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Developers’ side projects

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: Developers’ side projects

#391

Post by gaius »

ditonal wrote: post #165
maxxxxx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most professionals have some kind of trade organization that sets standard. Doctors, laywers, many types of engineers. The problem is that programming is so attractive because the barrier for entry is so low that anybody can get into it without problems.

Yep, and don't call it a union. Barrier of entry is not a problem, we dont need an organization to limit entry into the field, we just need political representation. Now "tech" in politics means executives/VCs. We just need an association that funds employee friendly lobbying.

There is an organization in the UK, the BCS, that is widely regarded as irrelevant, and no-one can understand how it still exists. It adds zero value to anyone working in the industry and in fact frequently undermines workers for the benefit of large employers or the government. For example it is peddling the "skills shortage" myth.

If we have a guild it needs to be by, and for, actual workers.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#392

Post by spangry »

dnt404-1 wrote: post #362
nightski wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Don't work as an employee. This is the one industry where it really isn't that difficult. I took the leap 5 years ago and within 3 years quadrupled my income and have complete autonomy and freedom.

For those who like this idea, can we have a communication channel to ask how you did it?

I'm not a software dev or tech worker. But I hope you guys do this.

I may have just drunk too much HN kool-aid, but software devs seem to be criminally under-valued and often exploited (see Crytek thread on front page, for example). Then there's guys like Bezos who, after underpaying and exploiting you, will replace you with a machine-learning algo the second it is technically feasible and a net positive to the company bottom line.

I've also noticed some interesting features of the software development labour market: quite a lot of the work is creative in nature, you produce non-rivalrous products (i.e. my consumption of 'software x' does not block someone else's consumption), and the workforce is supposedly peppered with unusually talented individuals who produce 50-100x the value that the average worker does.

There are two other industries that have similar features: traditional screen entertainment (TV & Movie), and professional sports leagues. In both of these industries, the content producing workers (baseball players, actors) are invariably a member of an industry guild or union, and operate more like independent contractors than employees...

Food for thought.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#393

Post by nsomaru »

spacelizard wrote: post #294
zodiac wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative though? Through the article Joel gave reasons as to why those two limits can't be placed (even if the company was nice and wanted to)

I can think of a few: - Have the employee agree to grant a royalty-free license to all relevant inventions made in the appropriate time period - Have the employee forfeit all inventions in the event they initiate litigation - Or better, sign a mutual patent disarmament clause (probably my favorite option) Going back to the core of the issue though, I would not trust investors who insist on appropriating the rights to…

Could you elaborate on your last point, a patent disarmament clause?

If there's precedent that would be great!

Re: Developers’ side projects

#394

Post by spangry »

jdavis703 wrote: post #388
chrshawkes wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's make sure we unite to make these companies known yah?

Sadly legal settlements prevent talking about such things usually.

There's a time-tested solution to this: one of the functions of these sorts of organisation could be to provide legal representation for their members. Unions, for instance, will often supply professional advocates (i.e. lawyers, negotiators etc.) to members in employee-employer or even professional-industry legal disputes.

It's often said on HN that skilled software developers are more akin to 'craftsmen' than they are to 'employees'. There's a number of good reasons why craftsmen have, almost invariably throughout history, formed guilds, unions or 'professional associations'...

You either organise or you accept being exploited.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#395

Post by alkonaut »

tetrep wrote: post #63

> Your game designer works for a year and invents 7 games. At the end of the year, she sues you, claiming that she owns 4 of them, because those particular games were invented between 5pm and 9am, when she wasn’t on duty. > ... > So before you hire this developer, you agree, “hey listen, I know that inventing happens all the time, and it’s impossible to prove whether you invented something while you were sitting in t…

> Your game designer works for a year and invents 7 games. At the end of the year, she sues you, claiming that she owns 4 of them, because those particular games were invented between 5pm and 9am, when she wasn’t on duty.

That's not what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that after developing 7 games that belong to my employer, my personal website project that computes tax returns in ethiopia would somehow belong to my employer because

I'm perfectly fine with my employer owning everything related to what I'm employed there to do unless explicitly agreed otherwose

I'm not fine with my employer owning every single piece of "IP" (god I hate that term) that I have created during my employment but outside of work, if it's unrelated to their business. I don't even agree to that even if I have a "standard contract" in which I have stated that they own everything I do. I'm not going to argue over that contract, no one does, and I'm still not ready to give up the ownership of my personal projects.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#396

Post by hajderr »

dnt404-1 wrote: post #362
nightski wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Don't work as an employee. This is the one industry where it really isn't that difficult. I took the leap 5 years ago and within 3 years quadrupled my income and have complete autonomy and freedom.

For those who like this idea, can we have a communication channel to ask how you did it?

have you started the channel yet?

Re: Developers’ side projects

#397

Post by kodisha »

At the moment I am not working at any side project, but occasionally I have idea or two, and I was just waiting for a right time to start working on them.

Reading this was quite devastating, not even started, and I feel like I already lost, even though my side project has next to nothing to do with my current industry.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#398

Post by yoz-y »

dustinmoris wrote: post #280
yoz-y wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have obviously never tried to find a job in France. All big companies and laboratories will make you sign a no-compete agreement which encapsulates 100% of any code you could write. Even most startups do so. It is a shitty situation.

You are right I never worked in France. I worked at many companies and I never had anything like this in my contract. The only standard thing I get every time is to not be able to work on anything that directly competes with my employer.

The problem is that the "direct competition" is too vague of a term to rely on. If you work in a services company, then practically any code is competing with them. If you work for a startup, then they can pivot at any time.

The one concession I got was that I can negotiate the ownership of code I do outside work case by case.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#399

Post by stefek99 »

"Most developers think that the work they do at work belongs to their employer, but anything they work on at home or on their own time is theirs."

NOT ME.

I dread the time when in order to pay my bills I had to sign a contract...

Released all my ideas to the public domain: https://github.com/genesisdotre/wiki/wiki/Ideas-released-to-...

"original matter, work or creation" - on my occasions I wanted to ask how about: 1) cake recipes 2) gardening 3) drawing with my kids 4) urine and excrements 5) photography

(if I was to create YouTube channel talking about philosophy that would inevitably belong to them as well)

Can we please introduce employment contracts that are fair to both sides?

Re: Developers’ side projects

#400

Post by __derek__ »

joeljumpedshark wrote: post #341

Joel is both asserting that a particular state of affairs presently exists that quite likely doesn't--specifically that employers have a strong rather than tenuous legal claim to all side projects produced by their developers due to the vagueness of the relatedness clause of the California law and the contracts incorporating it--and also attempting to convince his readers, most of whom are developers, that this is en…

> we need a professional association (union) of the kind that lawyers, doctors, and dentists have

A nit-pick: those professions have guilds, not unions.

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