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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

More than one person has come to me with a story that they'd developed a side project without notifying their employer, and now that it was done and they were distributing it were worried their employer was going to claim ownership.

I didn't have anything helpful to say. I've done side projects when I was working for Big Corps, but in every case notified management beforehand and got a written ok. Never had any trouble with it. When I've accepted job offers, I'd also provide a list of projects that were mine and had them sign off on it as a condition of employment. Never encountered any resistance to that, either.

But these poor people were sweating bullets imagining all the bad consequences of their employer finding out.

Just ask, in advance. If you're a valuable employee, they'll say ok. Never heard of one saying no. And they'll appreciate that you asked instead of sneaking around.

But be careful not to use company equipment.

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> Just ask, in advance. If you're a valuable employee, they'll say ok. Never heard of one saying no. And they'll appreciate that you asked instead of sneaking around

Yahoo told me I couldn't participate in the Netflix recommendation challenge (not that I would have done well), and then 6 months later praised another Yahoo employee who did well in it. #notstillbitter

Yah, you have good cause to be bitter about that.

The decisionmaker who praised is probably different from the one who told you no.

Have you got that "no" in written?

It was in writting, yes. I don't think I still have access to it: I don't keep archives of employer email, but I did use yahoo-inc email from mail.yahoo.com, as was allowed and sometimes encouraged, from time to time, and continue to have some access to old work emails through that; this chain of mail could be in there, but I'm not going to look for the same reason I haven't purged all that. It's too much effort and I don't care enough.

Doesn’t it bother you that you have to ask some manager if you can do something (a side project) in your free time?

It sounds as you are their slave, and not an employee who works x hours per month for y amount of money.

Imagine a baker that has to ask the boss if he/she can bake a loaf of bread at home

If that baker intends to sell that bread they also may run afoul of non competes.

See https://www.eater.com/2017/10/13/16459044/non-competes-chefs...

It's their free time, they can do whatever they want with it. If there is something unlawful or disloyal well then you deal with that situation, but you can't tell someone "I will tell you what you can do in your free time just in case you may do something I don't like".

Also, let's be honest, how much harm can a 1 person project do to a multi billion corp? It's a fallacy.

Well I had kind of the reverse situation: I wanted to contribute to Cygwin, owned by RedHat. RedHat would not accept my contributions unless I got a signed release from my employer, IBM at the time. Well I tried to get this signed release, but all I got was the run-around. Nobody would bother taking the risk. It's one of the reasons I left.

It's a good reason to leave, if the separate project is important to you.

I've just been accumulating all my contributions for when I quit or come up with a good enough alias to contribute them under.

> Doesn’t it bother you that you have to ask some manager if you can do something (a side project) in your free time?

Not at all. A salaried position comes with more open-ended expectations than an hourly position.

Besides, why the resistance to simply asking making it open and honest and the boundaries clear? My agreements on those things tended to be 2 or 3 sentences. I'd sign it, I'd get a veep to sign it, make a copy, and file it away.

It's just good business to do such things.

Do you also ask them for permission when you want to go biking? Visit your mother? Throw a party? Draw a picture? Contribute to an open-source project? Smoke a cigarette? Build a gadget? Buy a house? Have a child?

What an employee does in their own time is 0 business of the employer, none of the above is different from the others in kind.

Oh come on. That's certainly not what Walter was implying. It is any project that may have a potential current or future overlap with the company's plans or products.

> Have a child?

As long as you agree that the child is a property of the company.

Be sure to read that contract from Rumpelstiltskin Inc. very closely before signing

I'm also surprised at how natural people talk about that, like it's totally ok your employer "owns" your free time.

I might not have been a valuable employee, but I tried making a Plex clone in my free time when I was at Apple, asked if I could open source it, went all the way to the VP of tech to ask permission, just to be uncerimoniously told that it was not allowed, because they "really wanted me to be fully focused on Apple".

I'm not sure I agree at all that they'll say "ok" just because you're a valuable employee; I think you might have gotten lucky at your BigCorps.

Apple will be Apple.

But there are lots of other places to be.

It really depends on the organisation, but from my observation (I, myself, never developed any side projects worth releasing so this is based on what others did), most large organisations are not like that. Legal and HR specifically are very risk averse, so permission is usually denied by default, unless there is a overriding benefit to the company (or someone else to take the hit when things go wrong, a very cynical take I know).

