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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

I hope nobody is dissuaded from working on side projects by this post.

First of all, restricting contracts to only work related to the company's business is not unheard of (even outside of California). Every company I've worked at has agreed to that.

Secondly, it ignores the abundant evidence that people successfully turn side projects into businesses all the time without being sued by their ex-employers. In fact, I'd even posit that the median startup is begun while the founder is still working for someone else.

Don't sign draconian contracts and don't be afraid to work on side projects. Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer).

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  > Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer).

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Spolsky has built his career around promoting a good work environment for developers. After reading his blog for many years, listening to his talks and podcasts... he's either an extremely talented thespian, or one of the most conscientious people in tech.

And, while everyone has bias, I seriously doubt Joel and StackOverflow worry, or have any need to worry, about employee side-projects. They seem much more interested in employee retention.

I think Spolsky has done a fantastic job of building a an employer brand that attracts developers. It allows him to attract quality developers at under-market rates.

I don't necessarily think this is even a conscious act on his part. It's just that if you spend decades on one side of the table, you inevitable adapt that side's biases. Every employer wants their employees focused solely on their projects.

I get what you're saying, and with most other CEOs I would agree, but it doesn't really compute in his case. Considering the amount of time he has spent for the past decade+ evangelizing the developer side of things, and how obviously he empathizes with life as a developer... I'm happy to accept whatever he says at face value. He's a good egg.

Also, thank you for giving me the opportunity to post something positive about someone in tech! I'm generally the one being cynical and negative, so it's a nice change :)

I guess I'm not in the habit of accepting anything anyone says at face value. It doesn't mean he's running some long-running conspiracy, it's simply a reminder that his perspective comes from a particular position.

  > I'm not in the habit of accepting anything anyone says at face value.

Well, that is generally a wise approach. The only reason I'm defending him is that I mentally pegged him a long time ago as an unusually decent guy. To be fair, I only know him from his writings and public speaking, but that has been consistently developer-minded.

I have met him and he is generally a very decent guy, but like I said his perspective is informed by specific experiences.

That is probably true, but then you also have to look at the merit of those experiences. His fight has essentially been trying to make programming a "respected profession", where you contributions and time is respected. If that's the environment you're trying to create, then side projects are less important. Since your best work, excitement and learning is supposed to happen at work. Side projects might even undermine your efforts since programmers at worse workplaces compensate by having more exciting side projects. So I think the perspective is less that side projects are bad and more that work should be good enough that side projects (that leads to commercial products rather than hobbies) become unnecessary.

I have nothing against Joel. But to be fair, as people in finance use to say, "history is not indicative of the future".

They also say: "you are as good as your last trade", in finance.

ObNitPick: "Past history is not indicative of future performance."

I don't think your post contradicts morgante's point at all. As soon as you start taking your side project seriously, you stop being a developer (i.e. a person selling his or her time sitting in a cushy office) and become an entrepreneur. That means his developer advocacy stops applying to you and you become his potential competitor.

Of course there are different kinds of side projects. Everyone is worried about projects that could potentially grow into big businesses or popular open-source libraries. I don't think anyone will sue you over some inconsequential code written while being happily employed by Acme.

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