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Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

So if you have any other interests, such as rebuilding old cars, would that boss still have a problem with it? That is the thing I don't get, is how some companies see a big difference between regular hobbies and programing related hobbies.

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I only know a few companies that promote a healthy work/life ratio.

I believe that on average non-tech companies treat their employees better and give them more right and freedom.

With non-tech companies you usually sell your time. But with tech companies you sell your brain power, if your side projects affect your brain contribution to that company for sure they don't want that.

So silly of them, I always say this. Companies should stop treating their employees as assets.

And let me say again, there are successful tech companies run by smart people that don't do this! And most employees including the founders are happier because of it.

At SunSed we believe that we should treat business like a passionate music band — making money is not the ultimate goal — the ultimate goal is to see people enjoying your music while you enjoy playing!

It might actually make some sense for a programmer's boss to be concerned about side programming projects, even if they have nothing to do with what the company does, but not be concerned about outside interests like rebuilding old cars.

Programming all day at work and then spending a lot of your non-work time programming too could put you at higher risk for getting burned out on programming. Spending your non-work time rebuilding old cars probably won't affect your programming at work.

Note that I'm not suggesting that the boss should be able to make you stop programming at home. Many people can program at work and at home and not get burned out, and it should be up to the programmer to decide if they are such a person. I'm just saying that programming related hobbies are more likely to affect programming work than are non-programming hobbies.

Equally there could be beneficial aspects to working on different coding problems outside a main job- improving skills, learning new tools, whatever. But that's not the important thing. To me, the important thing for an employer should be performance: "I have these expectations for the role, how is the employee doing in relation to those expectations, and are they being paid over or under the market value for the position?" Even if the employee could be better if they didn't have a side project, figuring out balance and maintaining job performance are skills in and of themselves. If an employee can do that, great, if not, bummer. The external cause doesn't matter. What matters is the employee's judgement in the self care they need to do in order to meet the needs of their job. No need for employer to borrow trouble by trying to control non-work activities and incurring bad will.

[Google owns any IP you develop, even on your own time](http://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/7822/working-leg...), and you can't easily work on those interview-worthy side projects after you get hired.

That's not necessarily true. Companies certainly like to advocate for the idea that they automatically own any work you do that's relevant to any of their business interests, even if that work isn't relevant to your particular job. But that doesn't mean it'll hold up in court. Just a couple of days ago I was reading something about how courts regularly side with employees instead of employers in disputes like this, how they tend to interpret that as only applying to work relevant to the employee's job and not to other parts of the company. Unfortunately I don't remember where I was reading that, so I can't go find it again.

Of course, take this with a massive grain of salt. I'd certainly prefer not to have to go to court to try and figure out if this is actually true.

Were you reading it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142327 ? There's a couple of mentions of courts siding with employees and courts in California siding with employees.

That's probably it. And I'm in California so I probably only paid attention to that bit.

That's kinda true, but we can request to get our copyright back on a per-project basis.

All previous companies I worked for had this clause. I've heard it's not as easy as typed to actually enforce. However, the companies I worked for stated that any personal project "relevant" to company interests belonged to them, up to 6 months after you leave.

This clause is illegal in many states. It definitively is in Wisconsin where I live, and I thought for sure it was illegal in California.

http://www.shakelaw.com/blog/employee-inventions/

"For example, the California Labor Code stipulates that regardless of what an employment contract or PIIA says, an employee owns the copyright and patent rights to his inventions if the invention is made entirely on the employee’s own time, without using any of the company’s equipment or technology, as long as the invention (a) does not relate to the company’s business, or (b) did not result from work performed by the employee “as an employee” of the company. Washington state has a similar law protecting employee projects outside the 9-5 bounds."

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