Ethically speaking, I would think that as a principle, employees should never agree to ask the employer for permission to do things in their own time, for their own purposes, outside of the area of the business. Employees are just that, employees, not indentured servants. There are duties owed by employee to employer (and vice-versa) but this should not be one of them.

It's complicated. If your contract says you can't do it, that means there is a legal path toward stopping you if someone bothers. That means someone has to care enough, which means that as long as you don't piss anyone off and don't get too much press you'll be fine. If you ask, it is in nobody's interest to say yes especially lawyers.

And yet I never had any trouble getting a 'yes'. One of those companies was Boeing - as big and bureaucratic as they get.

I always refer to the Apple=>Woz=>HP story where Woz went to his employer 3 separate times to seek their blessing and receiving an a-okay each time that his involvement with Apple was not going to be contested by HP.

DOH!

One of the reasons why Woz is a smart cookie. Think of all the problems Apple could have had if he didn't.

Woz is an absolute hero of mine, and if you're reading HN and he's not a hero of yours, then, boy, I don't know.

How about, thoroughly read your employment agreement (and everything you sign).

> Just ask, in advance. If you're a valuable employee

That is a massive, massive if.

Yeah, well, no. Realistically no one ever will fight or most likely even decline a good job offer over a typical employment contract, and no employer will ever change a typical employment contract specially for you, unless you are somehow preemptively assumed to be a very valuable employee, in which case you are most likely being hired for some very high-level (like, executive) position, so your contract isn't "typical" to start with. And this is far less likely than actually becoming a valuable employee just by doing your quite ordinary job for a few years.

You might as well recommend fighting over your gym membership contract, of a bank contract, or a telecom operator contract. Right, it's your free choice, uh-huh. Either you accept it as is, or you go fuck yourself and workout at home, without internet, looking for a job where you'll be paid in cash (which also is far from being common). Again, unless you are preemptively perceived to be a very special customer (i.e. "expected to bring in a lot of money"), in which case your contract probably isn't typical to start with. And it is most likely your lawyer who negotiates over it for you anyway.

I must have had half a dozen contracts tweaked over the course of my career. Small things, of course, like making IP rights more explicit and changing notice periods. I can assure you I'm not that valuable. Weird.

Saying a contract is "non-negotiable" is just another negotiating tactic. They're all negotiable.

How do you explain that I've negotiated lots of these "take it or leave it" contracts?

The only contracts you can't negotiate are government job contracts and union jobs. Which is one reason I'm not interested in either of those job categories.

> bank contract

Haha, I once negotiated a large loan from my bank at an interest a full percent below their official floor. I'm not even very good at negotiating, some people I know are much better.

> telecom contract

Have you ever said the magic words: "that sounds high, can I get this for a lower price?" The salesmen are allowed to negotiate. The initial price they quote you is the sucker price.

Every time I've been to the dealer for car work, all I have to do is balk at the quote and 10% comes right off.

This is not a special skill. Anybody can do it. Fer gosh's sake, you're expected to negotiate.

I'd love to hear your techniques.

I haven't had success with trying to negotiate telecom contracts. When I balked at the price, the salesman would sometimes offer a contract with lower levels of services along with the price reduction. And typically, it's more costly per unit of service, so not much of a bargain.

I do. Every word.

Everybody should. The number of times I would have been bitten if not for my bad habit of reading 'standard' contracts before signing them can't be counted on one hand any more.

Or, ensure that it is in your contract eliminating the need to ask.

For example my employment contract states (I'm paraphrasing), anything I do outside of work I own copyright on. And anything I do for work is owned by work.

I wonder if there is more than one country in the world where it’s possible for companies to own their workers like this.

In Germany for example you can’t give away the copyright on something you wrote as a person. The only thing you can waive is the distribution part of your copyrighted works.

What you do outside your work hours is only subject to the law, not an employee.

This doesn't stop companies from putting it in their contacts to scare you though. I worked at a FAANG in Berlin and that clause was _the_ reason I almost don't sign.

Unenforceable clauses are part and parcel of the typical employment contract in France. Non-compete are the one of the most common offenders. I have seen companies try to enforce hours while paying by the day - two incompatibles provision in French labour law. Most employers know they would lose if it came to the worst but they try anyway.

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