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Comment by microtherion | Hacker News Reader

Some good discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056

Bottom line is that at least in California, employees theoretically have the right to IP developed in their own time on their own hardware, but in practice, there are numerous caveats, and litigation can be extremely risky.

One of the caveats is that the invention should not overlap with a company's "existing or anticipated line of business", and with the FAANGs being such behemoths, that can cover almost any form of software development.

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Something that comes up in these discussions is the concept of “company time”.

Company resources is clear cut, but what is company time for a salaried employee? How does that change with being a remote employee?

I’ve moved to a strategic product role and honestly work less than an hour a day on average and seldom go into the office. If I decide to work on a side project does that restrict me from git commits between 8-5?

> Company resources is clear cut, but what is company time for a salaried employee?

Usually salary comes with an expectation of hours per week/month, and usually also comes with a software where you write down your hours, to track overtime, minus time, etc. So all the time you write down in that system, counts as companytime.

Interesting, I haven’t had a timesheet since I was an intern during college almost 20 years ago.

I didn’t realize that timesheets we’re still a common part of being a salaried employee in tech.

It depends what you do - I've always had to timesheet, but that's because I was working for clients, so we had to at the very least make sure we were estimating correctly, or, at my current job, that we're billing the hours I actually work.

It's not too onerous, since I only work for one client at a time, and time spent not at work is uncommon and usually in big chunks (e.g. an hour or two for a doctor's visit, days or weeks for vacation).

You've had this at tech jobs? I've definitely never had to track time at any of my tech jobs (nor have I ever been eligible for overtime .)

Yes, switzerland requires time tracking, including a requirement of certain break times if your shift is long enough.

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