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GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

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Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#141

Post by BuuQu9hu »

throwaway7558 wrote: post #83
uniclaude wrote: post #8

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. Kudos to github for this, I'm impressed!

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,…

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.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#142

Post by AIMunchkin »

lsaferite wrote: post #84
fs111 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future. I am pretty happy with my employment. Paid vacation, paid sick days, reasonable hours and all that good stuff.

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 c…

"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.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#143

Post by superbatfish »

bluejekyll wrote: post #134
superbatfish wrote: post #126

Look, this is nice for github employees, but it's worth noting that this is not an easy decision for all companies to make. We (developers) aren't like factory workers cranking out widgets by the hour. We're paid to think deeply about challenging problems. For me, that means chewing on a problem for a long time, often when I'm not at work. Honestly, when a problem is challenging, I can't get it out of my mind. I'm th…

Companies can't track your thinking. They can know when you're using their equipment. I'm fine with them owning what I do with their hardware, networks, anything they pay for... but they can not own my off-time, and they most certainly do not own my mind. What I build in my offtime is mine; this is in fact where every entrepreneur starts. What you're proposing is that all innovation should stay in the hands of the em…

If the company wants all of your ideas, even the ones you come up with on the weekends, then they should offer you a higher salary than the companies that don't demand that time.

As it turns out, many companies do exactly this. And (apparently) their developers decided it was a fair deal. But if you don't like that deal, that's an entirely reasonable choice. In that case, just don't work for such a company, even if they offer better salaries.

It would be unfair to say "don't take the job if you don't like the deal" if there weren't other options, but the fact is that there are lots of other options. There are plenty of software jobs that don't include such clauses, especially in the non-profit and academic sector.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#144

Post by superbatfish »

jt2190 wrote: post #135
superbatfish wrote: post #126

Look, this is nice for github employees, but it's worth noting that this is not an easy decision for all companies to make. We (developers) aren't like factory workers cranking out widgets by the hour. We're paid to think deeply about challenging problems. For me, that means chewing on a problem for a long time, often when I'm not at work. Honestly, when a problem is challenging, I can't get it out of my mind. I'm th…

> When a savvy software company hires someone, they understand that [thinking deeply about a work problem, even during nights and weekends] is how developers operate. This isn't really the _reason_ that companies have these kinds of policies though... Ultimately companies have a legal problem of sorting out what they own from what they don't. This is especially important when the company sells it's assets. The defaul…

>This isn't really the _reason_ that companies have these kinds of policies though

I think it's fair to say that there are multiple reasons. The one you listed is definitely one of them. Joel Spolsky wrote about this a few months ago:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#145

Post by [deleted] »

matthewmcg wrote: post #137

I work at a large law firm that represents a lot of software companies. Our standard employee agreement forms have the usual default (company owns everything you create with its resources or that relates to the scope of your employment). This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms . We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits o…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#146

Post by bluejekyll »

superbatfish wrote: post #143
bluejekyll wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies can't track your thinking. They can know when you're using their equipment. I'm fine with them owning what I do with their hardware, networks, anything they pay for... but they can not own my off-time, and they most certainly do not own my mind. What I build in my offtime is mine; this is in fact where every entrepreneur starts. What you're proposing is that all innovation should stay in the hands of the em…

If the company wants all of your ideas, even the ones you come up with on the weekends, then they should offer you a higher salary than the companies that don't demand that time. As it turns out, many companies do exactly this. And (apparently) their developers decided it was a fair deal. But if you don't like that deal, that's an entirely reasonable choice. In that case, just don't work for such a company, even if t…

The problem isn't the single employer, it's when every employer does this, and it's your only option, and this is the trend.

So we must resist it at all levels. And again, what you state is actually not enforceable in CA, as our laws protect your personal work. It might in fact be one reason why the valley exists here.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#149

Post by musesum »

My last company was a acquired by a company based in California. Under CA law, you are entitled to your own IP if done on your own equipment. So, I had a separate laptop. The employment agreement had a clause where you were to list all of the IP that you had owned. But, it was ambiguous about whether I was retaining ownership or turning it over to the new company. So, I asked their legal: am I listing what's mine or what's yours? The reply was an ambiguous "yes". I quit after 1 day. A colleague, with the same issue lasted for a month.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#150

Post by darpa_escapee »

ryandrake wrote: post #139
falcolas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No employer has ever objected to this I've not had this luck, personally. They are always willing to forgo the job offer just to ensure that everyone has the same contracts. I'm guessing that it's going to be a size of business issue. And the IP assignment clauses are, for the most part, getting worse and worse; my current one extends the assignment to a year after termination, voluntary or not.

Same here. In the past, I've tried negotiating the boilerplate IP assignment agreements tied to a new job and, in every single case/company, I was contacted by legal with a very clear demand to "sign it unmodified or GTFO". For you Captains of Industry who are somehow able to negotiate your employment agreements, congratulations on having that opportunity--but I think that situation must not be very common.

It's a sign the pool of potential employees is large enough that concessions don't have to be made at negotiations. This is why we have unions.
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