81–90 of 399 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Germany this isn't even a thing.
Have you tried it? One still has “Anzeigepflicht des Arbeitnehmers” (duty to report). And then your boss has a right to forbid your activity. It is a very thing in Germany.
I personally think this is just another step in a series of many reminding us that Google has become just another US corporation. And a way those grow is by finding 'efficiencies','doing more with less' and leveraging their size. It is an end of an era. Then again, Jimmy Johns was always pretty bad for the workers and attempted to have kids working there signing non-competes. Maybe we should be happy it took google s…
I personally think this is just another step in a series of many reminding us that Google has become just another US corporation. And a way those grow is by finding 'efficiencies','doing more with less' and leveraging their size. It is an end of an era. Then again, Jimmy Johns was always pretty bad for the workers and attempted to have kids working there signing non-competes. Maybe we should be happy it took google s…
> Maybe we should be happy it took google so long. If you read the thread you'll note that this policy has been around for a long time (at least the ~7 years I've been with Google). The author also notes that, in terms of open source, things have become dramatically _more_ permissive over time.
Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.
Yes this is extremely common outside of "tech." Almost all large employers will make all employees (even the janitor) sign an ownership of inventions agreement as a condition of employment. Here's an example of such an agreement from a pharmaceutical company I found (section 2.3 and 2.4): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1245104/000119312512... See also: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-sid…
Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.
Physical property is very different. Your employer cannot claim your carrot or tomato crop in your home garden.
Ultimately, you’re better off with terms like this if you’re working with a big company. If you have permission to do a side project, your are without risk. If you don’t, or your employer doesn’t have a clear policy, there is always the risk that they’ll come out of the woodwork and claim some piece of the action.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intellectual Property and Copyright aren't quite the same thing. The IP is the idea, whereas the copyright is the specific recipe. So in my mind, the equivalent would be using your learned cooking skills for another restaurant while working at a Michelin restaurant. They both serve food (competing or related industry), but while the dishes are different, the techniques to create them come from the same source. I woul…
Intellectual Property isn't really a thing in itself. It's a vague collection of a couple of different concepts, including Copyright, Patents and Trademarks. Those are three very different kinds of temporary monopolies granted by the government, but the people who promote the phrase "intellectual property" want them to be considered as not a government-granted monopoly on a certain kind of business, but as a natural…
Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.
"Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time." Not a Michelin restaurant, but apparently Outback Steakhouse makes that exact claim. "Inventions, Ideas, Processes, and Designs. All inventions, ideas, recipes, processes, programs, software, and designs ...conceived or made by Employee during the course of Employee’s employment with the Employer (whether or…
Seems reasonable for the President of the company. Do they make waiters and line cooks sign a similar contract?
Companies use tricks such as 'coded on the corporate hardware', 'non compete agreement' etc.
Grow some common sense, do all your side project strictly outside office hours, on your own hardware, in domains that don't even remotely relate to what your employer's industries , and it will be very hard for the emplying organisation to come after you.
I could inspect everything my organisation does, how they do it, then bake something up that technically outperforms it, then quit and work on marketing, again Leveraging everything I've learned, their mistakes and success. Would that be fair?
On the contrary, working for an optic company and developing oil drilling optimisation methods to sell once in quit, would they even come after me? It's fair, won't trigger any suspicion or even interest in pursuing litigation.