Is It Cheating to Have a Side Project?
blogs.hbr.org
blogs.hbr.org
I heartily advocate that when it comes to managing their own time, employees do whatever they can get away with without getting fired. When it comes to negotiating compensation, companies exercise an enormous strategic advantage over employees, which they've proven completely willing to exercise in dishonest ways (cf. Apple/Google "non-poach" agreements). So when it comes to time-management, in the general case, I say fuck 'em. Get your work done, but when the door's closed, get out the clown suit and practice your torch-juggling routine if that's what you feel like doing.
Of course if you actually like your boss, or you don't think your company is run by dicks, and you'd feel bad about getting clown makeup on the company furniture, then don't do it. But only YOU can decide what's right in a given situation. No one needs employment morality lessons from business book authors.
The best bosses know this and will tell you as much, they will help you find out what you want to do. They realize that your first job is not going to be your last and help you focus on developing your skills. Then they hi five you when you get a better job.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you're not paying your employee extra when a deadline is approaching and he's working 13 hour days cutting into his personal time, you damn well can't complain if he works on personal things on light days when he doesn't have much work.
I know this methodology doesn't quite work well for the likes of Apple and Google, but I think if more companies realized this inevitability, they could actually use it to their advantage and prevent a lot of drama.
Do you just ignore it?
Do you formally give your employees full rights to their work (which is part funded by you)?
Do you have a formal agreement giving you a stake in their work?
> In particular, what happens if one of those side-projects becomes insanely profitable?
So far that hasn't happened. Much like the Y-Combinator model, we have a small stake in the company. If one of the projects became insanely profitable, we'd stand to benefit immensely. Just the involvement would likely generate all kinds of spinoffs (i.e. media coverage, etc)
> Do you formally give your employees full rights to their work (which is part funded by you)?
We try to stay away from owning or licensing code in general. We have a bit of a mantra here, we build ships, we don't sail them. In that regard, we'd rather benefit from the spinoff potential than the possibility of a windfall.
> Do you have a formal agreement giving you a stake in their work?
Yes, but not in perpetuity. We're interested mainly in fulfilling progressive ideas and seeing them through. After working in the biz long enough, you start to see a pattern among passionate people. They pour their heart into their craft - for someone else, and that works for many people, but for those who want something more, you lose an employee regardless - might as well benefit from it.
I mean, what's the takeaway from the article? "Have a diverse skillset". Got it. Mind blown. (Except not).
Bullshit.
A company can fire you for any reason. Yes, this is a perfectly valid reason to fire someone. You could also fire someone for showing up to work at 8:05 instead of 8:00. And you can fire someone because "You're the boss".
Despite that, what a bullshit article. "If you aren't 100% working for your company from 8am to 5pm then we think you should be fired" is all they are trying to say. No surfing the net, no testing out new ideas, no chatting with coworkers, no personal calls and EXACTLY 30 minutes during lunch: you are hired to sit, do work, punch out and fuck off.
People like this rile me up a bit... I've worked for places like that, and people like this, never again.
Usually it is a feature used by the employees to fire someone any time for any reason (yes, I mean _any_ reason, race, sexual orientation, shoe color, it will just officially be presented as "restructuring").
I once worked under a guy, he had very serious problems if some checked out a new tool/language/library/framework etc at work or even tried to learn something new to him like say Haskell.
Over a period of time I just figured out he was just plainly jealous that some one young would over take him.
Those are the last kind of places you should work at, also they are worst team players you can ever get.
That's the hourly-employee version of this. The salaried-employee version, epitomized by Japanese office culture, is something more like:
> We expect you to show up at 9AM on the dot, but to 'enjoy your job' enough to not clock out until 9 or 10PM every night. Of course, you'll probably only be actually working for about three hours of that, but it doesn't matter. Butt-in-seat, long as possible. Play some video games on your computer or something. Just don't let it look like you're enjoying yourself.
Here are my thoughts:
* My side projects have—without fail—made me better at my day job. For instance, when I had my last 'real' job as an iOS developer for a startup, my side project was Cocoa Controls[2] (http://www.cocoacontrols.com), which shaved dozens-to-hundreds of hours off our development schedule.
