Reminds me of something I read awhile back.
(Companies, not employees, to get credit for inventions if merit system in place)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/10/10/national/compani...
Developers’ side projects
241–250 of 411 posts
Re: Developers’ side projects
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you have to quit your day job before starting the side business, or working on it at all. Otherwise your ex-employer still has a claim on your business. The beauty of side projects is not having to make them pay the bills. As soon as you have to make them pay the rent, they stop being side projects. But having an ex-employer sue you for lots of money because your side project is booming is a great problem to have…
> is a great problem to have ;) Your comment is inspiring. The question then becomes, how much of your project's worth, as a percentage, are they going to come after you for?
that becomes a question for lawyers at the appropriate time.
Put it like this:
not having a side project because you're afraid your employer will sue will get you exactly and definitely $0.
Having a successful side project will teach you a ton of useful stuff and probably earn you more than $0 even after the lawyers have finished arguing (depending on your definition of successful).
Re: Developers’ side projects
#243I find this mindset totally disgusting, but I'm glad it's been summed up in such a concise way. > Being an employee of a high tech company whose product is intellectual means that you have decided that you want to sell your intellectual output, and maybe that’s OK, and maybe it’s not, but it’s a free choice. Let's clarify that phrase, "sell your intellectual output". Keep in mind that earlier in the article we discov…
> A situation where every idea you come up with, everything you think, every last shred of creativity is owned by someone else is one of the most profoundly dystopian things I can imagine. That's rather overdramatic. Several centuries ago, every idea you come up with, everything you think, you could probably keep as your own because no one was interested and there was no way you could sell them and make living, even…
We are currently living in the current age, not several centuries ago.
Should one accept terrible medical care, as such care would be considered revolutionary a few centuries ago?
Additionally, there were people back then whose intellectual output was their own and were able to do things with that output.
Re: Developers’ side projects
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is terribly dangerous logic exactly because it's so alluringly close to right. As I said elsewhere on the thread: the worst, most heartbreaking problems a startup can have are the kind that only become apparent after the company is successful. You screw up vesting or grants somehow. You mess up liability in a contract, or don't get any legal review at all. In almost every case, you're fine either way... ... exce…
Yeah, but if you do the invention off the clock, after you started? And you decide to disclose? No one will ever give you a yes or no answer. Never. It's like raising VC, or invading Russia. They will just put everything off until tomorrow. Forever. I worked at That Place In The Valley that is not in Cupertino or Menlo Park. I tried to get "I own the IP" authorization for some side project that didn't matter to the b…
> No one will ever give you a yes or no answer. Never. It's like raising VC, or invading Russia. They will just put everything off until tomorrow. Forever.
That hasn't been my experience (albeit with much smaller companies). For one thing, if you have correspondence showing that you've made a good faith effort to get an answer, it is going to tilt the playing field in your favor in a dispute.
But as going to court isn't what you want, this does lead in to something of a ProTip (though IANAP, TINPA): In general, when hashing out a contract, it can pay off to ask for various requirements imposed on you (in this case, it would be disclosure "within 30 days") to be mirrored by similar requirements on the employer.
Re: Developers’ side projects
#245I've been a contractor and entrepreneur for many years. I do like the higher income that I can command as a contractor, but it's also a matter of principal that any work I do on my own for my own endeavors belong to me. My current client and I have talked about going "full-time" and I've even discussed it with their legal department. The problem is they have a culture of standard employment contracts and are extremel…
I agree with your critique, but I disagree with this line of thinking: > If you need the company/paycheck and don't have enough of a background to command a change in the standard employment contract, then you have to sign away all rights. You're not signing away your rights, your signing away everyone's rights. What about the person who doesn't like to sign his rights away, but is now expected to, because some other…
This person doesn't have the opportunity or financial freedom to fight for everyone. He or she has bills to pay. The leverage dynamic is very real.
It seems the law should be improved here. It would directly promote innovation and new businesses. I don't see much downside either. Businesses would be less entrenched, which on first glance sounds good.
Re: Developers’ side projects
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the state, but many assume you are competent to negotiate these issues before accepting employment.
Right, but what I'm talking about is a case where they fail to give that form to you until after your start date (and of course, after you've left your previous job). So they have the advantage -- either you sign the form, or you get fired on your first day of work. Too bad that most states won't consider this "signing under duress".
or you sign and immediately start looking for another job. if they've truly done this in bad faith, they can pay for your jobhunting time.
Re: Developers’ side projects
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't quite understand Joel's point. Regardless of whether you are legally right, a larger company could sue you for the sake of suing, and make your life very miserable. And if the fight continues and you run out of money, what then? I had exactly that thing. I was being bought-out and a small client decided (against the contract that they had signed) that the changes we had made to our mortgage broker commissio…
> And when I left the company that bought me out to start another project, I made sure that I had a release to say that I'm indemnified against any future legal actions and I started the project the day after I got that release. How do you force a company to do something like that? What's in it for them to agree, especially when you're leaving?
What the company gets out of it is an employee (or ex-employee) that isn't disgruntled and pissed off at them.
Pissing off employees or ex-employees for no reason is generally a really stupid and risky thing for a company to do.
Re: Developers’ side projects
#248I was at a larger company and tried to play ball with their policies for personal work. My contract gave them "right of first refusal" and had a space for exclusions of things you were working on outside of work. Some friends weren't allowed to continue contributing to a few Open Source projects...which seemed excessive, but makes sense if they're overly cautious. I mentioned I was helping a friend on a short film. I…
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Re: Developers’ side projects
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer). Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Spolsky has built his career around promoting a good work environment for developers. After reading his blog for many years, listening to his talks and podcasts... he's either an extremely talented thespian, or one of the most conscientious people in tech. And, while everyone has bias, I seriously doubt Joel and StackOverflow wo…
I have nothing against Joel. But to be fair, as people in finance use to say, "history is not indicative of the future".
ObNitPick: "Past history is not indicative of future performance."
Re: Developers’ side projects
#250I am surprised nobody here has yet mentioned the real case of what happened to Evan Brown, the former president of the Dallas Ft Worth Unix Users Group who worked at a telephone switch company as a system administrator and had an idea for a generic code translator. Maybe the New York Times tells it best: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/08/business/an-idea-not-yet-b...
interesting case. the everything2 writeup seems better than the nyt one: http://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown