

Has anyone ever gotten in trouble for working on side projects during work hour? - vivivi

Has anyone ever gotten in trouble for working on side projects during work hour? How did they find out?
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wallflower
Don't do it. They can find out anything. As if they were watching a live-
stream of what you are doing. By law, employers have access to monitor
anything and everything that happens on company property. Company property, in
the modern sense, includes laptops, company-issues phones, tablets, and the
wired and wireless networks. They have every right to in-near-real-time
perform surveillance of what you are doing.

As for employee IP agreements and contracts, it really only becomes litigious
if there are large sums of money involved.

For example, Mayo Clinic v. Peter L Elkin, MD

[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/USCOURTS-
ca8-11-02959/USCOU...](http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/USCOURTS-
ca8-11-02959/USCOURTS-ca8-11-02959-0)

There are cases of litigation against 'small fish' I can't find references for
at the moment.

In most cases, they will go after you with non-compete (which is not really
legally enforceable in California). Technically, if the company you work for
is big enough - you can be 'competing' with them.

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nicholas73
Can they see what you are doing even with dynamic websites or over https?
Assuming they can only read network traffic.

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hashtree
Examine DNS lookups, examine URLs, MITM potential to read everything, all
sorts of things they could do on just the network level.

~~~
nicholas73
None of those can show what you are actually seeing on your page? What if you
were using a web based IDE? Or Python Anywhere?

~~~
hashtree
MITM certainly can see everything, and employers do it:
[http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/03/05/1724237/ask-
slashdot-d...](http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/03/05/1724237/ask-slashdot-
does-your-employer-perform-https-mitm-attacks-on-employees)

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mtmail
I know a guy who got into trouble write a <insert favorite programming
language> module and putting it in a public repository. The module solved the
current task. It was easy to install and had documentation. All good? No. The
company claimed he spent extra (meaning unnecessary time) cleaning up the code
and making is usable for other companies. Also I think he didn't attribute the
company. They claimed full copyright to the module, co-maintainer status and
reimbursement (money back from the outsourcing company, not sure if they could
have deducted part of the salary). To be save I would even suggest to invest
in a second laptop so the company can't claim you used company resources at
home after work.

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fred_is_fred
Many large tech companies make you sign forms stating that even work done at
home on your own time on your own laptop is still their property. Whether this
is enforceable or not is another story, but they have more money for lawyers
than you will.

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Gustomaximus
We had someone walked out from a company for working on their business during
the day. I don't know how it was found out but this employee was pretty
useless at delivering on their job so I imagine that didn't help.

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BorisMelnik
Oh hell yes. I worked for a transportation company and used to park the van
and spend at least 1-2 hours sitting in the van outside hacking away on public
wifi. Got caught all the time.

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vivivi
How the heck did you get caught?

~~~
BorisMelnik
just being an idiot - it was a small town so people would drive by and tell on
me and stuff.

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rifung
Not yet..

