end, more europeans move to the Us that the other way around, showing ultimately what the body prefers.
Who cares about income? Profit matters. Societal benefits matter too. How many days of work in a month is required to break even on all the basics of life like rent, food and medical care + retirement insurance.
Everything matters, thats why looking at only 1 axis ends up biased. Seeing how people vote with their feet takes everything into account, preferences, income, services, etc.
The reality is that the US is a very generous place if you have money, so if you are a software engineer you can have a luxurous life in comparison to what one would get in EU. The situation is opposite for lower paying jobs.
You can get a better private education in the us with money that you can for free in europe. College is a great example of free college vs overpriced but ultimately valuable private colleges
You could have a much bigger houses as well. If you move to munich or berlin(even though the latter is one of the cheapest cities in europe) a house is really expensive in comparison to what you can get in a city like Austin, Denver, even Seattle if you commute a bit.
For real. I am an indie game dev who recently released his first big game on Steam. Just a week or two ago I had a prospective company tell me that, in order to hire me, I would need to sell them the entirety of my personally-developed IP and dissolve my interest in my own company.
One the one hand, they want capable people who go out of their way to achieve results + love their craft. Guess what, that often happens by working on side projects (whether ultimately commercial or not, is irrelevant).
As an employee the only concession I would personally be willing to make would be to not compete directly with the company you're employed at. And only if you're not employed at a company doing everything, i.e. a Google or a Microsoft.
That's an absolutely absurd request. I can understand if they said that you wouldn't be able to work on your game during business hours, or on your company machine, but to request that you dissolve your company and sell them your IP? That's insane
Information feudalism. The slim possibility that you might get into an IP dispute with them later used as an excuse to make sure employees have no independent revenue-earning capability.
Well, at least for the payout period, assuming it wasn't all given in a one time payment.
Otherwise, it of course depends on what they're doing. It might be really interesting work that you get the chance to work with a lot of other very brilliant people to build something amazing.
If that's not true, then no, I'd probably go and start just writing fun open-source stuff all the time.
Yeah, the added gray area here is a little uncomfortable. I have never seen a startup actually define what business hours are. What if you work late 2 nights a week, and then the third night on a side project. Could that be interpreted as business hours? Do business hours vary by individual?
Yep. I was hired at a major hedge fund. Disclosed my interest in various companies ahead of time. Got to the hedge fund. Was told that I had to dissolve the interest. Quit job. Everyone pissed.
I had other reasons to quit which had nothing to do with the job itself (I loved it), but that was a major one. I get paid more, per hour, from my businesses than any job I've had so far.
Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future.
Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control over your future other than maybe running away to another feudal manor and some have non-competes to try and enforce that kind of slavery. So they're worth nothing to you as an employer unless you want to LARP that you're a feudal peasant in 1300 and you're worth nothing to them as they'll fire you or steal from you in a blink of an eye if they can make a nickel off it.
Meanwhile a competitor smart enough to hire you as a consultant will crush them in the market purely for organizational superiority reasons. Companies that hire contractors are inherently more modern and superior and more likely to succeed.
The future, being unevenly distributed, some folks still think employment is alive, but one effect of post-industrialism or service economy or infinite benefit prices is employment is good and dead. In a dying business model, the employer needs employees a lot more than employees need the employer.
Ok. Now imagine you are getting twice as much after taxes for the same work but without benefits. Would you still be as happy? Hell, even 50% more. And you are spreading the work across multiple clients so any one client 'firing' you is suddenly not a huge thing since your income is distributed across multiple clients. Sure, you don't get paid benefits, but you get higher income and the ability to work for multiple clients. Not every person can do that and even among those that can, not every one has the motivation to do it.
It's minimum requirement for a hire contract in Norway. 3 months mutual notification, and only in a few cases can you be fired on spot without compensation (theft and such). You can contractually increase the notification time from the baseline, but not decrease.
Makes for happy and productive workers, and also benefits companies who don't have to worry about loosing their best worker without notice.
3 months notice period seems a very bad deal to me.
If you want to change job you simply cannot because no one would wait for 3 months, unless you are at executive level.
I was shocked to see that a month of notice is common here (Ireland). It actually was an issue when I wanted to attend a conference for my new employer (gave notice around 11 PM exactly 30 days before I had to fly).
I get that it's apparently an employee protection but it does seem kind of ludicrous. What happens if you rage quit? Win the lottery?
I shouldn't be changing job more than once every 2 years, so 3 months is nothing. The notice period is often reduced for the first 6 months, or you can ask for that before signing your contract.
In reality a company has no real desire to keep a disgruntled employee longer than they have to, so you can burn bridges and leave earlier if force the issue. It's a pretty unprofessional thing to do though.
Well sure, I think the difference is between what's courteous and what's contractually stipulated. It's rude to give short or no notice regardless, but it's not always a contractual obligation.
If everyone is the same situation then that delay becomes just a normal aspect of the hiring process. I'd be more concerned about the types of abuses that the delay could allow in countries with a less mature employment culture: backing off at the last minute and wasting 3 months of that company's time, bullying a leaver for all of 3 months to discourage other people, etc.
you can always negotiate to get out earlier if you want to. That's the way it works in Germany and Belgium, probably in most other European countries as well.
Well that all sounds nice and dandy, but imagine you don't find new clients or they don't pay your invoices or you get seriously sick or something in your private life needs all your attention.
Yes, you have to get new clients, that is always a risk. Proper structuring of payment schedules and IP transfer helps with invoice payment. Also, having long-term relationships with clients also helps there. I would hope you carry some sort of insurance in the case of life taking a sudden left-turn, but perhaps you don't. Ideally you financially plan enough to cover something like that.
I've been a contractor as several points in my life and loved it mostly. It is sometimes stressful making sure everything is on track, but the freedom of not depending on any one client and the difference in income that allowed me to work less If I wanted was great.
I currently work as an employee and also like the benefits it provides and the people I work with. But, I also know that ultimately companies now days have very little loyalty so my mind never lets me think of being an employee as some absolute guarantee of stability.
> I currently work as an employee and also like the benefits it provides and the people I work with.
So you broadly claim that "employment is dead" using big words like "feudal system" and how you can make so much more money contracting etc. etc. and then it turns out you are an employee after all? Seriously?
