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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it seems weird that he doesn't say how to fix this:

Get written agreement from your employer that your side project is your own. Some employers even have a standard process for doing this.

They might say no, but then you know not to put any more work into it.

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This is true, but ultimately if your company wants to be a dick about it, you could still end up having to fight them in court. They just have to say "when we signed that form you said it was a <domain A> app, but now it's turned into a <domain B> app which competes with our business. Hand it over."

As Joel says, a judge/jury will probably be inclined to find for you, but you still have go through the pain and cost of litigation. Also, while it's not usually in a company's best interest to pick legal fights with their employees, the catch-22 is this: the only time it's worth it for them to be dicks is when/if your business takes off. I'm sure your employer doesn't care about your little news aggregator until you're shopping around for $100 million in VC funding.

Ultimately he's right. If you seriously want to start a side business, quit your day job.

All startup advices, left and right, in unison say: it's way better to develop your product on somebody else's dime :) . Don't hurry to leave your work until your own business starts to fly.

Go figure... What are the practical ways to benefit from side projects? It's hard enough to work on two works at the same time, would be sad if the results would be lost.

There's a difference between a project and a business, but the line is pretty blurry.

But you have to quit your day job before starting the side business, or working on it at all. Otherwise your ex-employer still has a claim on your business.

The beauty of side projects is not having to make them pay the bills. As soon as you have to make them pay the rent, they stop being side projects.

But having an ex-employer sue you for lots of money because your side project is booming is a great problem to have ;)

> is a great problem to have ;)

Your comment is inspiring. The question then becomes, how much of your project's worth, as a percentage, are they going to come after you for?

that becomes a question for lawyers at the appropriate time.

Put it like this:

not having a side project because you're afraid your employer will sue will get you exactly and definitely $0.

Having a successful side project will teach you a ton of useful stuff and probably earn you more than $0 even after the lawyers have finished arguing (depending on your definition of successful).

That may be a temporary bodge solution to this, but the final solution is to eradicate the kind of legal implications that being an employee entails, aside from the only fact that it is no different than you selling a service to the employer during the contracted working hours. An employee is nothing more than a consultant that, most of the time, works on location, and should legally be treated like that.

Obviously that wouldn't stop you from signing your work away in a contract, but at least removes the whole "it's a different kind of transaction" legal mentality from it.

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