131–140 of 186 posts
From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the individual inventor is a hero in our popular imagination Am I reading this incorrectly? Are they promoting the idea that Steve Jobs is an individual inventor?
There was also a two-year non-compete clause that forbid me from working with any of their direct competitors afterwards.
I signed the contract because I wanted to do the work, and because I knew that all the other places would have me sign the same contract. I also thought that this company was the most progressive of the group. Finally, I wanted my ideas to be funded, and so in exchange for the time and the resources that they promised to put towards my work, I would provide them with the ideas. We were both taking risks to achieve a greater goal together.
In the end, they reneged on their side of the bargain and didn't provide the necessary funding to complete the production and testing that the product design needed. After trying to get the work done myself in-house by funneling time and energy away from other projects towards mine, it came to a head and it was acknowledged that they weren't going to fund the work and that we needed to part ways.
On the day that decision was made, I was escorted out, leaving everything behind, my notebooks, and all my digital research files.
Several years later, when they won a large contract for work that was in the area that I was working on, my manager took me out for lunch and said that I had just been about 5 years ahead of the curve, and that they hadn't had the resources to carry that type of research and development that far ahead of a clear billable opportunity.
When I asked him about the files and the notebooks, he said that nothing ever happened to them, they were all just filed away in the archives.
I left understanding their situation well. It's hard to fund something when it's not clear when the payoff will materialize, and when it did materialize, they were able to get there first anyways. So the loss of five years in R&D wasn't noticed, by them, their clients, or the industry.
The lesson that I did learn was - back up your files offsite, and have duplicate notebooks, one that is your private notebook and one that is your office notebook. Because when you sign a contract like this, you have to be prepared to leave everything onsite when it ends.
The irony with the 2 year non-compete is that after I left, non of the other firms were interested in even discussing the work that I had done. Which is why these guys were the only ones that I could have worked with in the first place, and it's why they were the only ones able to secure the contracts when the need for the technology finally arrived.
And there wasn't much I could do with the technology myself, since it was untested and unproved and I couldn't fund the research myself. So the non-compete clause didn't impact me much either.
Perhaps this sheds some light on why the contracts exist and why people like me sign them.
(Has anyone come up with a phone / camera that does automatic tagging based on GPS location? Your phone knows you are in front of some famous landmark, and tags the photos with the name. I assume it has been done by now, but this was when the first phones were starting to incorporate GPS and it seemed like a novel idea).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Not everyone has the will... to do such a thing. This may just be crotchety old man talk, but sometimes I wonder if the extremely protective child-rearing (particularly in schools) that seems to be abundant today will make future adults particularly susceptible to this kind of bullying. If you never have to deal with this kind of social stress as a child, how can you possibly deal with it as an adult? Perhaps gettin…
Being humiliated and beaten as a child with no control over the situation is not "training" for anything. It's abundantly clear that you did not experience that and have no idea what it is like for a child. Let's hope as a crotchety old man that nobody ever decides to show you what it's like when you're stuck in a nursing home where no one believes or cares to help you because of some stupid reason like that it shoul…
I've always been particularly confused by the contract clauses which specify that all work of the employee during their time at the company is property of the company itself. Does this mean that if I develop some completely unrelated software in my spare time while working as a programmer at a large company, that the software I created at home also belongs to my employer? What if I was to write a book during that sam…
Typically work done in your spare time on company hardware/resources falls under this clause. Anything you develop after hours on your own machine is yours.
Maybe don't sign these types of contracts? We are fortunate enough that even the most mediocre among us can hold out for the next employer that doesn't demand this kind of control over you, or start your own company. I don't give a shit what a company says about their culture of work/life balance or whatever. If I see blanket IP clauses unrelated to non-compete, or like arbitration clauses that remove us from civil c…
I basically did whistle my way out the door because of this. I worked as a contractor for a very large defense company. After a year, they offered me full time employment. I specifically asked if there was a "we own everything you make" clause in the employment agreement, but I was assured there was not. I went through about five digital form contracts, and when I got to the last one, it had the clause in there. I to…
Employers owning employees ideas "related" to thier employment has been the case for a very long time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you had a written promise, could you sue?
No, you can only say no thanks and leave. I strongly suggest to anyone who gets hired at Google to read the employment contract completely (you can ask them to send it to you before you start). If you have a friend who understands contract law, have them explain it to you. Then decide. Unlike in credit situations there is no equivalent of the Fair Credit Act covering employment contracts. Many employers exploit that…
If part of your job is to create ideas within some domain, and you can't control exactly when said ideas will crystallize, should it matter whether you 'got' an idea whilst 'at work' rather than in the shower, or on the way to work? The line is difficult to draw precisely with legal language, so companies err on the side which protects them best (hoping employees will sign anyway, given they've already gone through t…
The bigger problem is not the ideas that relate to your every day job... But Say your a Aerospace Engineer working on rockets and on your off time you write a scifi book, after your done you take it to a publisher, they publish it, and then your employer claims ownership over that book... and sues you That type of shit happens all the time, and while that is an extreme example, there are all kinds of examples like a…
Maybe don't sign these types of contracts? We are fortunate enough that even the most mediocre among us can hold out for the next employer that doesn't demand this kind of control over you, or start your own company. I don't give a shit what a company says about their culture of work/life balance or whatever. If I see blanket IP clauses unrelated to non-compete, or like arbitration clauses that remove us from civil c…