If you find that, for whatever reason, there's a slot in the day where you can either do / ask for more company work, or work on your side projects... What do you do?
Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
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Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#2anyone who works on their personal side projects on company's times and hardware, risk that the results will become ownership of the company. it's also a bit dishonest and immoral tbh...
I would check the employment contract asap.
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#3Downtime during working hours is time for self-care.
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#4anyone who works on their personal side projects on company's times and hardware, risk that the results will become ownership of the company. it's also a bit dishonest and immoral tbh... I would check the employment contract asap.
Why is this immoral? Genuinely curious. It seems the underlying assumption is that every second belongs to the company while you’re “on the clock”, but this doesn’t line up with many companies’ philosophies of “get the work done, time is irrelevant”.
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#5I don't do any coding during the 9-5, but I do a lot of brainstorming, and reading content related to what I want to build. To the naive person, it might look like I'm just browsing random sites to satisfy my curiosity.
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#6anyone who works on their personal side projects on company's times and hardware, risk that the results will become ownership of the company. it's also a bit dishonest and immoral tbh... I would check the employment contract asap.
Why is this immoral? Genuinely curious. It seems the underlying assumption is that every second belongs to the company while you’re “on the clock”, but this doesn’t line up with many companies’ philosophies of “get the work done, time is irrelevant”.
> It seems the underlying assumption is that every second belongs to the company while you’re “on the clock”
this assumption is correct for vast majority of employed people
you would have to refer to your specific employment contract. for me personally it always stated the amount of hours I'm expected to be working per day or month.
spoken gentle-human's agreement is one thing, what is written in the contract is another and always legally binding...
I would like to hear someone tell their boss they spend 1 or more hours every day working on a personal project on company's time, if its not dishonest it should not be a problem and will be met with praise and compliments I'm sure...
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#7anyone who works on their personal side projects on company's times and hardware, risk that the results will become ownership of the company. it's also a bit dishonest and immoral tbh... I would check the employment contract asap.
Why is this immoral? Genuinely curious. It seems the underlying assumption is that every second belongs to the company while you’re “on the clock”, but this doesn’t line up with many companies’ philosophies of “get the work done, time is irrelevant”.
If you are salaried in the US there is no clock. You can't have company time if the company explicitly isn't buying a set period of time. Firms tend to be unclear on this until it comes time for you to work outside of your 9-5 then they are quite clear on the concept.
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#8anyone who works on their personal side projects on company's times and hardware, risk that the results will become ownership of the company. it's also a bit dishonest and immoral tbh... I would check the employment contract asap.
It's not immoral at all, but I agree it is very dangerous. My job at the companies benefited immensely from what I learned when working on my personal projects, and naturally the other way around. But of course I never brought my code at the company (although I had in a couple occasions done the opposite in emergency situations with the company knowing, a few days I never billed them for but contributed to a good raise afterwards - dear old times when handshakes were often enough). Bringing your code at the company today is very very dangerous, and i mean just bringing it in, not working on it during company time on company's hardware. Don't do that.
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#9Nope.
At least not directly. Similar to how a carpenter might learn stuff during their 9-5 that helps them be a better carpenter, the work I do during my 9-5 informs what I do outside of work.
If I were to spend time on personal projects, I'd never use my day job's resources. Early in my career I left an employer to start my own company. That former employer tried to sue me, saying that because I came up with the idea while "on the clock" that they could claim some or all ownership of my new company.
My former employer had no case though. I never used their resources, never even jotted down notes about the idea I had, never even talked about it to other employees. The idea itself was one that wouldn't even compete with my employer - two totally different industries/markets.
That said, my lawyer at the time said that if my former employer even had a single email I sent that hinted at the idea, or scrap of paper with any reference to it, they might have been able to get a case in front of a judge or arbitrator.
For those considering working on side projects, and you want every chance of protecting those side projects, it wouldn't hurt to talk with a lawyer about how to protect yourself as early as you can.
Re: Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
#10No, I would not work on any personal projects during work hours as I don't want to risk any IP clauses getting applied to my own personal/side projects. Generally down time is a good opportunity to learn more about tools which could be applied in the future, but are not immediately required.