Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Importance of Side Projects

rawsyntax.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 50 posts

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#31

Post by wallflower »

barrkel wrote: post #13

Per my contract, every creative thought and act I perform while employed belongs to my employer. My contract could be interpreted to mean that even my comments here are owned by my employer. Rather demotivating for genuine side-projects.

I asked a question about this a while ago on HN, and even threw in the point that I've charged the MacBook with my side projects on the employer's AC outlet (but never used it at work, nor used their network).

The popular answer: buy another battery (carry two) and explore another job.

My interpretation was that if I did work-for-hire e.g. contract work that I never owned (because it was done for a client), then I could develop a portfolio (while not true side projects) outside of work. An extension to that is to work on projects with diffuse ownership (many people on the team). A further extension is to work on purely pro-bono projects (I do find pro bono projects more creatively fulfilling than the constrained business app-type contracts)

Either the headhunters for mobile app developers either don't understand the side project thing or the companies that are using headhunters don't understand it. A company said 'Yes, you can work on your side project as long as it does not use any of the code that we write here'. Really? They don't seem to understand that any decent programmer is constantly rewriting/refactoring/debugging/refining their personal, homegrown library of code and that there is a fair amount of infrastructure/frameworks that is never written from scratch. So, I think this is why so many BigCos are now turning to training their in-house developers on native mobile stuff.

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#32

Post by bmunro »

jackbean wrote: post #26
pagekalisedown wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait 'til you have kids.

I don't have kids and it is highly hypocritical of me to say so but "Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace while living with his wife and 13 children."

Was War and Peace a side project or the main project?

If it wasn't done as a side project then it isn't really relevant.

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#33

Post by the_decider »

bmunro wrote: post #32
jackbean wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have kids and it is highly hypocritical of me to say so but "Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace while living with his wife and 13 children."

Was War and Peace a side project or the main project? If it wasn't done as a side project then it isn't really relevant.

War and Peace was the side project. Tolstoy's main project consisted of managing the land and peasents on his country estate.

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#34

Post by alnayyir »

georgieporgie wrote: post #30
alnayyir wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are protected from this completely in the state of California. One of the many reasons this state is so great.

Really? Do you have any citations/references? It would be good to have some on hand. :-)

http://www.ndasforfree.com/NDAS/GetEmployeeOwn.html

QUOTE

California is unique in that its laws expressly establish that the employer owns trade secrets created by an employee. (Cal. Labor Code Sec. 2860). However, an employer in California would not own trade secrets created on an employee's own time without the use of employee materials. Although the law does not require a contract, it's a good idea to buttress your position in California by the use of a written agreement.

UNQUOTE

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#35

Post by gruseom »

jackbean wrote: post #26
pagekalisedown wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait 'til you have kids.

I don't have kids and it is highly hypocritical of me to say so but "Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace while living with his wife and 13 children."

Tolstoy was one of the richest men in 19th century Russia. His situation isn't the least bit comparable to a middle class nuclear family of our time, where parents actually do the work of raising children and hold down jobs as well.

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#36

Post by dochtman »

cletus wrote: post #17

I have mixed feelings about side projects. Sure it sounds good and looks good but let me tell you my own example. I am a single core processor. I am pretty much capable of doing pretty much just one thing at a time. I've tried to multi-task to the point of switching off from what I'm doing at work to something else but it just doesn't work. One or both of them suffer. I tend to be engrossed in what I'm doing at work.…

Hmm, I don't feel the same way (like I'm a single core processor). I'm not from the US, though.

I often feel like I've gotten stuck for a bit on a main project, and it'll help me to stay away from it a little bit by working on a challenging distraction project. That gives me time to mull over the main project (mostly not at a conscious level), which will often be easier to get traction with after I've made some progress on the distraction.

So perhaps I am single core, but with a pipeline design. ;)

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#37

Post by tricolon »

alnayyir wrote: post #15
barrkel wrote: post #13

Per my contract, every creative thought and act I perform while employed belongs to my employer. My contract could be interpreted to mean that even my comments here are owned by my employer. Rather demotivating for genuine side-projects.

You are protected from this completely in the state of California. One of the many reasons this state is so great.

What about New York?

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#38

Post by Sandman »

I can definitely relate to the part that talks about analysis paralysis. When starting a new project, like everybody else, I'm usually faced with several different options on how I'm going to design it, which libraries I'm going to use, what the overall architecture is going to look like, what features I'll implement and so on. And very often, I get stuck deciding between two options, weighing which one is better, which one might prove to be a bad decision in the future and which one might make my code more flexible/inflexible to change and refactoring.

But then I slap myself (figuratively, of course) and remember to "just do it". To just release any kind of working code, never mind if it's a suboptimal design, never mind if there are a few bugs or if it's slower than it could be. The important thing is to release anything. The code can be improved upon after that.

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#39

Post by roel_v »

cletus wrote: post #17

I have mixed feelings about side projects. Sure it sounds good and looks good but let me tell you my own example. I am a single core processor. I am pretty much capable of doing pretty much just one thing at a time. I've tried to multi-task to the point of switching off from what I'm doing at work to something else but it just doesn't work. One or both of them suffer. I tend to be engrossed in what I'm doing at work.…

But people aren't single core computers. You're not going to tell me that all you ever do is work on one program. You go play squash in the evening, you have a barbeque in the weekend. The point isn't that, during your work day, you switch between 'job' and 'side project' 5 times; the point is that you work on your job in the daytime, and then at 10pm you hack a bit on that one algorithm you didn't quite get right, or on that lost sunday afternoon while you're waiting for your in-laws whose flight was delayed for 3 hours you experiment with that unit testing framework for language xyz you're been looking at. That's not multi-tasking.

Re: Importance of Side Projects

#40

Post by alnayyir »

tricolon wrote: post #37
alnayyir wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are protected from this completely in the state of California. One of the many reasons this state is so great.

What about New York?

I'm a coder, not a lawyer. If you have a specific concern you should discuss it with an IP lawyer.
Post reply on HN