Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

91–92 of 92 posts

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#91

Post by alok-g » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:03 PM UTC

johnward wrote: post #90

alok-g wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi John, Being based in California, I am well aware of the laws specific to here also (though IANAL). After having read two books on IP laws, I totally agree with what this lawyer told you -- not to sign. If you were to sign, there are plenty of things there that prevent you from having side projects and moonlighting even if you are in California. A question: So did you join the company without signing it? What was t…

We were acquired and in order to stay employed you had to agree to the new terms. This is a very very large corp that's core business is IP, they don't make exceptions for this. I have bills to pay so I signed.

This is what I expected too. Thanks for responding. I keep on asking these questions to people where relevant to understand how many people have these issues, and thereby also advice other people who are plain unaware.

A majority of people who are aware of their employment contracts report having these issues and cannot legally have contributions to open source or side projects on their Github profiles [1]. I extrapolate from that that those who are unaware of these also are legally-speaking bound by their contracts for these contributions. I still see this rising use of Github profiles to tell good developers apart from bad developers. There was a huge thread I had started on "Startup Engineering" Coursera discussion forums on this topic itself that generated over 50 replies, several new data-points, and also over 20 down-votes for me ;-)

[1] Unless they have appropriately written permission from their employers of course...

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#92

Post by alok-g » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:15 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #78

3pt14159 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people I hire are more useful to me if they can contribute to open source. Also, if you can't get me a code sample of SOMETHING, then 99.99% chance you could not pass our technical interview. I'm not asking for the world here. I'm asking for 10k lines of Ruby / Python / Lisp / C++ / C / ANYTHING.

We are clearly in a different industry. Even asking for code samples in my industry opens me up to potential legal liabilities. I've stopped interviewees during an interview when I felt like they were treading on what we would consider protected work product. It is entirely possible I can't pass your technical interview, but I'd be surprised if everyone in my industry couldn't, and they are all as restricted as I am.…

My bet is that 3pt14159 is in the same industry too and unless he has is own startup, is probably bound by the same restrictions either without realizing or without caring.

>> If you want 10K lines of my code you better be prepared to pay for it.

+1.

I do not mind someone having me write code on a whiteboard during an interview. Asking for 10K lines is indeed out of question since this would invariably be code I have developed for a previous employer. I am working on my own startup now and still won't show 10K lines of code to protect the startup's IP!

There have even been a case where a colleague pulled out code he had written at previous employment for use in the current employment. We blocked him from doing that.

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