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Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#41
post #15

I work as a freelancer from home, so my answer might be less interesting to people at an office, but I've found that at home I'm mostly just doing the things I wanted to do at the office when I worked in one, but felt uncomfortable doing there. These include: Taking short (15 - 30 mins max) naps if and when I need them, which pretty dramatically helps me creatively problem solve. Going for a long-ish walk outside. Th…

Could talking to other developers about personal side projects constitute your company claiming ownership of the intellectual property?

No. If you follow the letter of the contract, most IP assignments claim everything their employees do, but practically, that's just because it's impossible to write a contract that says "everything you do for your job, nothing that you don't".

The primary driver is that you don't want to get into litigating how much time your salaried employees work. So most employers will tacitly ignore side projects, only coming after devs who write code that steals users or shifts revenue from their customers to a project that a dev claims to own. And that's pretty rare.

Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#43
post #19
post #15

I work as a freelancer from home, so my answer might be less interesting to people at an office, but I've found that at home I'm mostly just doing the things I wanted to do at the office when I worked in one, but felt uncomfortable doing there. These include: Taking short (15 - 30 mins max) naps if and when I need them, which pretty dramatically helps me creatively problem solve. Going for a long-ish walk outside. Th…

> Going for a long-ish walk outside. Do you have a real objective on those walks (ie getting groceries, lunch) ? I like walking with non-gym clothes but only when I'm actually doing something in the way...

I am like you, I don't like walking without an objective. When working from home, though, I will take breaks and take my dogs for a walk which is great for everybody involved.

Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#44
post #15

I work as a freelancer from home, so my answer might be less interesting to people at an office, but I've found that at home I'm mostly just doing the things I wanted to do at the office when I worked in one, but felt uncomfortable doing there. These include: Taking short (15 - 30 mins max) naps if and when I need them, which pretty dramatically helps me creatively problem solve. Going for a long-ish walk outside. Th…

Any podcast can you recommend?

Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#45

Why would you have free time in the office? Or to put it another way, why would you be in the office during your free time?

For me, free time is when I don't have the motivation to start something new right then and there so I look something up or work on learning a new framework/language. It can also be when I finish work and still have 30 minutes until my train. I don't want to start on something to get interrupted but I also don't want to just sit at the train station waiting for my train.

Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#46
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could talking to other developers about personal side projects constitute your company claiming ownership of the intellectual property?

No, as I mentioned, I'm a freelancer. Intellectual property for any project is strictly defined in the contract for that project. I'm also operating on my own equipment, as a separate entity, on my own property. Not to mention that clients are actually not allowed to get to specific with when or how I do my work exactly, without breaking some Canadian (and I suspect American), rules related to distinguishing contract…

Could you elaborate on defining the intellectual property in your contracts? I've had questions about how to do this correctly recently while negotiating one of my first independent contractor agreements.

Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#47

Why would you have free time in the office? Or to put it another way, why would you be in the office during your free time?

In some countries employees have the right to take a certain amount of free time during work.

Why would you use it? In my case, I find it helpful to go for example for a walk to clean up my head or deal with some private matters that are easier to do during working hours.

Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#48
post #15

I work as a freelancer from home, so my answer might be less interesting to people at an office, but I've found that at home I'm mostly just doing the things I wanted to do at the office when I worked in one, but felt uncomfortable doing there. These include: Taking short (15 - 30 mins max) naps if and when I need them, which pretty dramatically helps me creatively problem solve. Going for a long-ish walk outside. Th…

Any podcast can you recommend?

Depends on what you're interested in.

For programming:

-Software engineering daily & the other less frequent version

-the changelog

-shoptalk (mainly frontend)

-twenty percent time (mainly Laravel?)

-syntax (new show)

-full stack radio

-does not compute

(Would love some recommendations for more!)

Startups/Bootstrapping/Business:

-Indie hackers

-Tim Ferris (some episodes)

-Startups for the rest of us

-Mixergy Startup Stories

-The pitch

-DFJ ETL (Stanford entrepreneurship podcast)

- How I built this

For life and interesting topics:

- Tim Ferris

- Freakonomics

- Planet Money

- 99% invisible (haven't listened to much, but hear it's very good)

- Between World's (haven't listened to it much yet)

For entertainment:

- How did this get made? (hilarious reviews of bad movies by a group of comedians with various guest comedians)

- Bill Burr (Like having a chat with your funniest friend that you go way back with)

Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?

#49
post #19
post #15

I work as a freelancer from home, so my answer might be less interesting to people at an office, but I've found that at home I'm mostly just doing the things I wanted to do at the office when I worked in one, but felt uncomfortable doing there. These include: Taking short (15 - 30 mins max) naps if and when I need them, which pretty dramatically helps me creatively problem solve. Going for a long-ish walk outside. Th…

> Going for a long-ish walk outside. Do you have a real objective on those walks (ie getting groceries, lunch) ? I like walking with non-gym clothes but only when I'm actually doing something in the way...

I usually actively listen to some new music or just think about a variety of topics while I walk around the neighborhood. So for me it's less about the walking but getting away from the computer/internet and just don't bother about work related things.
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