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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Uber is building a self-driving car research center in Pittsburgh. They hired most of the CMU self-driving car people. Supposedly they're going to renovate a railroad roundhouse in Hazelwood and use some of the empty space from the old coke plant for road testing. How's that working out?

In California, anything you do on your own time belongs to you, and the previous employer can't enforce most non-compete agreements. So you can leave and do a startup even if your old employer doesn't like it. That's an edge Silicon Valley has and no other state has had the guts to copy.

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> In California, anything you do on your own time belongs to you, and the previous employer can't enforce most non-compete agreements.

This X100. Add in the fact that Stanford makes it easy for faculty to weave in and out of industry, and those facts explain a lot.

Stanford didn't always pull in a lot of government research money. See http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?articl...

It took a long time for Sili Vally to become Sili Valley, and a confluence of factors.

CMU has grant money coming in. But CMU seems to pride itself on being Scottishly tight-fisted with how it treats the IP of faculty and students. And tight-fisted about everything else -- About a year ago I attended accepted student's day with my daughter (accepted to both Carnegie's College of Computer Science and Institute of Technology) and I got the distinct impression that CMU is not very flexible and is not very generous about much of anything -- kind of a state school attitude at private school prices. (My daughter chose MIT over CMU.)

So I think to make Pittsburgh work as a start-up hub, it will take CMU being a little more open, some more inventor-friendly IP laws by the state of PA, and patience. And somehow you have to keep the first generation of successful entrepreneurs around to be the VC's for the next generation.

> In California, anything you do on your own time belongs to you, and the previous employer can't enforce most non-compete agreements.

I work in Pittsburgh, and recently learned that my employer can own intellectual property that I created on my own time in my home. I was appalled.

It's a normal employment clause, don't freak out. Just fix it. Tell them that you would like your own projects excluded and your agreement should exclude your own personal projects as long as you inform them in writing of what those projects are.

It's not something to be appalled about. They aren't trying to be evil overlords.

> It's not something to be appalled about. They aren't trying to be evil overlords.

Not so fast. A lot of East Coast companies aggressively enforce contract provisions, EMC being one of the worst.

If it's in your contract, and it's not illegal in that jurisdiction, you should be very concerned.

Most companies require board-level approval to change a contract, and you will usually be told, "I want you to leave the premises now."

If the default is terrible, then be appalled.

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