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Comment by warcode | Hacker News Reader

If self-improvement is not a "work-task", that is not a company worth working at.

The problem with working at a company like that is that by the time you realize you are stuck, you have no relevant practical experience anymore and it can be rather difficult to get hired at places that are worth working at.

This is why github exists. IANAL but I'm guessing when you don't use company resources, do it during off hours, and the open source work you do has no relevance to your company's industry; publishing that work to github should be fine.

For most sane people this is the case. But many companies' boilerplate IP clauses claim ALL of the IP generated while working at the company. The vast majority of them won't give a damn but it still exposes you legally if you are under such a clause and have a side project/contribute to opensource.

There is an elegant way to get out of that. Approach your management (usually requires director-level approval), and say that you are doing some volunteer web site work for [insert charity] on the weekends, and they require a signed release that your employer OK's it. This can also fall under the "requires approval for moonlighting" clause in many employee handbooks.

Then, assign all copyright to your opensource work to the FSF, which is a 501c organization.

Well there's self improvement -- say, learning the ins and outs of internal company software; and then there is "self improvement" -- mucking about with a pet project in an esoteric language that has no bearing whatsoever on the company's bottom line and arguably does not sharpen the skill-set that they are paying you for.

Not every company can afford to let employees "self-improve" on the latter level.

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