Nope. Never said anything about agreeing with that comment. I was strictly commenting on the "I am pretty happy with my employment. Paid vacation, paid sick days, reasonable hours and all that good stuff."
Time I need to spend managing clients is time I don't spend on self improvement or development. I'd prefer to specialize and be a better software developer than a decent software developer and mediocre client wrangler.
This never happens, as there is a minimum time to create a "minimum viable work unit" and often you're paid to deliver as soon as possible, not a year later. I've never seen a contract with enough slack to make overlapping work reasonable.
It is not physically possible. Might only work if you're selling templates or are a Mechanical Turk.
Generally higher income is not much higher either way, at least around here. Nobody wants to hire contractors for more than they have to pay full time employees.
You still get to pay your health insurance (typically covered by employer automatically here) and taxes.
Well, from personal, non-template, work I can say that I was frequently running work from 2-4 clients easily enough. If a client was more demanding of time then I was more demanding on cost.
If contract work is getting paid the same as FTE, then something is messed up. I literally charged double what I make right now as an FTE.
And yeah, I even called out the missing benefits, but that's something you pay for out of the income differential.
I've been a contract worker several times in my life. I'm currently a FTE and like the people I work for. Going contract is certainly not for everyone and is perhaps a panic inducing decision depending on your current situation.
> Now imagine you are getting twice as much after taxes for the same work but without benefits.
No, I wouldn't. I value stability and simplicity in my life, and I will gladly eschew higher pay for a more traditional lifestyle. I'm a conservative suburbanite with no ambition, and I'm proud of it.
On top of that, non-employer insurance is terrible. In some states, you actually cannot get a PPO unless you're on an employer's policy (I refuse to get an HMO for moral reasons), and large megacorps (we're talking Disney-sized corporations here) will package their own insurance and offer benefits that go above and beyond what you can get anywhere else.
> and the ability to work for multiple clients
That's a negative for me. I'm a strict 9-5er. I just want to show up at the office every weekday, put in my eight hours, then go home and relax. I actively do not want to run my own business or do anything that resembles negotiating with anyone. I'm not an entrepreneur or a risk-taker of any kind.
This is false. It's insurance, they don't prevent you from seeing any provider you want, they just have set out certain limitations on what they will cover. All insurance has limitations, an HMO is just on a spectrum of coverage. A PPO plan won't cover every provider either.
I'd argue that being an employee is less stable than you think it is in general, at least in the tech sector.
I had my own private PPO for a decade (geez!) at least, and the policy provisions were better than most employer policies I saw offered to me. Well, at least until the ACA came around and shook everything up a little.
I'm happy you're a happy 9-5er with zero business desire and that you are 100% risk averse. You are not the target of my comment.
"so any one client 'firing' you is suddenly not a huge thing since your income is distributed across multiple clients"
For whom you have to spend roughly 1/3 of your time on collection because companies don't get rich writing a lot of checks. If it fits your psyche, great. Not everyone is like you.
As I said in another comment, part of that is covered by proper payment structuring and IP transfer provisions while the rest is covered by having long-term clients that you have a good relationship with.
It's surprising how few companies will bend on this. In my experience it seemed like they were more concerned about the possibility of other employees getting notions. It's a big reason to move somewhere that mandates vacation time (though again, I'd rather just take as much time as I want unpaid).
Employment is lower risk. It's tougher to fire employees than contractors, so there's lower firing risk for employees. It also reduces your work overhead for stuff that HR can take care of for you (health insurance, life insurance, etc). As well as sick days.
And at some places, this lets you focus on larger problems that you'd never get solved working from contract to contract.
I've seen good people get fired for what seem like purely political reason (in California). They got a month of severance but come on. My father worked for a handful of companies his entire career and had true loyalty for them. The company, in turn, took care of him his whole life. This does not exist anymore in the private sector. If your org seems to have it, I'm sorry to tell you that it might change one day (and very abruptly). I've seen this happen to places that were considered unassailable.
In my experience employment is not lower risk at all, in terms of continuity of employment. Companies will fire you even in countries where your rights are strongly protected, the only difference being you get paid for the nuisance. This is not really a differentiator: let's say that incentivised employees get a month of salary for each year of service, then you can factor that in your daily rate as a contractor.
The big advantage is when you have strong rights and we're talking about long term illness. For example in Italy you can't be fired if you are truly sick for months: your employment will be retained, however you might not get paid, or not get paid fully.
Other advantages might be related to discrimination: for a young white male it might be easier to get a developer job, or for a seasoned white male might be easier to get a lead/manager role. It's the same with employment, but as a contractor, passing job interviews becomes a significant part of your job, as well as cultivating relationships.
I keep reading this here, but this doesn't square with the reality I see all around me (this may be specific to the USA). I've observed plenty of people getting fired, sometimes on short notice and for non-obvious reasons, often only known to the employer and employee. As someone who does not run a business, could someone explain to me the details about exactly what makes firing someone "difficult" for an employer?
Most of the arguments against contracting, so far as of this timestamp, seem to boil down to anecdotal "I've got mine so who cares about everyone else" with a side dish of if I can imagine how in a utopia idealized employment could be for everyone, and if that imaginary "could be" employment is superior to how contracting actually is in reality, then its proven with no need to implement it for any individual or entire culture that employment is better, because being better in theory trumps how it is in reality.
Is there any stronger argument in opposition than "I got mine..." or "In a utopia..." ?
In all fairness, as of the timestamp of my comment, all of the pro-contract-work arguments I've seen include things like "and it's so easy when you have good relationships with long-time clients" and other such things. Which is really the same argument as the anti-contract "I'm in a stable awesome job with great benefits, so of course this is better.".
I have yet to see anyone comparing using the WORST case of EITHER of these scenarios - and I think I would argue that comparing worst cases, contract work fails harder, since the availability of non-contract employment (at least in the tech industry) is certainly easier to find than trying to self-market for high-ish prices as a contract worker with no prior experience to show for it and no current clients, especially since there seem to be SO many pitfalls for new contract workers to fall into that could hopelessly screw them over, at least in the short term.
Edit: To clarify my point:
Worst case non-contract: Shitty job, terrible company/management, average to below-average salary, and terrible (if any) benefits and healthcare.
