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Developers’ side projects

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: Developers’ side projects

#171

Post by ditonal »

droidist2 wrote: post #145
st3v3r wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. They're experts in law. We're experts in engineering. Doctors are experts in medicine. Would you say it's tragic that one needs to pay a doctor to tell you what's wrong with you?

But often when things come up and it's "Hire a lawyer" it feels like responding to "How do I change my password?" with "Hire a software engineer." The law is very user-unfriendly. Also hearing that I should take the same remedy whether I have a question or I need to be defended against criminal prosecution seems strange and intimidating, like being told I should hire a brain surgeon for a migraine headache.

Yes. We need to politicaly organize to make legal protection for tech workers scalable.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#172

Post by DrScump »

rjurney wrote: post #62

You ALL need to read California Labor Code 2870! Surprised nobody has mentioned the most essential thing to know about regarding this stuff in California. The site is down at the moment, but the link is: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr... CA 2870 is attached to any such agreement you sign in California, and protects independent invention. You should read it. This law forms the legal basis…

The leginfo.ca.gov site has been deprecated for awhile. The current code is here:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection...

Re: Developers’ side projects

#174

Post by johnwheeler »

ImTalking wrote: post #89
alxmng wrote: post #65

> Not related to your employer’s line of work. Um, wait. What’s the definition of related? [...] I don’t know. It’s a big enough ambiguity that you could drive a truck through it. No, it's not that ambiguous at all. The courts rarely side with the company, and only in cases where it's quite obvious the work was directly related. If your side project isn't directly related to the work you are doing, then you don't nee…

You don't quite understand Joel's point. Regardless of whether you are legally right, a larger company could sue you for the sake of suing, and make your life very miserable. And if the fight continues and you run out of money, what then? I had exactly that thing. I was being bought-out and a small client decided (against the contract that they had signed) that the changes we had made to our mortgage broker commissio…

> Regardless of whether you are legally right, a larger company could sue you for the sake of suing, and make your life very miserable

A company with resources could sue you for a number of bogus reasons if they wanted to be dicks.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#175

Post by marcus_holmes »

rqebmm wrote: post #74
skybrian wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it seems weird that he doesn't say how to fix this: Get written agreement from your employer that your side project is your own. Some employers even have a standard process for doing this. They might say no, but then you know not to put any more work into it.

This is true, but ultimately if your company wants to be a dick about it, you could still end up having to fight them in court. They just have to say "when we signed that form you said it was a app, but now it's turned into a app which competes with our business. Hand it over." As Joel says, a judge/jury will probably be inclined to find for you, but you still have go through the pain and cost of litigation. Also, wh…

But you have to quit your day job before starting the side business, or working on it at all. Otherwise your ex-employer still has a claim on your business.

The beauty of side projects is not having to make them pay the bills. As soon as you have to make them pay the rent, they stop being side projects.

But having an ex-employer sue you for lots of money because your side project is booming is a great problem to have ;)

Re: Developers’ side projects

#176

Post by rqebmm »

avmich wrote: post #127
rqebmm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but ultimately if your company wants to be a dick about it, you could still end up having to fight them in court. They just have to say "when we signed that form you said it was a app, but now it's turned into a app which competes with our business. Hand it over." As Joel says, a judge/jury will probably be inclined to find for you, but you still have go through the pain and cost of litigation. Also, wh…

All startup advices, left and right, in unison say: it's way better to develop your product on somebody else's dime :) . Don't hurry to leave your work until your own business starts to fly. Go figure... What are the practical ways to benefit from side projects? It's hard enough to work on two works at the same time, would be sad if the results would be lost.

There's a difference between a project and a business, but the line is pretty blurry.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#177

Post by delinka »

pfranz wrote: post #98

I was at a larger company and tried to play ball with their policies for personal work. My contract gave them "right of first refusal" and had a space for exclusions of things you were working on outside of work. Some friends weren't allowed to continue contributing to a few Open Source projects...which seemed excessive, but makes sense if they're overly cautious. I mentioned I was helping a friend on a short film. I…

This situation sounds terrible. Were you writing software for your employer? Why would you have told them you were volunteering non-coding assistance to a film production? Did they honestly think they had the right to require you show them copyrightable works created by other people who were not their employees? Did you truly take those creations and show them to your employer?

This whole situation sounds ludicrous and should never have been required to happen by management in a company whose focus is creating software.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#178

Post by bb611 »

ThomPete wrote: post #134

When I ran my design studio at it's height of 80 people I would encourage everyone to have side projects. When you reach that size people coming and going starts to become the norm. Just as each employer is not going to be valued as when you are a much smaller company, neither should the employee be forced to some sort of fake commitment to a company who is no longer able to care for others as a small tight band of b…

Minor correction: As of December 6th, Joel is no longer CEO of Fog Creek: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/06/anil-dash-is-the-n...

However, he is still CEO of Stack Overflow and has over 300 employees, if I were one of them I might be pretty concerned about his take on side projects as my employer. I think in all likelihood, Joel means the article as a warning to developers who think they have more freedom than they might actually, and he's probably quite permissive about side projects at SO, but I agree the article doesn't come across that way.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#179

Post by jacques_chester »

ohyoutravel wrote: post #53
jacques_chester wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. My thinking is coloured by a few years in law school before dropping out. If there is a true "five nines" in our lives, it's the reliability of the law. We each interact with and under the law dozens, hundreds, even thousands of times every day without ever needing recourse to lawyers. But when you need a lawyer, you need a lawyer. One might as well sigh heavily about needing plumbers when the pipe bursts…

Isn't law school a few years?

4 years, full time or equivalent, for an LLB in Australia. I did one year full time, 3 years part time, before dropping out.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#180

Post by [deleted] »

alxmng wrote: post #65

> Not related to your employer’s line of work. Um, wait. What’s the definition of related? [...] I don’t know. It’s a big enough ambiguity that you could drive a truck through it. No, it's not that ambiguous at all. The courts rarely side with the company, and only in cases where it's quite obvious the work was directly related. If your side project isn't directly related to the work you are doing, then you don't nee…

[deleted]
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