161–170 of 186 posts
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He definitely wasn't. And more importantly, neither was Edison.
Patents with his name on it: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/ste... While he didn't invent all that stuff himself, it's not like he had nothing to do with any of it.
With top talent, you never really employ it. You just sponsor it. If you fail to recognize this, people become demotivated and that talent is either meaningless, or turned against you. The problem is that employers, and almost all of them are this way, are do damn short-sighted. They'll pinch pennies on benefits, lay people off for the slightest reason or no reason, and burn hours of time on psychotic, all-consuming…
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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.
How about if you ssh to you home machine on work time and do stuff there?
Plenty of people have done it, but likely not acceptable from an HR perspective.
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>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…
I would argue more that the instilled mindset of "do as the authority figures say, you have no influence in the matter" that's pervasive in schools also does a huge amount to train adults to not feel like they have this option. That takes a lot to overwrite when it's instilled in you for the first 18 years of your life.
My solution to this has been: * When I need to work on something, I think of the library I wish existed to get it done. Anything I need that is employer-specific should be configurable * I make the library and release it with an MIT license * I then use that library to accomplish my goal This has the benefit of usually making me write better software. And it motivates me to make the open code better quality and bette…
If Mr Lobel is claiming to be a legal academic (a professor for fracks sake) his lack of knowledge in how employment law devoped in common law jurestrictions is truly shocking. Employers owning employees ideas "related" to thier employment has been the case for a very long time.
"jurestrictions", can't tell if typo, clever pun on jure , or unknown legalese. Google gives me 2 English language pages with it on, a blog and a forum thread - I'm going with typo for "jurisdiction".
At Microsoft we don't have these contracts. You are free to work on whatever after hours (with your own equipment and not using company resources).
This wasn't the case when I worked there 10 years ago. Check your paperwork.
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If you had a written promise, could you sue?
Would you work for an employer that you had to sue to force them to allow you to work there?
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"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? " In most states, the answer is "yes, it pro…
Thanks for that, I wasn't aware Switzerland had similar provisions, I thought it was just the state of California.
California does not, and does not say what most engineers think it does.
It says companies can own inventions that:
(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer.
#1 is read fairly broadly. Most think it just says #2.
With top talent, you never really employ it. You just sponsor it. If you fail to recognize this, people become demotivated and that talent is either meaningless, or turned against you. The problem is that employers, and almost all of them are this way, are do damn short-sighted. They'll pinch pennies on benefits, lay people off for the slightest reason or no reason, and burn hours of time on psychotic, all-consuming…
Implying of course that the "other" talent, you know, not the top kind, you can employ and own all you want?
I'm not saying that such people should be "owned". That's pretty reprehensible. I'm saying that they don't require an amount of autonomy incompatible with the standard employment context.