Smart people should stop leveraging the amount of information in their brain. That's the property of some corporation! What was he thinking?!
> The proprietary ... know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee ... are owned by ZeniMax.
I've typed and erased this response 3 times because I tend to wander, but the I think what irks me the most about things like this is that they will end up concentrating on some physical object, like some code that he created in his spare time while still under their employment.
They won't even acknowledge the fact that this is a titan of productivity and a genius programmer who could probably conjure up anything he's written in the past N decades given an afternoon.
Was adapted into a big budget 2003 movie.
1) He refused John Carmack's pitch for a new project. Stupid.
2) That got his best employee to quit the company and start a new one. Double stupid.
3) That new company he has no rights to was worth $2 billion a year and a half later. Management-level stupid. (note I don't care what it's "value" is, someone paid 2 billion for it, that makes it worth 2 billion)
And now of course, the lawyer wants some money. It isn't fair that something I could have had but didn't want was sold for $2 billion ! Obviously they owe me for the idea !
I have a 2 year old daughter that has this sort of behaviour too. I also have a 5 year old daughter, who has grown out of it (that wasn't easy, let me tell you). I'd expect the CEO of a legal company to ...
Dammit I almost got through that last sentence without laughing ... and crying.
If they expect "the proprietary ... know-how" and experience of all employees to remain confidential, then surely they can't have expected him to use any of the knowledge he gained working anywhere else previously, when he started working for them.
If that's the case, employing Carmack gains you nothing over employing a fresh new graduate, except that it costs a heck of a lot more.
Or are they just another bunch of fucking hypocrites?
It seems a lot more likely to me that he felt he was entitled to spend his time however he saw fit and did the VR work during work hours. I doubt if it would have even occurred to him to differentiate between "work time" and "time off".
This is where the "just sign it" attitude is going to bite some people.
When I read this, my thoughts went to all the smart people who created something awesome while employed at a company and were never personally credited.
I mean, so much of our discourse is tied up in exchanging opinions of companies rather than individuals.
Feels a bit strange now I come to think of it. Having all these overbearing hierarchical organisations of people, that end up directly or indirectly controlling large parts of your life.