Come to New York! We're rolling in so much finance money we don't need to hit up small businesses.
Any programmer who thinks that they should have any right to have "their own time" and "side projects" should leave for a more friendly state. Like California.
I am not joking.
In New York, you can negotiate a contract to get this clause - it's quite common. The only difference is that contracts without the exemption (ie, total assignments) are considered enforceable, whereas in California, they aren't. That doesn't mean that Californian contracts don't sometimes include those clauses anyway - from a legal strategy standpoint, it's in the company's best interest to do so.
Furthermore, my understanding is that this Californian precedent is rather limited in practice, since it's easy for a company to claim that your product is related to something that the company is doing or is planning on doing (and hard to prove otherwise), and similarly easy for them to claim that you've used company resources and/or time to do the project, as people sometimes do without thinking about it. When you start picking it apart, the Californian exemption is very narrow in letter, and even more so in practice.
In short, you're definitely not missing out on anything automatically by coming to New York, because it depends on what kind of a contract you negotiate. And Californian law won't get you home free either, because there are too many other variables at play, and too many other ways for them to wiggle around the law - they just need the incentive to do so.
First of all in California it is against the law to fail to inform people of their rights. Thus even in the cases when contracts include those clauses, the impact is severely watered down.
Secondly in New York, even contracts without these clauses by default have them implicitly included.
Thirdly the "claim we're working on everything" issue is real in California, but only for people working for large corporations. People working for small companies can usually make a good case that they are working on something different.
Fourth, there is a real difference in culture. In California it is common for people to do things like"start companies on the side", and therefore the natural response upon finding that someone has done so is to not try to contest it unless they have specific cause to. By contrast in New York this is not common, which means that employers are much, much more likely to try to explore their legal options.
I am sure that it is possible to live in New York, sign careful contracts, and find people who will be supportive. However if management changes, or different lawyers examine those contracts, or someone just does the calculation that you won't be able to afford to assert your rights, I believe that your odds of running into trouble in New York are significantly higher than in California.
Maybe I'm overreacting. But once burned, twice shy. This is among the reasons why I never again want to live in New York. (The weather would be another. The fact that it never quiets enough for me to sleep soundly would be a third.)
Decades in some cases the long running section A pension case went on for well over a decade in the UK conveniently for the employer that meant that the people effected by the decision started dieing off reducing the cost.
As a side note, I cannot move to most cities in Colorado because I happen to have two dogs who are banned by their breed. The point is, there is way more to the conversation than just taxes alone.
Don't say I didn't warn you!
Seriously, stop going to bars around Times Square. You should know better by now.
It slightly irritates me when people say this, because usually those people have no problem accepting that other amendments that they hold to be more important (e.g, the 1st) apply to the states.
Heck, people try to apply the 1st amendment to private corporations & online forums set up by 14 year olds.
Similarly, gun enthusiasts can't claim that all gun control is unconstitutional. The easy days of magical thinking (whether one side arguing "Second amendment does not protect an individual right!" or the other side arguing "Thomas Jefferson wrote ``Thou needeth an HK-416 with a magazine of thirty cartridges lest black helicopters invade thy farm''!") are done.
This is completely wrong. Not just for the second amendment, but for pretty much every other Bill of Rights amendment that guarantees a "fundamental right" (including the first, which begins with "congress shall pass no law").
Whether or not you like the idea of private gun ownership (if you don't, you have a lot of room to argue about what is protected under the second amendment)[1], doing away with 14th amendment incorporation would be a horrible idea (Remember Jim Crow? Remember when women could not obtain an abortion, period?)
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Ri... -- The doctrine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._Chicago -- The ruling that incorporated the second amendment. Interestingly Justice Thomas' opinion (in favour of McDonald, but opposed to due process incorporation) is interesting in that it demonstrates an originalist constitutional view (opposed to the view everyone else uses) which is typically associated with conservative politics, despite the fact that joining the majority in a "due process" incorporation would mean probably mean less gun-control laws (a typically conservative opinion) than in using "equal protection" incorporation.
tl;dr 14th amendment incorporation is probably the most important evolution of US constitutional law in terms of expanding actual civil liberties as experienced by US citizens. It is not okay to be ignorant of it.
[1] Second amendment as an individual right is fairly new: first such reading in 2008 (Heller) as opposed to 1919 for first amendment -- despite, of course, both amendments dating back to the 18th century. As a result, there's not much good case law on books: it's very hard to argue a second amendment case from a criminal trial and yet it's also hard to find civil litigants with standing to sue such as Heller. It's safe to say that complete weapon bans or bans that make self-defense impossible are unconstitutional and that bans on fully automatic weapons (like the 1934 National Firearms Act) are constitutional. However, that's not where most of the debate is happening, so a clear standard has not yet evolved (but there are more cases working their way up through the federal courts).
And there's the added benefit that if you learn some basic Spanish, you can hire illegal immigrant labor to do all your housework and gardening for a pittance (this can be done without knowing Spanish, but then you end up wasting money on a middleman, and there are other benefits to knowing Spanish in Texas anyway).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law#United_St...
While Wyoming is definitely not a tech hub, they do protect your right to use lethal force to protect your property.
Plus if they steal your horse, you can hang them and shoot them. win/win
Actually a "duty to retreat" is rather rare. In California, there's a right to use lethal force if you are in a situation where a reasonable person would believe they are in risk of life or limb.
I also don't think you can shoot someone for just being on your property in Texas when there's no reason to suspect they are a danger to you, or if they're just trying to steal your car while you're inside the house, etc...
Far more difficult in New York: I've heard "must wait six months", "need to document a specific reason", and both... The overall message being "don't bother."
There is no statewide plastic bag ban in California (though some California municipalities have restrictions on plastic grocery bags).
And there is no federal lightbulb ban (there is a federal rule providing energy efficiency standards for certain categories of lightbulbs which sets increasing standards including ones which many currently-popular incandescent bulbs would fail; the intent of the bill was to encourage development and sale of more efficient lighting devices, which it has done.)
OK, I agree - I should have said "in many places in California". Using weasel words like "restriction" - as if only "very dangerous assault bags" were prohibited but there was no problem with regular plastic bags - does not change the fact the bags are banned - in SF, in San Jose, in LA county and in some others. In fact, in most places the regulators themselves flat out call it a "ban" in their explanatory materials.
>>>> And there is no federal lightbulb ban (there is a federal rule providing energy efficiency standards for certain categories
Which is effectively a ban on certain - very widely used - categories of lightbulbs. The fact that the it is called more verbosely does not change the fact that it is a ban. The intent also does not change the fact - I'm sure every governmental ban has tons of supposedly good intents behind it, it does not stop being a ban because of it.
Though I do have the impression that Bloomberg has done yeoman's work on public education.
I don't have the energy to find which state would give me the best deal, but I seriously doubt it's NY. :-)
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But then again there might be some tax magic I'm missing.
In NYC, including city tax, it's $5,203 versus $5,289 in California. If you live in NJ or Westchester, it's $5,495.
That being said you can live in New York City and get much better public services than say living in Silicon Valley. $100 per month for a MTA pass versus $100 a month for car insurance alone, etc.