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Comment by shepardrtc | Hacker News Reader

Any sort of administrative action or warning should not have to be interpreted. If that is the case, the warning should have been explicit that they are not allowed to contribute in any way because of said contracts. Instead, there's hand-wavy complaints about a "hobby" and very aggressive and cultish, "You are an IBM employee 100% of the time".

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> "You are an IBM employee 100% of the time".

That would instantly make me start to execute on becoming an IBM employee 0% of my time.

Clauses like that aren’t allowed in California. California law says that anything I do in my own time, on my own equipment, and not related to my company’s product is something my employer is not allowed to own.

I make this crystal clear whenever signing an “inventions” clause, and I avoid companies which make, say, DNS servers, for exactly that reason.

In this case it is related to the company's product so that exemption would not apply.

Sure, but in this case they were working on the kernel driver of an IBM NIC.

The sentence in question is misinterpreted. I read it like this: our contract applies all the time, not only when you're directly working for the company. We don't know what the contract exactly says. Likely there's an agreement not to work on IBM-related products in spare time.

California law overrides illegal contracts. However, in this case such provisions would be legal as the sibling comments point out.

Why only CA? Shouldn't it be that "the law" overrides illegal contracts - basically a tautology? Otherwise, what's stopping anyone from writing illegal contracts and forcing the other party to abide by them?

Because the basis of every state's contract laws are different. Something are illegal in CA but not in NY.

Remember that all we see is the bit of the email (presumably?) that the employee chose to post in the commit message. We don't know what other context there is. This feels like the last email in a long chain of emails, with a manager who's just done with excuses and trying to shut down any further argument in advance.

Thank you thank you for posting this, comments like this are a reason I love HN and despise places like Twitter, where the name of the game often just seems to be to take stuff out of context in the hopes of getting a juicy, negative soundbite.

This manager could be an asshole, or he could just be exasperated after previous communication with the employee. Point is, we just don't know, and it's dangerous to draw conclusions based on the single email that the aggrieved individual chose to post.

> he could just be exasperated after previous communication with the employee

Then they are a very poor manager. That kind of tone and language should never be used. If it has gotten to that point, then the issue should be escalated to HR. But it doesn't sound at all like they're exasperated. It sounds like they're a bully.

Sounds like the type of email a manager who's stuck as the messenger for legal and/or HR and knows that this type of message has to be by-the-book in case it ever ends up as part of a legal proceeding. Unfortunately you can be the best manager in the world, but in that situation you still end up writing roughly the same email as someone who's barely competent.

> That kind of tone and language should never be used

The manager may have sent the email, but legal and/or employee relations wrote that.

Legal most certainly did not write that. No serious professional wrote that.

> take stuff out of context in the hopes of getting a juicy, negative soundbite

Pretty much anyone who goes through someone’s posting history to find something then post it out of context to make someone look bad is someone who is not acting in good faith. Usually, the motive is to be a bully.

Now you're the one removing context. This wasn't going through history to find something, this was part of the instructions they just got.

I would direct message you, but since you have decided to be completely anonymous with no contact information in your profile, I have to make this public.

It’s not removing context. It’s conversation drift, which frequently happens in online conversations. The post I was replying to mentioned Twitter, and it’s well known that some Twitter users will go though someone’s old blog or what not to find “a juicy, negative soundbite”. There’s even an expression for it: “offense archaeology”.

Please do not make bad faith accusations without looking at the full context of the conversation, which includes the post I was replying to. I don’t know what your intentions were making that reply, but it comes off to me as rude.

I didn't say you were operating in bad faith, I said you were removing context. And I stand by that.

> It’s conversation drift

You were quoting something that was being directly applied to the article. If you were only talking about twitter it's on you to make that clear. To me, your post very much reads as talking about both.

> I have to make this public.

Good. Someone clarifying what they meant should be public.

Given the tone, I suspect IBM Legal are also involved.

Once IBM Legal gets involved, you toe the line or get fired.

Note that is is usually true at most companies, not just IBM.

The included message is probably lacking a lot of both written and unwritten context.

> Any sort of administrative action or warning should not have to be interpreted

All communication, inherently, must be intepreted. Administrative actions and warnings have no special exemption from this.

> You are an IBM employee 100% of the time.

Sorry but that violates FLSA. You're only an employee when you're doing work. They don't own you.

I think it’s just poorly phrased and what they’re trying to say is that their status as “IBM employee” is a boolean value. You either are an IBM employee (and presumably have some additional contractual requirements) or you aren’t.

No, I think this was pretty standard company-speak for "you're salaried so we own all your creative output, regardless of when or where you create it". Most employment contracts in the bay area (at least) have language to this effect, regardless of whether or not it's enforceable. Even if it isn't, an employer can still make your life miserable over it, and there's not much you can do about it aside from quit.

If you are an exempt employee you are bound to legal contracts if they say they own your output 100% of the time, unfortunately.

Any such warning needs to be clear to the employee. There's no particular requirement for it to be clear to the rest of us.

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