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Comment by wheaties | Hacker News Reader

That works for everyone except those who would have to declare to their employer that they're working on the side, for whom they're working and on what. Also, there are places in the US which allow an employer to claim any ideas related to your occupation that occur both on the job and off it (i.e. any code a developer writes, period.)

I'm assuming that type of thing is a no go and leave off a larger chunk of candidates than most people would be willing to admit.

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I know there are places where that truly is a requirement to employment but I've twice successfully negotiated (once at a startup, once at an ad agency) those clauses out of my contract and I highly suggest others at least try to.

It resulted in a few awkward conversations with HR / legal but I stood my ground and insisted that them owning my entire life was unfair and said I was happy to have them own my output during work hours but nothing more. If they don't come around I'd consider it a red flag.

>I know there are places where that truly is a requirement to employment but I've twice successfully negotiated (once at a startup, once at an ad agency) those clauses out of my contract and I highly suggest others at least try to.

I don't do this any more. I realized after a couple of these jobs that this level of explicit disrespect written into a contract pretty much tells you all you need to know about working there before you've even joined.

Now I just pass politely and move on.

The pay at places that would try and ram that in there was never that great anyway.

I've had contrasting experiences. The employment contract was boilerplate and after a single awkward conversation it was removed.

I was happily employed At each company for years with an amicable "break up".

One company was <5 FT and another was >50 FT. Both in the US.

> I don't do this any more. I realized after a couple of these jobs that this level of explicit disrespect written into a contract pretty much tells you all you need to know about working there before you've even joined.

Tbh, we had this come up when we purchased and I negotiated it out of my "new" hiring contract successfully.

So far everyone I have on LinkedIn at #ParentCompany has quit but my little isolated bubble trundles on largely immune to such problems as long as we hit our sales/profit numbers.

So I suspect you are correct in some cases but you can still sit in protected bubbles that have that in the contract AND are still worth working for.

Hey, wheaties, I work on engineering hiring at Automattic. For the purposes of the trial project we’re very flexible and always account for the applicant’s situation. It’s fine if their employer must retain copyright, we can always choose an open-source project for the trial :-)

I don't understand this, sorry. If the employer retains copyright, then isn't it the case that, in most situations, the applicant cannot legally license their work under an open-source license? (Because the employer owns the copyright, and may not agree to the licensing.) I don't see how the fact that it's open source makes any difference.

Perhaps new software is part of the goal.

Most jobs already have a severely restricted hiring pool because they are location-bound. When literally the entire world is your hiring pool, I'm sure they can still find the talent they need, even if there are large chunks of people who have a problem with their process.

Sure, on an individual level for someone who has this problem, it sucks. At a personal level when people at Automattic talk about individual candidates, it probably also sucks. But at a corporate level, evaluating whether their process is meeting their business needs? This issue, though legit, doesn't smell like a deal-killer.

Would that even prohibit the employee from contributing code to open source projects? :\

Sometimes yes (without prior approval). In practice this depends on the size of contribution, purpose, and relation to your current employer's industry. I've found there are two types of people: those who do and ask later or claim ignorance, and those that ask up front.

I'd guess if you are employed somewhere with these draconian rules concerning unrelated side projects (i.e. pre-approval) then you might not be the type of person they want. I know that feels a bit like employee/victim-blaming, but it also shows how important that employee values his personal software freedoms.

> I know that feels a bit like employee/victim-blaming, but it also shows how important that employee values his personal software freedoms.

It's also a great way to punish the naive who have since wised up and want out.

There sure do seem to be an awful lot of stupid biases like this floating around for an industry that claims it can't find talent.

Any company that claims it can't find talent is artificially limiting their hiring pool, perhaps based on geographic constraints or the like. We're up to 422 Automatticians at the moment, and that's not really slowing down.

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