91–100 of 399 posts
This isn't surprising, though it does suck that employees have to jump through these hoops to avoid having our work claimed by employers. The way to go is to never use company resources or company time when working on personal things and also never work on something that they'd want. Sometimes it's convenient to break the first 2 rules so it's annoying to make sure to never use my work laptop/internet/office when wor…
https://sfconservancy.org/contractpatch/ https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/contractpatch/2018...
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…
They’ve always been that to me. We should all try to look past hype and focus on the reality, not just the perception of the moment.
Does Google handle scale better than the vast majority of other companies? Yes.
Did Google build an industry leading search engine? Yes.
Did Google steal the patented idea[0] that ended up giving them essentially f!?k you money that has enabled a lot of both good and bad behavior since? Yes.
Has Google acquired[1] most of the successful products they’ve had since? Yes.
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[0] here’s one quick source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-aug-10-fi-googl... but definitely dig into the Overture vs Google lawsuit for a very eye opening story if interested. There’s a ton of shocking details in that case which had long lasting impacts for all companies involved.
[1] Android, YouTube, DoubleClick, Google Docs (Upstartle), Google Maps (Where2/Keyhole/Waze/others), Google Voice (GrandCentral), Groups (Dejavue), Photos (Picasa), WebP/WebM encoder formats (On2), the list goes on and on
In fact, Google has one of the most permissive IP policies that I've seen at any company except for VA Linux Systems. The default is that the vast majority of work done by an employee can be released under an open source license. Sure, there's a process that you have to go through, and unless what you want to do intersects with work that you are doing for your team that isn't intended to be released publically, or competes with a critical company initiative, the default answer is that it will be allowed to be released.
This is not true for many, if not most companies, and as a responsible open source maintainer, I make sure that people understand they have permission from their company before I accept their open source contributions. Otherwise, I would be putting them, and the project, at risk. (Note that because of this, there are many employees which are not allowed to participate in open source development, because their employers will not give them permission to release code written by an employee under an open source license, whether written "on their own time" or not.)
At Google, once you get this (mostly pro forma) permission, you can work on open source projects on your own time, or on 20% time, using company laptops, or using GCE resources, etc. When I was hired at Google, my manager and I cut a deal such that I could work on Linux Kernel and community projects for 50% of my time, instead of the normal 20%. Sure, the overlap between what was good for Google and what was good for ext4/Linux was pretty broad, but Google also paid for me to travel to various conferences in Asia, Australia, Europe, etc.
Also unique to Google is there is a process by which you can get permission for you to out-and-out own the work done on your own time, as opposed to Google owning it and releasing it under an open source license. If you take that option then it really has to be done on your own time, and must not use any company resources, meaning not on a company laptop, or on a company network, etc. This is rare, and I'm not aware of many other companies that give employees that option.
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If someone asks you to bring wine or beer to a party, do you usually bring both? Because that would still be valid in an OR statement but basing your ordinary life decisions on boolean logic doesn't always work out like you expect it. If a contract is written as: You own things you make on your own time unless you're using company equipment provided: * The thing does not relate to company business * The thing does no…
Yes, I think that if someone asked me to bring "wine or beer" to a party, literally everyone I know would be fine with me bringing a bit of both. In fact, what would be weird would be someone objecting to my bringing both on the grounds that they meant, but didn't say, "xor". I don't think this contract is ambiguous in natural language. Or is generally inclusive, and if you want xor you either write xor or use some c…
The rational can't be entirely wrong. In tech, skills and ideas gained during employment help generate new ideas. Since you are paid and trained, there is this incentive to profit from everything you produce. 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…
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It's crazy that the "using X company equipment" legal basis works at all in those disputes. Most of the time, "equipment" seems to mean "laptop". IHMO when "equipment" is such a commodity as a laptop, this should never even be an issue. That's like a newspaper that would claims the work of one of it's journalist who is writing books on his personal time on the basis that the book was written with a pencil he brought…
This is most easily resolved by simply not using a company laptop at any time. One of the first pieces of advice I got when I joined a big tech company for the first time was to just put the work provided laptop back in it's original box and get my own. This turns out to be pretty good from a number of angles-- you get an emergency spare plus any kind of crazy bloat ware your job needs you already have a sacrificial…
Just keep it separate.
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You're just doing work on your personal laptop? That doesn't mean you own the work you produce so I think it would complicate ownership of the non-work you produce. Best to use the work laptop for work and the personal laptop for personal stuff both for IP and company policy reasons.
> That doesn't mean you own the work you produce Of course not, it does however eliminate a host of problems resulting from using company equipment including additional complications from efforts you would otherwise own except for using company equipment, or the extraordinarly reduced right to privacy you have on company equipment. Using separate equipment is also good, but isn't always realistic particularly if your…
Don't do it. Also, dont use anything related to work for anything other than work.. It's a tool for the job. Leave it at that.
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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.
Have you? This is only relevant if your invention is in direct competition to the business at hand.