Worst case contract: No clients to speak of, unable to get your business off the ground, still struggling with self marketing, and when you do find work (few and far between), you are underpaid because of a combination of unrealized self-worth and bullying clients who refuse to pay that amount.
In the case of "worst case", at least the non-contract worker is getting PAID.
I'd propose that above the very bottom of the barrel, contract work is slightly better because it is like speed dating and the odds of meeting the right client for you are higher than could be experienced in slower paced long term employment.
I think I could agree with that - once the newbie learns how to market a bit, how to be more aggressive getting clients, contracting COULD snowball (we shouldn't be making any sweeping claims!) much faster than a normal 9-5 career.
Wow, I'd lie if I said I wasn't worried I'd someday have to take a job like that. Was this job you applied to in the gaming space? If so, is that type of ask common place in your experience?
Also, a bit of an aside. What's the game you released called? I get you probably intended to avoid the plug but I'm curious.
Hopefully you'll never have to take a job that asks this of you.
Yes, the job in question was in the gaming space, working on an unannounced virtual reality title.
This has been the only time a company has ever asked me to divest interest in my own company and/or IP before being hired. Granted, I have only recently begun looking for work, but I cannot imagine this being a common scenario.
Instead, I imagine these guys as sharks that do not have my best interests in mind; only their own.
As for my game, it's called Ethereal Legends, and is now available on Steam. To bring things back onto the topic of this thread, the code for my game is also available on GitHub!
Sometimes I just go with it because of how unenforceable that contract will be for them and how Ill get paid in the meantime laughing silently to myself at the absurdity
Depending on how vicious the company is when "crossed" you might find they can make it expensive for you for a while by trying to enforce it and making you put resource into fighting back.
Personally, if I don't agree with and and/or aren't willing to stand by it, I don't sign it. Of course for some less fortunate desperation means they have to compromise on such ideals.
there's just so many ways around it and I'd LOVE to get some case law made just to get some unknowns clarified. Like when I contribute to an already existing open source project on company's time/resource/IP-appropriation-regime, do they get to rewrite the Apache license because one contributor had signed a contract? when running this open source software that happens to generate a transferable token with a liquid secondary market with no proof of ownership, is that the company's?
would love some broke startup to spend time on that case
That depends very much on which jurisdiction you're in. You'd be crazy to assume, without taking proper legal advice, that retrospective assignment would not stand up as part of an explicit employment contract.
Like when I contribute to an already existing open source project on company's time/resource/IP-appropriation-regime
If you did that without your employer's permission, then probably both you personally and anyone redistributing the OSS project would be infringing the employer's copyright. If that upset your employer, you could expect to be fired and possibly sued, and anyone involved in redistributing the OSS project could expect a C&D from your former employer's lawyers pending removal of any infringing work you contributed.
Depending on the scale and sensitivity of whatever you contributed, a bad result could be that you are out of a job, bankrupt due to damages and legal costs, and known for being untrustworthy since any future employer who looks you up is going to find the lawsuit, while the OSS project is significantly inconvenienced and doesn't ultimately benefit from your contribution anyway.
yes, those are possible outcomes and the cost benefit from every single one of my side projects is so much greater
and I do factor in the jurisdiction in my own personal assessments and everyone else should too
there are many circumstances where the consequences are completely opposite of what the contract says (or how their employer's actually operate, care about, or will ever find out about) and people's behavior will conform to those consequences
There is also another factor to consider: while all this is playing out, in public, you are someone being highlighted as having signed a contract disingenuously. It doesn't matter how bad the contract is, the fact that you signed it and reneged on it later could look bad to future employers (especially if they have links to the company in question through the old-boy network or similar!).
Unfortunately companies do this all the time: I have personally seen clauses in contracts put forward by employers whose exact wording had been rendered completely ineffective and unenforceable by UK employment case law.
If it’s bad faith to sign off on a contract which contains clauses you do not intend to honour (because they are unenforceable) surely it’s equally bad faith (if not more so, given the power relationship) to keep unenforceable clauses in contracts purely in the hope or expectation that they will frighten uninformed employees into conforming with them?
No - these contracts are usually enforceable. But even if parts of them are not - it doesn't matter because the IP risk is just too high.
You're making a video game 'on the side' while working at a gaming company?
Then you want to 'raise money' - now the VC's say 'hey, you made this while you were at XYZ, weren't there contractual issues' - you say 'oh, it's not enforceable'. The VC says uh, no thanks, not looking forward to having all of our property owned by the company.
You should write back to the developer contact on that interview and explain exactly why you're declining. They may assume you had other reasons for not moving forward. Bad actors have a habit of making their mistakes look like something else.
> Just a week or two ago I had a prospective company tell me that, in order to hire me, I would need to sell them the entirety of my personally-developed IP and dissolve my interest in my own company.
That's unusually awful for an employment agreement. Most employment agreements claim everything developed by the employee on company time and resources, and many claim everything developed while employed, but this is the first time I've ever heard of an employment agreement demanding all past work. Good call on just leaving; not worth even negotiating with a company that tries to pull a stunt like that.
If the company was into anything related to gaming, my assumption would be that they were looking to buy the IP at a knocked down rate by hiring you (or that the chance to get the IP cheap was one of the differentiators between you and the next best candidate).
I agree--this is excellent and very tech-talent-friendly. As an example on the other side of the spectrum: I work for a very large Silicon Valley company that is well known (you've heard of them) for secrecy and obsessively guarding its IP. Here we can't[1] work on Open Source, work on potential start-up ideas, moonlight writing software for some extra cash, publish (either academically or releasing software online, app stores or web), or really do anything substantial regarding software outside of work. On personal time, weekends, on our own equipment, doesn't matter. It's a serious drawback, to the point where I've been actively looking around. I'm certain this will have an extremely positive effect on GitHub's attractiveness as an employer.
1: Technically, the policy is "ask your manager" but everyone knows what the answer is.
At least your policy is limited to software-related things. I need to ask permission to start a side gig selling shit on eBay, submit a fiction story to a writing contest, or even volunteer for mentoring/tutoring sessions (on any topic).
I didn't know the full extent before I started, but they threw more money at me than my wife and I have ever made combined, so I probably would have still taken it if I had known. Plus, I'm in NYC now.
Your employer, of course, is Google; I know this from my own tussles with Google's OSPO, which exists primarily to ensure that engineers don't have lives outside of Google.