* My side projects don't compete with my employer's line of business (or potential future directions). The last thing I want is to get embroiled in a lawsuit down the road over IP theft.
* My side projects never use company resources. That means no working on it at work, and no using that company laptop.
* I do my best not to discuss my side projects with my coworkers. I'm happy to chat about them if they bring them up, but I don't go out of my way to discuss them.
* Way back when, when I worked at Microsoft, I had to sign a moonlighting agreement that specifically spelled out what belonged to whom and what each party's responsibilities were. If your company doesn't have one, I recommend trying to introduce one.
[1] http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Seattle-startup-Di...
[2] Which is now my real job. Win.
Further, "employer's line of business" is very loosely defined. If you could share the technical skills between your job and the side project, you are most likely in the same line of business.
Here's a book I highly recommend: http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source-Prot...
If, according to the contract you may have signed with the employer, the IP you create belongs to the employer, and that IP is earning a lot of money, then the employer is liable to the shareholders for recovering that money or an appropriate portion since it legally belongs to them.
This is in addition to the point in the OP, which is you may be exhausted while at work.
(California has a carve-out in state law: an employer can't claim stuff that was not done on company time, nor with company resources, and which does not relate to the company's business. But many states, perhaps most, have no such carve-out. And even the California rules are subject to interpretation; what isn't related to the company's business if the company is Google? So, it's wise to consult a lawyer regardless...)
Trying to fight your way out from under a noncompete, or lawyer up on account of a side consulting gig or independently conceived and developed idea, really stinks. And the further you get in your career the more likely you'll encounter such a situation.
Such cases ultimately seriously dampen both enthusiasm for the employer, and the odds of finding talent interested in working under such a regime.
Of course, the ultimate negative would be for California's exceptions to be attacked by corporate interests.
Georgia recently amended our constitution to make non-competes much more likely.
I and much of the tech scene hugely lobbied against this effort, oh well. We didn't need to work for in state companies anyhow.
Those sorts of clauses really suck the fun out of life. "Gee, I'd have a hobby and share my work with the world, but my employer owns everything I do. I think I'll play video games instead. They can't take that from me!"
Ability for <Company> Employees to Accept Project Work Outside of <Company> Time
It is the policy of <Company> to allow employees to accept and function as independent contractors for other companies/projects while on their own personal time. That being said, the non-compete/confidentiality agreement remains in force at all times and <Company> trusts that this binding agreement will be upheld on the part of all employees and contractors.
Seriously - we aren't digital coolies. We are highly paid surgeons. You wouldn't for a second fire the brain surgeon for reading about a new type of surgery that he can't put to immediate use between operations. Hell no.
Its the same with node.js or ember.js or whatever you think the new hotness is that you want to experiment with. You are trying to see around corners and skate to where the puck will be. Sometimes its not obvious how node.js (or whatever) is going to help. You need to balance this against your current role, but 20% sounds about right to me.
This is good for the employer. If the employer doesn't get that then you should get a new employer.
Right. As long as it directly or indirectly benefits the company. In software development, it can be really beneficial to the employer.
But I also agree with the example of a PR guy working on his stand-up routine. That probably isn't something you want your employee doing during prime time for an hour a day.
If you want to experiment with some new tech -- and you've been allocated the time for it by your superior(s) -- then by all means play around. But in my experience, there's typically at most only a few in each department whose formal role includes these types of projects, and they're always skunkworks-like projects that rapid prototyping or POC-like, and never a full implementation (unless you choose to go forward with it of course). This is the essence of R&D, which is there solely to make sure the business survives -- not you.
Renting my time doesn't mean you own me. Either I produce sufficiently good work for you + you continue to employee me, or I don't and you do not. Beyond that, go fuck yourself.
I don't advocate working on non-work stuff at work, it's not a fair or honest thing to do, and personally, it's not something I do. But the article goes further, it approvingly quotes:-
"When people get excited about things outside of work they end showing up to work and going through motions just to get through a day. Everyone loses. The employee loses and the employer loses. People are not going to give all of themselves as they focus on their new outside interest."
Which is getting into 'I employee you, so I get to tell you what you do everywhere'.
