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Comment by MyNameIsFred | Hacker News Reader

What wouldn't be the 5th time I've heard such stories, but I don't think it's in any way specific to IBM. Employers like that want any OT you do to be dedicated to THEIR endeavor, not somebody else's...even your own.

If you're able and willing to code in your off-time, you should be doing it for the good of the Company. /s

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It's a terrible and completely unreasonable stance for an employer. You get the hours you pay for. You don't get to own people's free time.

One relatively benign reason behind such policies is that the employer wants your free time to actually be free time that helps your recover, not a second job that leaves you exhausted and fighting burnout and sleep deprivation.

That doesnt stand up to reason. There was no enquiry into the amount of hours put into this that would indiciate it was second job or exhausting, they also don't do a full enquiry into any other activities outside your work that might exaust you. That would make contributing to open source a totally arbitrary thing to pick on, which of course it isn't.

This happens because the "first job" doesn't pay enough (so doesn't allow for long-term free time), or has hours that are too long to begin with (so doesn't allow for short-term free time).

That's not benign at all - using your "free" time for rest and recovery so that you can be worked to exhaustion during the week.

And yet if I went to work at a retail job, they wouldn’t care.

It’s purely to help themselves.

They can "want" whatever they like. Doesn't mean it's reasonable, nor something people should cater to. ;)

More the opposite. Your contract says 8 hours, but everyone does 11 on average, so there is no way you could dispute ownership of those results.

Secondly most IT companies have 'innovation participation' programs that want to have first dibs on all your creative ideas, whether it's on the clock or off.

Thirdly, in an industry with very low start-up costs (all you need is a computer)and high competition for talent, even the potential threat of a former employer claiming IP over your new business can be a potential deterrent that nudges people into just not do it.

The response to this should be "Sure, for 3x the salary"

So when you come up with a solution to a work problem in the shower in the morning or while lying awake in bed in the evening you could sell it to the employer, since you owned that time?

What happens if you create something patentable in the eve information related to your employer's business, maybe even to your project. Can you patent it yourself and then collect royalties from your employer?

What happens if you infringe Copyright on a competitor on your GitHub project, where your GitHub profile also says where you are working, can the competitor distinguish wether it was you personally or as part of work?

For creative work it is tough to fully distinguish between work and leisure time ... some companies deal with this better though, than others.

In a right to work state, you could indeed walk in, terminate your employment, and file a patent later. You could then charge that company for that work. In civil court, it would be argued as to when you actually had the idea.

In these civil suits, the one with the most money wins, so you would still lose even if you indeed solved the problem after you left.

No need to defend those huge corporations. They're perfectly capable of bribing officials to screw over employees all by themselves.

This is a fair argument, but the solution isn't to just strip the employees right to own their own thoughts.

The specific problem seems to be about patents and trade secrets. If a contract covered those two things well, would an employer have legitimate cause to push further than that?

Well, for corporate lawyers the solution is easy :-D

A good solution is hard.

Yeah sure, and if you like I can also clean the bathrooms because I know how to do it... Off-time is for your own not for your company regardless off what you do with it.

The /s stands for sarcasm

I've always wondered whether /s predates, was a concurrent development, or is an evolutionary shortening of </sarcasm>.

The history went something like this:

    jk
    </sarcasm>
    <sarcasm>...</sarcasm>
    </sarcasm>
    /sarcasm
    /sarc
    /s
    \s

⸮ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation

This punctuation is very ironic.

No it doesn't, it stands for "This used to be sarcasm but I ruined it by telling you"

People use it for a reason. Intended tone does not carry reliably over text.

It also stands for "hitting over head with hammer"

If they want that sort of dedication they can give me equity or back off.

> If you're able and willing to code in your off-time, you should be doing it for the good of the Company.

Excuse me, what the f...?

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