I see no conclusive evidence in the parent comment that proves it's Google. I would've actually guessed Apple.
My understanding is that Google actually has a reasonable process for this, and that people have taken advantage of it to start or contribute to projects in a personal capacity.
it sounds the most like Apple except for the open source part. There are a limited set of licenses they allow, but many employees at Apple contribute to open source software, both at work and in their free time.
Probably not Google, they do have a process for open source contributions though it is pretty expansive - technically you need approval for answering a Stack Overflow question with a code snippet.
They do approve side projects in rarer cases where it has nothing to do with Google's business - for example, my friend recently wrote an app for sex positions. But most things that I want to work on have a messaging / ML / AR component to them somewhere so I haven't felt comfortable building anything while I've been employed there. Hence the main reason I'm leaving Google at the end of the month, to build those things :)
I work at Google, and can confirm that the process for open source contributions (as long as you're okay with assigning copyright for the work to Google) isn't particularly onerous in most cases. You just have to verify that the project has a valid open source license, and send in a copy of your first three commits.
California state law invalidates the non-compete portion of your contract, so long as you develop your solution on your own time and without company-owned resources.
You've omitted the third requirement, which is the nasty one: your outside project must not relate to the actual or reasonably anticipated R&D of the company.
I turned down a job with IBM once they told me, after appeal, that they would own my side project if I continued to work on it. The interview process cost me 40 hours and an all-nighter take home (I really needed the job.) The salary was fantastic for Canada, but still pathetic by US standards.
One of the main reasons I left EA was because I wasn't working on games I was interested at work, and couldn't work on them in my spare time either. My job in the game industry got in the way of me making games.
Pet projects are not necessarily good for a company:
1) Code is not necessarily an asset, it is also a liability: needs to be maintained, tested, documented, etc. This has a non-trivial cost.
2) Engineer salaries are usually more expensive than a license.
3) Experience working using internal frameworks/libraries/etc can be harder to trade in the marketplace, especially if you are not the author.
4) It is hard to keep up feature parity with commercial/open source alternatives.
5) Internal projects do not necessarily lead to more employee satisfaction. They can be usually lacking around user experience and can be frustrating to use.
6) Some internal projects have purely political motivations, like self-perpetuating the authors in the company.
Finally, if you absolutely require to start an internal project, but it does not provide a competitive advantage: open source it.
If you have any of the problems 1-5, I would argue you actually have a problem of management not trusting engineers enough to buy them a good and suitable existing market solution, and that's why they have to come up with something makeshift.
I agree that it happens in companies, but it's definitely not a good thing.
Big step in the right direction. I also believe this will have huge impact on the morale as well. If you offer enough courtesy to your employees you'll receive a lot more in return. Personally, I believe this can boost productivity in a different way, because if the employee is challenged with a different set of problems other than the "same ol' " during the work time, the experience can be directly applied to the possible future employer's problems.
For anyone interested in the Alcatel horror story mentioned in the article, it's even worse than you thought:
Therefore his thoughts, which were characterised as “invention” in the decision, should be disclosed to Alcatel. The judge also ordered Brown to pay Alcatel’s legal fees, which exceeded $330,000.[1]
In the US it seems especially bad, since Americans seem exceptionally obsessed with "living the American dream" aka making a lot of money. Many people assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be a good person.
> Many people assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be a good person.
I used to agree with that, but now politics has cleaved this into two.
A) If you're a democrat/progressive (Soros, Hillary, et al.) you're corrupt, greedy, immoral. And you got all that money via ill means. They must be stupid and anti-American be
B) If you're a republican (Trump, Murdoch, Ted Stevens, et al.) your earned it from picking up yourself by your bootstraps, the American Dream. And they must be smart people, they have lots of money!
And vice-versa.
As an aside, I'm increasingly seeing spammy "Soros is an anti-american progressive socialist communist" comments on other low quality forums. Which is interesting considering his investments, wealth, views on Russian, path to citizenship, and interest in helping economies move away from communism into capitalism. Post-truth, I guess.
I can't help being somewhat cynical and jaded on this one. I tend to think that people become wealthy through
(1) inheritance,
(2) something nefarious (greed, cheating, etc.)
(3) working hard and the equivalent of winning the lottery, being rewarded for that hard work
I believe that I could maybe relate to the people in category 3.
Every startup/dot.com millionaire/billionaire is a #3. For every one of them there are 10,000 others who are just as smart and worked just as hard but their company just didn't pan out for any number of reasons.
OK I'll bite - how did the Clintons make their money? What goods did they sell? What services did they provide? Because they went from broke to $250M surprisingly quickly for career civil servants.
I don't think there's anyone who doesn't know that Trump inherited his wealth.
It seems a lot of folks on HN think that if you have a lot of money, you either made it in a startup, and are thus brilliant, or you made it in any other fashion, and are probably a crook.
Everyone has a tendency to flatter wealthy people because the truth is that they're hoping, consciously or subconsciously, they'll get a dispensation from them somewhere down the line: a sale, a gift, or some other kind of benefit from association with a powerful individual. Unfortunately, it appears that many wealthy people forget this and begin to believe that they actually are just brilliant and special and that must be why they get a lot of attention.
This is in no way exclusive to Americans. In fact, from my admittedly limited experience, this is much more explicit in other cultures.
Politics is a totally different ball game. You basically must be wealthy to be successful in national politics (not necessarily in the Trump or Clinton stratospheres, but still need significant personal wealth and resources), and this is also the case in not-America as far as I can tell.
I'm not familiar with the politics in that area, but I would say this holds true even if the state has provided accommodation for anyone to run a competitive campaign regardless of the private resources they have available.
The talking point of "Would you rather trust someone who can't get promoted past a mid-level position in his company to play with the big boys, or someone who has managed his life such that he is in charge of things and has been able to accumulate vast personal resources?" is always going to be persuasive, IMO. "If he can't manage his own affairs..." and all that.
It's not an absolute non-starter, but I'm skeptical that any "regular Joe" would be elected for a significant national position as long as there are people who are massively more wealthy willing to compete (and there will be).
I don't know why you got downvoted, but your assumption isn't really true. In the Nordics many of the Members of Parliament have a working-class background, such as a nurse or a sawyer, with little personal wealth.