Fuck that.
"Why don't you go ahead and get the biggest mortgage you can on a house. Please come and tell me how big your mortgage is and how much you need to work for me for the rest of your life. Now that you have told me, I will make sure to use this information to subjugate you even further."
Later on in the article they make clear that despite their claim he made an "extremely valid point" without making clear they meant just that specific aspect, they still believe you should spend time on side projects outside of work / company time.
Fact of the matter is, execs and big guys have side projects all the time. Just because they don't involve writing code it doesn't mean they don't have projects. I know a lot big guys who attend pointless conferences which they absolutely don't have to, sometimes on their own money just because their pet project is to grow their network. Or they are busy working on their next real estate project in their spare time. Or they are writing a business proposal for their own venture. This happens just all over the place, all the time.
I agree that the office time should be clearly used for office work. Any other time apart from that is yours and use it the way you like it.
It's also a problem of management culture clashing with employee's expectations and desires. For example, I used to work for a place that would routinely monitor email and chat logs to make sure people were talking about work and not being overly social - even if the job was being done well with no problems.
Personally I think it's important to find a balance; if a small slice of at-work, non-break time is 'spare' and being used to better oneself rather than just sit around blankly doing nothing - what is the problem? And if side projects are being done outside of work, well that's none of the company's business.
Tying that rate to hours worked, or pieces produced, is a negotiating tactic to focus your mind on irrelevance.
What matters is 1) what value do I produce for the organization (this sets an upper limit on what you can rationally demand in compensation, not that this seems to limit the C-level set), and 2) what can you command elsewhere?
Being able to negotiate from a position of strength, particularly via collective bargaining (why do you think the tech world is so deathly afraid of unions or true professional organizations) boost that through Ricardo's Law of Rent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent).
In my mind the interview died right there. He didn't get it, its not about pay, but about scratching an itch, trying new stuff out. I assume that he would be okay with me watching TV at night, or running with my dog, why would my decision to blow off steam with code matter to him?
There is no telling if any of the big tech companies will be here in the same form in 15 years, let alone 50.
What if by 2028 POTUS goes standard-oil on google, ms goes bankrupt, apple merges with yahoo?
Stranger things have happened.
This article is not only harmful to the modern workplace, but is irritating to web developers who thrive on creativity but work in environments where it's simply not feasible. I still have bills to pay, but am not defined by the desk I sit behind.
Not kidding, this is a real question. I have a feeling this is technically unethical but I'm not so sure my time will be wisely spent if I just ethically sat here and did nothing.
(In reality, this doesn't graduate you to better work. Unless your boss is personally interested in your advancement, it just gets you assigned more of the same grunt work.)
My personal answer: no, not cheating at all. Is your boss looking out for your career? Are you his or her protege? If you don't have a mentor, then you are your mentor and you have the ethical right to manage your career as you see fit. Keep learning and carry on.
The biggest BS in this article. Your delivering does not correlate to slack you get.
In my case, I have gone full-time for my (yet to be defined) project to avoid this issue and be focused 100% on it.
When I am working on a side project I am in the kind of mood in which I can program for 16 hours straight. Doing two projects keeps things fresh. When I am not motivated enough to work on a side project I am more likely to zone out at work and spend an inordinate amount of time lurking on HN.
When I have a side project I will fly through my work so that I can get back to what I really care about.
(Unless it is specifically said in contract and you are being paid for a chance of inventing for company something forth extra pay)
Just askin'
Not only is the moral high horse off-putting, but the advice is impractical. Article says you should be spending 1000 hours per year looking for another career. It also says that if any of those 1000 hours occur on "company time", then (using their words) "you are stealing". This is overprivileged nonsense at its worst. How many people can fit in 1000+ hours per year on a side project and the real demands of a typical day job without some degree of (taken if not given) overlap? Answer: not many, but it's a good assumption that these writers have multiple maids and nannies...
Of course, it's worth it to be smart about overlap. Avoid using company resources, and the writing of code that will go into production should not occur during traditional company hours. If you're going to steal time from work, use it for reading, learning, and exploration-- not product code itself. You can lose if you do that.