Ask HN: Have there been movements to “keep the code” after layoffs?

5 points·ebspelman··7 comments

I was recently laid off from a startup where I think we were writing some pretty awesome code.

I think many other people have felt similar things recently when, because of a layoff, they've been severed from a great codebase they were learning from.

Have there been efforts or movements to encourage employers to make their codebase available to employees they let go?

View on HN

What's the incentive for an employer to do this? That incentive needs to be massive in order to overcome the downside of giving company property away for free to people who you might never see again, who you might not be on good terms with because of their termination, who you have no way to oversee in the future, who now have the option to work for your competitors. No company in their right mind will agree to this.

That's highly unusual unless you were employed on an open source project. Most employers would wipe your memory if they could.

>Most employers would wipe your memory if they could.

Will work for memory wipe. In my book that's a win/win.

If Paycheck (2003) is anything to go by.

It’s a driving plot component in the book Snow Crash too.

As a contractor, I've experienced a lot of contracts where they explicitly state that any code written on behalf of the client belongs to the client. It's not your code, so you cannot take it with you (legally).

Zip the git repo and upload to telegram as an attachment. Network admins won't be able to tell what you did, just make sure the filename is cat_memes or teambuilding_photos.

Fuck companies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com