I don't have any data to back this up, but I have a feeling people tend to vote the same class as they are, with a hope that a similar candidate is better suited to understand their concerns. A working-class member would be very, very wary of voting anyone with wealth.
This is of course made possible with a true multi-party system. A businessman is a rare sight indeed within the ranks of (true) left-wing party.
His job at alcatel was converting old code to new code (probably architecture or similar), and he figured out a way to do this faster (or automatic), I think in this case github's IP agrrement also covering rights of company on this invention
I always try to negotiate this.
Since I always bring value, effort and ideas from personal time and resources in to the company, for free.
If they don't want to do that, then write down a big list of every idea and project you've been working on to date, including any domains you own and projects within them, and make sure they can't touch any of the IP you've already created.
I rejected an offer from a company that had a similar policy/procedure. Their contract stated that they own pretty much anything you do that's related to their business (which was huge and varied). But you were allowed to list any existing IP over which they had no claims.
That would have been fine and dandy, and probably even acceptable to me. But based on the wording of the contract, the IP clause still applied even after terminating your employment with the company. Which meant that while they might not be able to claim rights to my existing IP, ownership of any future IP could be called into question.
So, while I think your approach is good, there can still be issues with it.
It's not a personal project if you don't own the IP.
If it Was The opposite way then the employees would not do these projects, in turn they will learn a much narrower range of skills.
My view: In some companies, depending on their business model, it might be reasonable to ask to own your own work on side projects. But it would be reasonable of them to expect you to give up something in exchange (e.g. smaller salary).
Isn't this ignoring the benefit companies might want the kind of talent that can pump out side projects as well as their work? But that's rooted to the 10x engineer myth.
Why does this only apply to IP? Why isn't the company considered to own the employee's labour 24/7 in all regards? Your employer should be compensated for the labour you spend doing your washing. Or if you happen to spend an hour in the evening driving an Uber or subletting on AirBnB, your employer should own that as well?
"But rather than negotiating a deal, Alcatel fired Brown and sued him for ownership of the idea. After a seven-year-long court battle, he lost and was forced to spend three months at the company’s offices, without pay, writing out the code to implement his solution."
I deeply hate the judge who made this verdict. You must be truly devoid of human feeling and common sense to explain this as a reasonable application of the law.
There's an exception to the US Constitution's abolition of slavery: punishment for a crime. Fortunately, contract disputes are civil rather than criminal.
I can't find the decision, but I doubt he was forced to by the judge. It seems more likely that he negotiated this for a discount on the stupendous court costs.
For instance, here's a 2002 report on the loss which doesn't mention the requirement.
An employer is paying six figures to an employee. In exchange for said salary, employee works set hours and within that time, is supposed to work for the employer and anything they create within that period is owned by the employer.
However, in the comments. It seems like everyone wants their cake and eat it too? Which is to say, if I'm working for you between the contracted hours of 9 to 5. And if I am working on a personal project that the employer is not going to benefit, I should keep the IP. Even though the employer is paying for my time?
Note, this isn't about working outside of the contracted hours at home, nor is it about staying late and using company resources to develop said project and claiming IP belongs to the employee.
For large companies like github. They could probably be more flexible. But for smaller companies, every working daylight hour to them is needed and required for projects to deliver on-time.
These very same companies would argue that all code/IP belongs to them. That they woudn't want employees working on pet projects in THEIR paid time.
Kinda sounds to me, that people here wants 3 things.
1) Pay me a large wage > north of 6 figures.
2) If I code something for me during working hours, it's MINE.
3) If I code something outside of working hours, it's also MINE.
Sounds like bratish entitled behavior no?
Can someone set me straight here? I don't see how this could be good for employers who don't agree with this.
Oh and btw, if you want to work on your own thing, being paid by a company, that you keep the IP. It's called being an entrepreneur and setting up your own company. So instead of saying kudos I wish more companies do this. Go start your own today and you have that freedom NOW!
There's lots of problems with this line of thinking. One, it encourages "butt-in-seat" thinking, which is inefficient. If I deliver what you wanted delivered in the time allotted, I should be free to work on whatever I want. Of course, a manager wants to squeeze every drop, so if you've finished they'll say "I have some more work for you". But best believe you'll never be fairly compensated for that work ( at most companies anyways. Obviously if the company is Facebook/Google you can have a massive impact and will be flying around to work on whatever suits your fancy ).
Look at it from a contractor's point of view: a contractor will have many other things that they can deliver and make money from, so adding a bit of polish to your project vs delivering another client's makes less sense.
Employers should expect developers to work on company IP within contracted hours and any new code/IP is owned by the company.
In addition. Developers who have their own side-projects own that IP and if they work outside of contracted hours and generate new code on THEIR projects. Well, they own that IP also.
One caveat though. Developers should allow employers to go through their generated code, to ensure that developers aren't stealing company IP.
Oh but if a company wants some code that the developer generated in his own time? Well, negotiations should start. The company should pay for that!
Most corporations I interviewed with have this policy, including Microsoft and some large banks. Otherwise it would be impossible to attract OS developers.
Also the agreement[1] is not completely rosy, it has some strings attached.
For example if you are working on CSS library, Github uses it and contracts you to make some patches, they might claim IP ownership over those patches. That is a mine field for OS project.
I personally would not sign it. It needs extra clause to clarify what projects are excluded.
> The Company owns any IP ("Company IP") that you create, or help create as its employee or contractor, .... related to an existing or prospective Company product or service at the time you developed, invented, or created it
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Kudos, great decision.
Couldn't agree more. I hope it sets the formation of a precedent in motion. Great to see.
Kudos to github for this, I'm impressed!
Sometimes I get the feeling that even my own country (Portugal), with all its issues regarding work conditions, still appears to be in better shape.
I am no lawyer, but I don't expect that under EU work law anything done outside work can be forbidden in the work contract, in any member country.
The only issue I see from law point of view, is if whatever is being done, in terms of private projects, is related to knowledge acquired during the work activities, sometimes under NDA. Here yes, there can be issues.
Now if the projects are done in technology stacks or business domains completely different from what happens at work, then it isn't enforceable.
However I am no lawyer.
I have been working on mplyees.com, a site where employees can share what needs to change publicly and anonymously. Hopefully we can bridge this divide since employee happiness is key to a successful business.
