this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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I worked for as a software engineer for a company that I did interviews for. We were told that “pet projects” were a red flag unless they were a current college student. They showed a lack of commitment to their current employer. Basically, there’s no reason for them to have a side project, they should be working more for their current boss.
I left that company shortly after.
One of my first companies put a clause in to say that they owned the code you wrote in your spare time. I peaced out too.
So glad to live in California where that type of shit is explicitly illegal. Open source software would be so fucked with how much software is produced here.
It's explicitly illegal in California? I've never heard that before.
California has a lot of laws that stops corps from pulling shit, the corps usually leave it in their employee contracts as a scare tactic though. Non-competes for example are illegal, the reasoning os that most arguements for it are already covered by corporate espionage laws. It also fucks over the worker 9/10.
In large part because at least some portion of California lawmakers knows their history well enough to be aware that all of Silicon Valley is a thing in the first place because people were able to leave and take their ideas with them and start something new.
A huge portion of the value of Silicon Valley today can still be traced back to when the "Traitorous Eight" left Shockley Semiconductor to form Fairchild in 1957, and build tech based on what they'd learnt at Shockley, with many of them then going on to leave Fairchild and found further new companies. The outcome of that among many others resulted in both Intel and AMD, and the same pattern has repeated many times.
Makes sense, I wasnt actually aware of that. But then again im from the Inland Empire so the goings on of the coastal cities makes me want to lobotomize myself.
I don't know why you guys are like that, it's wonderful out here.
Most of us are chill with San Diego, its just LA and San Francisco that are annoying. LA cause they dont know how to drive and think their the only part of SoCal, and San Francisco cause of yuppies and being up their own ass.
That's meaningless if you don't use their equipment to do it. If you make a sandwich, do they own it? A table? A child? A novel? A painting?
Only the first born. You get to keep the rest.
I'm pretty sure this is illegal even in the US.
edit: shit, it depends on the State?!
Repeat for every labor issue
that would never hold up in court I would imagine so long as you aren't using company property to write the code
I almost got into legal trouble by them when I left. Their contract also said I couldn't work within 15 miles around any of their head offices in the world or any of their clients. They had hundreds of clients.
So I left and I did apply to work for their clients and they told my employer that this was against my contract. The employer laughed and said this isn't enforceable anywhere. However, when they passed it by their legal department they said that it isn't worth a legal fight even though it's easily winnable. Just asked me to wait a year.
Sounds like a good reason for the client to ditch them too.
Depends on jurisdiction. Worth checking before taking any chances. Also worth considering that an employer willing to put that in the contract may well try to fire you and/or sue you if you come up with something valuable and they decide they want it, so even when you're in the right it's often not worth working for a company like that.
I had one tried that, I crossed it out before signing.. it's total BS.
One of the companies I worked for put into their employment agreement language that stated they owned all the code I had written before starting work for them. It was the most hilarious overreach I've ever seen in an employment agreement - but then companies can put literally anything they want into the agreements, and they aren't worth shit anyway.
I told them this was utterly ridiculous and edited the agreement to remove this and some other nonsense before signing it, and they hired me anyway.
Why would they do that?
I'd be lying if I said I knew for sure.
It was a software consulting place.
If you’re an engineer employment contracts generally include clauses to give them anything you invent at home
These are typically limited to business relevant intentions (e.g., in theory if you work for shopify you would be able to work on code for rocket powered roller skates but not anything related to commerce -- this tends to be the extent of what's legally enforceable anyways). I wouldn't accept one that gobbles up any work that I do, too much red tape.
Staying away from big companies typically makes this all easier, because in the worst case it ends up in court ... and the mega corp may make an argument for way too many things and drag out the court to proceedings with a near infinite number of lawyers.
Alternatively, live somewhere that forbids this stuff (I think California is included in that list).
If they don't recognize that it's a stave on burnout and a way to learn and expand one's skillset, I don't want to work with them either.
"I don't have any side projects so there's no reason you shouldn't pay me a living wage"
Shit in my field we are pressured into having a side hussle. Sparks creativity and innovation while being free to those who pay us.
Damn, I had seven jobs as a programmer over a 23-year period, and every single one I got because of my "side hustle" writing and releasing music composition software.