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Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't disagree more. As my employer you have no right to dictate what I do on my own time, nor should you even be aware or have opinions.

> But we want to make sure professional endeavors outside of 37signals don’t create conflicts of interest or affect your time, dedication, or performance at 37signals. So it’s a delicate balance.

How about you mind your fcking business (literally in this case), and if I start to slip at work you can talk to me, discipline me or fire me. What I do at 5:01 PM is no one's business but my own.

37S is just yet another corp who wants to control every aspect of your life. Water is wet, grass is green.

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> if I start to slip at work you can talk to me, discipline me or fire me

I think that's what they're getting at here. They're trying to call out things that could lead to needing to have these type of conversations and prevent that from happening by preemptively giving examples of problematic scenarios.

Under "Not OK"

1 & 3 - Are basically don't work for a competitor at the same time because that's a conflict of interest. Totally fair, IMO, as it opens the company up to lawsuits about trade secrets.

2 & 5 - Are basically don't do work for another company during work hours as it's disruptive. Again, IMO, a totally fair ask.

4 - This is the only one I really see as overstepping a bit. I think they're trying to get at something something similar to #2 (don't let another job take time away from your work here), but it's phrased in a bit of a controlling way.

“As my employer you have no right to dictate what I do on my own time, nor should you even be aware or have opinions.”

Disagree it’s the employees job to find a job and employer that offers the right terms for you personally.

Lots of jobs have contracts that do limit what you can say or do outside hours of work.

The White House press secretary doesn’t get to go home after work and talk smack about the president on Twitch.

Members of the military can’t go and work out with enemies of the state on vacation.

As long as the agreement is clearly communicated and voluntary at the start of employment there are reasonable limits to employees even after work hours.

I love freedom but I understand discipline and limitations make everyone more free than chaos.

The White House press secretary is a political appointee who works as a press secretary for the most prominent political figure in the country, so slagging off the president after hours necessarily and directly impacts the job. The military has its own body of law, as well as separate judicial and prison systems, and federal courts have repeatedly given the armed forces wide latitude in how they treat their "employees." Also, those people are all working on national defense.

Those are weird examples to pick, considering how entirely different they are to the circumstances of an SWE at 37 Signals possibly doing other work after hours. And also weird is suggesting that such control is a form of discipline that help keep chaos at bay, and is in fact part of making everyone more free.

If they are paying you to do X and outside of work you are doing something that directly conflicts with X, don't you thimk that might fall within the realms of 'their business'? Wouldn't they be better off employing someone who wasn't attempting to bring the business down after hours?

that's only one part of what they're saying. Sure, conflict of interest is imoral, but telling me I am only allowed to do work for acquaintances and that once in a while... you can gently fluff off. And they keep repeating "a few hours per month", when they pay me for 160 hours out of 700 something in a month :).

The only valid point apart from conflict of interest is this, otherwise they should stop pretending they own my body, mind and soul:

"Does it require you to be away during times when you’re needed at work?"

If you believe this, you presumably also believe that companies should be able to enforce this, yes? Which means what, hiring private investigators (or having an in-house investigations team) to monitor employees after business hours? So you either support surveilling staff after-hours, or you think the policy merits existing but doesn't merit follow-through and enforcement?

> So you either support surveilling staff after-hours, or you think the policy merits existing but doesn't merit follow-through and enforcement?

Or, I believe, pragmatically that it is seldom enforced and is seldom a problem, but is a useful clause for the company when a employee really is taking the piss.

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