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Comment by prima-facie | Hacker News Reader

Record screencasts of the applications that you worked on. Keep them under 3 minutes, showing only the major features.

No, this is a very bad idea. If your old employer would ever accuse you of stealing software, it would be extremely bad for your case for a video you made of the application to show up in any documentation.

I don't know where that "3 minute" rule comes from. It smells like the "you are allowed to download these ROMs only for 24 hours" nonsense that emulator sites (used to?) say. That only increases my suspicion of this advice.

I don't understand this comment. Why would me having a video of an app I built be a hint that I copied it? Also, would I even have to provide such a video as evidence?

The 3 minute thing seemed to me a simple example of "keep it short to keep viewer attention".

EDIT: maybe you interpreted GP as meaning take a screencast of the code, while I am thinking of the working app?

A lot of "enterprise software" is stuff that you will never ever get on your home PC. Your employer only let you have access to the software under the NDA and IP agreement you signed, and unless they explicitly say otherwise, that also includes showing how it runs.

This isn't like showing off the feature you wrote for MS Word.

But if your employer ever accuses you of murder (wrongful death), the fact that you were narrating a video from home at the time might provide a fortuitous alibi.

Call it a wash.

I can't tell if this is a total joke post like reddit, or a sarcastic attempt at saying "well the employer can accuse you of ANYTHING" because the poster has never heard of employers accusing former employees taking things.

You aren't supposed to take private work materials with you when you leave. I know for a fact that I've seen "screenshots" explicitly listed as one of the things I'm not supposed to take in several very reasonable employee agreements I've received over the years.

Having been presented with very unreasonable employee agreements (once a security company tried to get me to sign "we own all your IP while you work here, and for a year after you leave" agreement), that doesn't mean the company doesn't get to keep the private stuff it owns private.

It's theirs, not yours. You signed an agreement not to take it. Don't take it.

My company makes this easy by putting a demo video out every 6 months or so. It's always a bit behind in the feature set but its better than nothing.

I guess my point is try to look for resources your company puts out before trying to create your own

Yes, anything that the company has publicly released is fine. If you want to show off the feature you wrote for MS Word, buy a copy of MS Word as a consumer and show it off on your laptop.

Do you have any legal knowledge to back up this position, or is it just baseless fearmongering? The laws we have are already restrictive enough, without making stuff up. So, what is the legal basis for your position?

You have the burden of evidence flipped. Contracts are valid unless found otherwise by law. There have been a variety of exceptions carved out from what's allowed in employee agreements over the years. The right to generate a portfolio of one's work history is not, yet, in that list of exceptions.

As a programmer I don't make videos, I write source code. We're not talking about me waltzing off with the git repository, but of me videoing my software as it does what it does. I for one, after 20 years experience mind you, have never signed a contract explicitly forbidding me to make a video of the product that I worked on running. I think that most other programmers are in the same boat. Which means that for most programmers, unless you are aware of a specific legal protection afforded to viewing software in action, your advice is scaremongering, and not helpful.

This doesn't make sense. If you stole the software why would a demo video work against you? Why bother with a demo video if you have the real thing to demo? You'd demo functionality not code.

I think that's a pretty good idea!

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