That's the real reason things are pretty messed up all around protecting IP.
As we've survived without funding so far, we're thinking of relaxing this as well. Kudos to GitHub's investors for staying away from this nonsense.
But turning down such people in favor of those who respect your IP is always the better investment down the line.
The reality is that the US is a very generous place if you have money, so if you are a software engineer you can have a luxurous life in comparison to what one would get in EU. The situation is opposite for lower paying jobs.
You could have a much bigger houses as well. If you move to munich or berlin(even though the latter is one of the cheapest cities in europe) a house is really expensive in comparison to what you can get in a city like Austin, Denver, even Seattle if you commute a bit.
Also in the UK taxation of employee shares is a lot saner plus GCT is a lot lower and you get a 16k Pa allowance for CGT
Biased metric. The US makes it hard for people to leave.
Needless to say, I decided against that job.
One the one hand, they want capable people who go out of their way to achieve results + love their craft. Guess what, that often happens by working on side projects (whether ultimately commercial or not, is irrelevant).
As an employee the only concession I would personally be willing to make would be to not compete directly with the company you're employed at. And only if you're not employed at a company doing everything, i.e. a Google or a Microsoft.
Otherwise, it of course depends on what they're doing. It might be really interesting work that you get the chance to work with a lot of other very brilliant people to build something amazing.
If that's not true, then no, I'd probably go and start just writing fun open-source stuff all the time.
I had other reasons to quit which had nothing to do with the job itself (I loved it), but that was a major one. I get paid more, per hour, from my businesses than any job I've had so far.
Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control over your future other than maybe running away to another feudal manor and some have non-competes to try and enforce that kind of slavery. So they're worth nothing to you as an employer unless you want to LARP that you're a feudal peasant in 1300 and you're worth nothing to them as they'll fire you or steal from you in a blink of an eye if they can make a nickel off it.
Meanwhile a competitor smart enough to hire you as a consultant will crush them in the market purely for organizational superiority reasons. Companies that hire contractors are inherently more modern and superior and more likely to succeed.
The future, being unevenly distributed, some folks still think employment is alive, but one effect of post-industrialism or service economy or infinite benefit prices is employment is good and dead. In a dying business model, the employer needs employees a lot more than employees need the employer.
I am pretty happy with my employment. Paid vacation, paid sick days, reasonable hours and all that good stuff.
That would have been wonderful!
With 3 months notice and strong union protection (public sector) it already isn't.
I'd much rather work for a single excellent organisation where I know I'm doing good than many who can't hold on to good staff and need contractors.
Makes for happy and productive workers, and also benefits companies who don't have to worry about loosing their best worker without notice.
And then there probably is a way to shorten the notice period when both sides agree (I extrapolate to Norway how in my country it works).
I get that it's apparently an employee protection but it does seem kind of ludicrous. What happens if you rage quit? Win the lottery?
Well, I'm a professional, so I finish my job...
I shouldn't be changing job more than once every 2 years, so 3 months is nothing. The notice period is often reduced for the first 6 months, or you can ask for that before signing your contract.
In reality a company has no real desire to keep a disgruntled employee longer than they have to, so you can burn bridges and leave earlier if force the issue. It's a pretty unprofessional thing to do though.
Means you're unlikely to get another job in the industry.
>bullying a leaver for all of 3 months to discourage other people
Would result in an easy case for constructive dismissal.
Employment isn't so bad in those cases.
I'll take my impostor syndrome and constant medium-high anxiety thank you very much.
I've been a contractor as several points in my life and loved it mostly. It is sometimes stressful making sure everything is on track, but the freedom of not depending on any one client and the difference in income that allowed me to work less If I wanted was great.
I currently work as an employee and also like the benefits it provides and the people I work with. But, I also know that ultimately companies now days have very little loyalty so my mind never lets me think of being an employee as some absolute guarantee of stability.
So you broadly claim that "employment is dead" using big words like "feudal system" and how you can make so much more money contracting etc. etc. and then it turns out you are an employee after all? Seriously?
So, please don't put words in my mouth.
Generally higher income is not much higher either way, at least around here. Nobody wants to hire contractors for more than they have to pay full time employees.
You still get to pay your health insurance (typically covered by employer automatically here) and taxes.
If contract work is getting paid the same as FTE, then something is messed up. I literally charged double what I make right now as an FTE.
And yeah, I even called out the missing benefits, but that's something you pay for out of the income differential.
I've been a contract worker several times in my life. I'm currently a FTE and like the people I work for. Going contract is certainly not for everyone and is perhaps a panic inducing decision depending on your current situation.
No, I wouldn't. I value stability and simplicity in my life, and I will gladly eschew higher pay for a more traditional lifestyle. I'm a conservative suburbanite with no ambition, and I'm proud of it.
On top of that, non-employer insurance is terrible. In some states, you actually cannot get a PPO unless you're on an employer's policy (I refuse to get an HMO for moral reasons), and large megacorps (we're talking Disney-sized corporations here) will package their own insurance and offer benefits that go above and beyond what you can get anywhere else.
> and the ability to work for multiple clients
That's a negative for me. I'm a strict 9-5er. I just want to show up at the office every weekday, put in my eight hours, then go home and relax. I actively do not want to run my own business or do anything that resembles negotiating with anyone. I'm not an entrepreneur or a risk-taker of any kind.
Can you elaborate on this?
Medical gatekeeping is a violation of the fundamental human right to body autonomy.
I had my own private PPO for a decade (geez!) at least, and the policy provisions were better than most employer policies I saw offered to me. Well, at least until the ACA came around and shook everything up a little.
I'm happy you're a happy 9-5er with zero business desire and that you are 100% risk averse. You are not the target of my comment.
For whom you have to spend roughly 1/3 of your time on collection because companies don't get rich writing a lot of checks. If it fits your psyche, great. Not everyone is like you.
And at some places, this lets you focus on larger problems that you'd never get solved working from contract to contract.
Up to you to decide which path you want to take. Depends what you want from life.
The big advantage is when you have strong rights and we're talking about long term illness. For example in Italy you can't be fired if you are truly sick for months: your employment will be retained, however you might not get paid, or not get paid fully.
