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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

#101

Post by amyjess »

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…

> Now imagine you are getting twice as much after taxes for the same work but without benefits.

No, I wouldn't. I value stability and simplicity in my life, and I will gladly eschew higher pay for a more traditional lifestyle. I'm a conservative suburbanite with no ambition, and I'm proud of it.

On top of that, non-employer insurance is terrible. In some states, you actually cannot get a PPO unless you're on an employer's policy (I refuse to get an HMO for moral reasons), and large megacorps (we're talking Disney-sized corporations here) will package their own insurance and offer benefits that go above and beyond what you can get anywhere else.

> and the ability to work for multiple clients

That's a negative for me. I'm a strict 9-5er. I just want to show up at the office every weekday, put in my eight hours, then go home and relax. I actively do not want to run my own business or do anything that resembles negotiating with anyone. I'm not an entrepreneur or a risk-taker of any kind.

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

#102

Post by vonmoltke »

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,…

At least your policy is limited to software-related things. I need to ask permission to start a side gig selling shit on eBay, submit a fiction story to a writing contest, or even volunteer for mentoring/tutoring sessions (on any topic).

I didn't know the full extent before I started, but they threw more money at me than my wife and I have ever made combined, so I probably would have still taken it if I had known. Plus, I'm in NYC now.

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

#104

Post by kutkloon7 »

jerf wrote: post #81
kutkloon7 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In think that in most countries, a large company will always win big trials. Andrew "bunnie" Huang has written a very good 2-page note on this in: http://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf (first two pages, but the whole book is a good read) In the US it seems especially bad, since Americans seem exceptionally obsessed with "living the American dream" aka making a lot of money. Many people assume that if…

"Many people assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be a good person." That sounds like one of those things that people assume everybody else must think, but nobody actually thinks.

Of course no one literally thinks this, but I observe that many Americans have a tendency to like rich people, and give them the benefit of the doubt.

In a presidential election, for example.

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

#105

Post by cableshaft »

Kapura wrote: post #52

I work at a fairly large independent game studio and there is a similar arrangement with the developers here. The studio has developed a framework of Unity extensions that aren't open source, but that the developers are free to use in their own side projects without having to cede any ownership back to the studio if/when their game is released. Even the fact that game developers are allowed to create other games outs…

Nice. I worked for an independent game studio once that wanted to own all IP for any sort of multimedia anything, since they were contract based and sometimes had to do other work besides just games if the client requested it.

Also they wanted IP rights for pretty much any ideas we had, including off company time, with the justification that we could come up with ideas to improve a game we were working on at any time, and also because the studio had a 'everyone can contribute to game design' mentality and we'd all be involved in design meetings from time to time. Which is technically true, but seemed so draconian.

I almost didn't take the job because of that clause, and I didn't publish anything during my time there. At least the people there were cool, though, and I still keep in touch with some of the people I worked with there, including the company president, who's actually a really nice guy.

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

#106

Post by elastic_church »

soverance wrote: post #36
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!

For real. I am an indie game dev who recently released his first big game on Steam. Just a week or two ago I had a prospective company tell me that, in order to hire me, I would need to sell them the entirety of my personally-developed IP and dissolve my interest in my own company. Needless to say, I decided against that job.

Sometimes I just go with it because of how unenforceable that contract will be for them and how Ill get paid in the meantime laughing silently to myself at the absurdity

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

#107

Post by VLM »

VLM wrote: post #73
soverance wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real. I am an indie game dev who recently released his first big game on Steam. Just a week or two ago I had a prospective company tell me that, in order to hire me, I would need to sell them the entirety of my personally-developed IP and dissolve my interest in my own company. Needless to say, I decided against that job.

Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future. Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control ov…

Most of the arguments against contracting, so far as of this timestamp, seem to boil down to anecdotal "I've got mine so who cares about everyone else" with a side dish of if I can imagine how in a utopia idealized employment could be for everyone, and if that imaginary "could be" employment is superior to how contracting actually is in reality, then its proven with no need to implement it for any individual or entire culture that employment is better, because being better in theory trumps how it is in reality.

Is there any stronger argument in opposition than "I got mine..." or "In a utopia..." ?

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

#108

Post by conanbatt »

lostboys67 wrote: post #10
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!

Sad that having even minimal employee rights is some how seen as exceptional.

The real question is how expensive they are. The US has les protections but thus pays a lot more. Soft engineers moving from SF to europe get their income cut by more than 50%. In the end, more europeans move to the Us that the other way around, showing ultimately what the body prefers.

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

#109

Post by pjmlp »

De_Delph wrote: post #94
pjmlp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From someone that is able to enjoy proper work conditions in socialist Europe, the state of work condition expectations in US is always surprising. Sometimes I get the feeling that even my own country (Portugal), with all its issues regarding work conditions, still appears to be in better shape.

Hi from socialist Netherlands, where the issues around IP and employers are EXACTLY the same as the US.

Are they enforceable?

I am no lawyer, but I don't expect that under EU work law anything done outside work can be forbidden in the work contract, in any member country.

The only issue I see from law point of view, is if whatever is being done, in terms of private projects, is related to knowledge acquired during the work activities, sometimes under NDA. Here yes, there can be issues.

Now if the projects are done in technology stacks or business domains completely different from what happens at work, then it isn't enforceable.

However I am no lawyer.

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

#110

Post by talmand »

ja30278 wrote: post #49

As a thought experiment, for people who agree with the idea that a company 'owns' all of the thought-output of an employee: Why should that mean only the valuable IP, and not _all_ of the thought-output, including the unpleasant parts. If an employee commits a pre-meditated murder, should the company be liable, as a partial 'thought-owner'?

I would believe that in certain situations in certain jurisdictions that would be possible.
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