Other advantages might be related to discrimination: for a young white male it might be easier to get a developer job, or for a seasoned white male might be easier to get a lead/manager role. It's the same with employment, but as a contractor, passing job interviews becomes a significant part of your job, as well as cultivating relationships.
I keep reading this here, but this doesn't square with the reality I see all around me (this may be specific to the USA). I've observed plenty of people getting fired, sometimes on short notice and for non-obvious reasons, often only known to the employer and employee. As someone who does not run a business, could someone explain to me the details about exactly what makes firing someone "difficult" for an employer?
Is there any stronger argument in opposition than "I got mine..." or "In a utopia..." ?
I have yet to see anyone comparing using the WORST case of EITHER of these scenarios - and I think I would argue that comparing worst cases, contract work fails harder, since the availability of non-contract employment (at least in the tech industry) is certainly easier to find than trying to self-market for high-ish prices as a contract worker with no prior experience to show for it and no current clients, especially since there seem to be SO many pitfalls for new contract workers to fall into that could hopelessly screw them over, at least in the short term.
Edit: To clarify my point: Worst case non-contract: Shitty job, terrible company/management, average to below-average salary, and terrible (if any) benefits and healthcare.
Worst case contract: No clients to speak of, unable to get your business off the ground, still struggling with self marketing, and when you do find work (few and far between), you are underpaid because of a combination of unrealized self-worth and bullying clients who refuse to pay that amount.
In the case of "worst case", at least the non-contract worker is getting PAID.
I'd propose that above the very bottom of the barrel, contract work is slightly better because it is like speed dating and the odds of meeting the right client for you are higher than could be experienced in slower paced long term employment.
Also, a bit of an aside. What's the game you released called? I get you probably intended to avoid the plug but I'm curious.
Edit: And of course, props to GitHub for this!
Yes, the job in question was in the gaming space, working on an unannounced virtual reality title.
This has been the only time a company has ever asked me to divest interest in my own company and/or IP before being hired. Granted, I have only recently begun looking for work, but I cannot imagine this being a common scenario.
Instead, I imagine these guys as sharks that do not have my best interests in mind; only their own.
As for my game, it's called Ethereal Legends, and is now available on Steam. To bring things back onto the topic of this thread, the code for my game is also available on GitHub!
https://github.com/Soverance/EtherealLegends
Personally, if I don't agree with and and/or aren't willing to stand by it, I don't sign it. Of course for some less fortunate desperation means they have to compromise on such ideals.
there's just so many ways around it and I'd LOVE to get some case law made just to get some unknowns clarified. Like when I contribute to an already existing open source project on company's time/resource/IP-appropriation-regime, do they get to rewrite the Apache license because one contributor had signed a contract? when running this open source software that happens to generate a transferable token with a liquid secondary market with no proof of ownership, is that the company's?
would love some broke startup to spend time on that case
That depends very much on which jurisdiction you're in. You'd be crazy to assume, without taking proper legal advice, that retrospective assignment would not stand up as part of an explicit employment contract.
Like when I contribute to an already existing open source project on company's time/resource/IP-appropriation-regime
If you did that without your employer's permission, then probably both you personally and anyone redistributing the OSS project would be infringing the employer's copyright. If that upset your employer, you could expect to be fired and possibly sued, and anyone involved in redistributing the OSS project could expect a C&D from your former employer's lawyers pending removal of any infringing work you contributed.
Depending on the scale and sensitivity of whatever you contributed, a bad result could be that you are out of a job, bankrupt due to damages and legal costs, and known for being untrustworthy since any future employer who looks you up is going to find the lawsuit, while the OSS project is significantly inconvenienced and doesn't ultimately benefit from your contribution anyway.
and I do factor in the jurisdiction in my own personal assessments and everyone else should too
there are many circumstances where the consequences are completely opposite of what the contract says (or how their employer's actually operate, care about, or will ever find out about) and people's behavior will conform to those consequences
If it’s bad faith to sign off on a contract which contains clauses you do not intend to honour (because they are unenforceable) surely it’s equally bad faith (if not more so, given the power relationship) to keep unenforceable clauses in contracts purely in the hope or expectation that they will frighten uninformed employees into conforming with them?
or that my foresight and source of legal counsel is better and people may find value in that?
or I better hope my side project takes off right!
You're making a video game 'on the side' while working at a gaming company?
Then you want to 'raise money' - now the VC's say 'hey, you made this while you were at XYZ, weren't there contractual issues' - you say 'oh, it's not enforceable'. The VC says uh, no thanks, not looking forward to having all of our property owned by the company.
Looks cool (fighting the "infected mushroom", ha).
That's unusually awful for an employment agreement. Most employment agreements claim everything developed by the employee on company time and resources, and many claim everything developed while employed, but this is the first time I've ever heard of an employment agreement demanding all past work. Good call on just leaving; not worth even negotiating with a company that tries to pull a stunt like that.
1: Technically, the policy is "ask your manager" but everyone knows what the answer is.
I didn't know the full extent before I started, but they threw more money at me than my wife and I have ever made combined, so I probably would have still taken it if I had known. Plus, I'm in NYC now.
I see no conclusive evidence in the parent comment that proves it's Google. I would've actually guessed Apple.
My understanding is that Google actually has a reasonable process for this, and that people have taken advantage of it to start or contribute to projects in a personal capacity.
They do approve side projects in rarer cases where it has nothing to do with Google's business - for example, my friend recently wrote an app for sex positions. But most things that I want to work on have a messaging / ML / AR component to them somewhere so I haven't felt comfortable building anything while I've been employed there. Hence the main reason I'm leaving Google at the end of the month, to build those things :)
1) Code is not necessarily an asset, it is also a liability: needs to be maintained, tested, documented, etc. This has a non-trivial cost.
2) Engineer salaries are usually more expensive than a license.
3) Experience working using internal frameworks/libraries/etc can be harder to trade in the marketplace, especially if you are not the author.
4) It is hard to keep up feature parity with commercial/open source alternatives.
5) Internal projects do not necessarily lead to more employee satisfaction. They can be usually lacking around user experience and can be frustrating to use.
6) Some internal projects have purely political motivations, like self-perpetuating the authors in the company.
Finally, if you absolutely require to start an internal project, but it does not provide a competitive advantage: open source it.
I agree that it happens in companies, but it's definitely not a good thing.
Granted, this can have downsides too.
Therefore his thoughts, which were characterised as “invention” in the decision, should be disclosed to Alcatel. The judge also ordered Brown to pay Alcatel’s legal fees, which exceeded $330,000.[1]
1: https://www.law360.com/ip/articles/1899/appeals-court-affirm...
Andrew "bunnie" Huang has written a very good 2-page note on this in: http://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf (first two pages, but the whole book is a good read)
In the US it seems especially bad, since Americans seem exceptionally obsessed with "living the American dream" aka making a lot of money. Many people assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be a good person.
I used to agree with that, but now politics has cleaved this into two.
A) If you're a democrat/progressive (Soros, Hillary, et al.) you're corrupt, greedy, immoral. And you got all that money via ill means. They must be stupid and anti-American be
B) If you're a republican (Trump, Murdoch, Ted Stevens, et al.) your earned it from picking up yourself by your bootstraps, the American Dream. And they must be smart people, they have lots of money!
And vice-versa.
As an aside, I'm increasingly seeing spammy "Soros is an anti-american progressive socialist communist" comments on other low quality forums. Which is interesting considering his investments, wealth, views on Russian, path to citizenship, and interest in helping economies move away from communism into capitalism. Post-truth, I guess.
I don't think there's anyone who doesn't know that Trump inherited his wealth.
That sounds like one of those things that people assume everybody else must think, but nobody actually thinks.
In a presidential election, for example.
This is in no way exclusive to Americans. In fact, from my admittedly limited experience, this is much more explicit in other cultures.
Politics is a totally different ball game. You basically must be wealthy to be successful in national politics (not necessarily in the Trump or Clinton stratospheres, but still need significant personal wealth and resources), and this is also the case in not-America as far as I can tell.
I'd say not a requirement in the Nordics. I'm sure it won't hurt though.
The talking point of "Would you rather trust someone who can't get promoted past a mid-level position in his company to play with the big boys, or someone who has managed his life such that he is in charge of things and has been able to accumulate vast personal resources?" is always going to be persuasive, IMO. "If he can't manage his own affairs..." and all that.
It's not an absolute non-starter, but I'm skeptical that any "regular Joe" would be elected for a significant national position as long as there are people who are massively more wealthy willing to compete (and there will be).
I don't have any data to back this up, but I have a feeling people tend to vote the same class as they are, with a hope that a similar candidate is better suited to understand their concerns. A working-class member would be very, very wary of voting anyone with wealth.
This is of course made possible with a true multi-party system. A businessman is a rare sight indeed within the ranks of (true) left-wing party.
If they don't want to do that, then write down a big list of every idea and project you've been working on to date, including any domains you own and projects within them, and make sure they can't touch any of the IP you've already created.
Also: Be friendly about it.
That would have been fine and dandy, and probably even acceptable to me. But based on the wording of the contract, the IP clause still applied even after terminating your employment with the company. Which meant that while they might not be able to claim rights to my existing IP, ownership of any future IP could be called into question.
So, while I think your approach is good, there can still be issues with it.
Last December, Joel Spolsky wrote about developer side projects, and honestly, he's right.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
My view: In some companies, depending on their business model, it might be reasonable to ask to own your own work on side projects. But it would be reasonable of them to expect you to give up something in exchange (e.g. smaller salary).
Except when the side project is useful for your employer and you've effectively contributed free, unpaid labor to developing it.
/s
You can't prove he wasn't thinking about his next job while he was installing my water heater so I should own that IP.
I deeply hate the judge who made this verdict. You must be truly devoid of human feeling and common sense to explain this as a reasonable application of the law.
After such an insane verdict I'd like to believe that Alcatel's top talent started jumping ship.
And get charged with sexual harassment
For instance, here's a 2002 report on the loss which doesn't mention the requirement.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/12/alcatel_owns_us_emp...
An employer is paying six figures to an employee. In exchange for said salary, employee works set hours and within that time, is supposed to work for the employer and anything they create within that period is owned by the employer.
However, in the comments. It seems like everyone wants their cake and eat it too? Which is to say, if I'm working for you between the contracted hours of 9 to 5. And if I am working on a personal project that the employer is not going to benefit, I should keep the IP. Even though the employer is paying for my time?
Note, this isn't about working outside of the contracted hours at home, nor is it about staying late and using company resources to develop said project and claiming IP belongs to the employee.
For large companies like github. They could probably be more flexible. But for smaller companies, every working daylight hour to them is needed and required for projects to deliver on-time.
These very same companies would argue that all code/IP belongs to them. That they woudn't want employees working on pet projects in THEIR paid time.
Kinda sounds to me, that people here wants 3 things.
1) Pay me a large wage > north of 6 figures. 2) If I code something for me during working hours, it's MINE. 3) If I code something outside of working hours, it's also MINE.
Sounds like bratish entitled behavior no?
Can someone set me straight here? I don't see how this could be good for employers who don't agree with this.
Oh and btw, if you want to work on your own thing, being paid by a company, that you keep the IP. It's called being an entrepreneur and setting up your own company. So instead of saying kudos I wish more companies do this. Go start your own today and you have that freedom NOW!
Look at it from a contractor's point of view: a contractor will have many other things that they can deliver and make money from, so adding a bit of polish to your project vs delivering another client's makes less sense.
Employers should expect developers to work on company IP within contracted hours and any new code/IP is owned by the company.
In addition. Developers who have their own side-projects own that IP and if they work outside of contracted hours and generate new code on THEIR projects. Well, they own that IP also.
One caveat though. Developers should allow employers to go through their generated code, to ensure that developers aren't stealing company IP.
Oh but if a company wants some code that the developer generated in his own time? Well, negotiations should start. The company should pay for that!
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921512 and marked it off-topic.
Also the agreement[1] is not completely rosy, it has some strings attached.
For example if you are working on CSS library, Github uses it and contracts you to make some patches, they might claim IP ownership over those patches. That is a mine field for OS project.
I personally would not sign it. It needs extra clause to clarify what projects are excluded.
> The Company owns any IP ("Company IP") that you create, or help create as its employee or contractor, .... related to an existing or prospective Company product or service at the time you developed, invented, or created it
[1] https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement/blo...
(I am not a lawyer, just a hobby)