This is a great post. Back when I was a corporate developer doing .NET, I never had many side projects. Maybe just a library or simple utility to do things like move photos around.
Now as a developer primarily working in Ruby, I always feel the need to have a side project to hack on in addition to my day job. The side projects allow for unsafe experimentation with new technologies. After a reasonable amount of vetting, I find that I'm able to make better decisions in my day job as a result. I think most Ruby developers today work in a similar fashion.
The startups that I've worked for never had much concern about what I did in my personal time, but now that I'm working for an acquired company that's part of a big corporate entity, it's a little different. I get more of the looks, comments, etc and can't be as public about my side projects. Also I can't take the side projects as seriously (i.e. get paid subscribers) because that could jeopardize my employment. I'm okay with this for now, but I understand that many would find this appalling. I think you just have to find the right balance between what's good for you versus what's good for them.
"unsafe experimentation with new technologies" love this, couldn't agree more with this statement.
It's likely a different way of thinking, possibly an old vs. new. For me, if I work with people that are hacking on cool stuff, publicly, its a great recruiting tool, its reassurance that you've made a great hire, and its confidence that they code going into production is battle tested in more than just localhost.
The managers that forbid their employees to work on side projects are plain dumb.
The most important gain for the employer is the fact that the employee trains himself on new technologies, for free, in his own spare time.
The risk would be that the employee might leave if his side project is a success. With around 4% rate of high success in the startup world, the risk of leaving is quite small.
As I wrote at the time, quoting the head of development: "outside work activities create a conflict of interest. [...] [we don't want that] you use your spare time to work on your app, and once it takes off you quit your job".
I remember replying that in that case kickboxing also creates a conflict of interest.
The result: lots of developers started to leave that company.
> they thought for some reason they owned everything
> I created, at any time, ever (sorry, no)
How common is this? I have yet to encounter it, but if I did I'd consider it an enormous red flag. It sends some very strong messages:
- We lack the respect for you to even be subtle about
leveraging the asymmetry of our power relationship in
order to try to fuck you.
- None of your potential future colleagues here are likely
to be passionate about their craft, because people who enjoy
making things of their own don't sign our contract.
I'm aware that employers are often willing to compromise about things like that during negotiations, but by that point the message has surely been sent.
Pretty common in BigCorp land. The problem is that many of these IP Agreements are very badly worded. The spirit is that you should not take work you do for your employer and turn around and create a product that directly or indirectly competes with them in the same industry.
I'm not sure how enforceable these agreements are. Like anything with our legal system in the US, they're used often to bully people into submission with the threat of legal action, regardless of the company's actual intent. In California, there's a wide range of employee protection laws in place that would make these difficult, if not impossible to enforce. Not sure about elsewhere in the country. (standard IANAL disclaimer applies)
One place I worked at had a pretty boilerplate IP Agreement. I worked with them to change some of the wording so it was less vague. There is often a section on these things where you can provide "prior inventions" that are excluded from the agreement. I took the opportunity to list every idea (as vaguely as possible) I might want to pursue in during the expected course of my employment.
I've only looked at 4 employment contracts for software companies, but all of them included some term claiming ownership of everything the employee creates at any time. In California this is unenforceable in specific circumstances. I also didn't worry about the two companies based in Texas and Massachusetts trying to enforce this, since it seems to be pretty standard.
My employer for my current day job (~70k employees) pretty much says this in their 17 page contract. It was a big warning sign for me when considering the offer, but I know that many other major corporations do this.
As a result, I have to take extra care not to "release" anything I create on the side, which is frustrating because I have always enjoyed working on side projects. Realistically though, it's unlikely for the company to claim ownership over any of these petty/small projects; but I'm sure if you released something that gained a lot of traction, especially something that competes with them, they would pounce on it.
For many corporations, the legalese related to things you create while under the employ of said corporation is rather extensive. Truth be told, there is a lot of boilerplate in there and most corporations are really only interested in stuff that competes with them, so it's more for defensive purposes than anything else.
That said, the language used is rather deep and entirely one-sided to the benefit of the employer. I would be surprised if any major corporation didn't have a clause of that nature in their standard agreements.
This is very common. I think the key is that most of them wouldn't bother acting on it, UNLESS you were successful and for me, that was the biggest reason I was afraid it -- it scared me to start anything at risk for success.
Of course its a red flag, but when you're coming out of college, being told that jobs are hard to come by, do you really have balls to throw out red flagged opportunities? It's up to us as individuals to know and accept it as a stepping stone rather than a career.
When a company makes claim to your after hours work, Is that the line between a "corporation" and "start up"?
I saw this at a previous company (some say it's common place). They put the legal-sleaze into the stock option documents saying employees would have to seek written consent for work outside of the company. So classy!
I work on my side project every spare minutes I have. Tools that I create on the side have benefited my employer so much. If they were to give me a hard time it will be their loss. I can always quit and work in my own, smaller pay check but you get peace of mind.
Problem is the agreements were discussing typically have a 'non-compete' for a period of time. So you can't create anything that resembles work you were doing at your employer for typically 2 years. For this reason :)
If you really wanted to pursue it, you could probably force them to explicitly define what the mean by 'compete' (thereby narrowing what they can come after you for), or else give you compensation for the period that they want you to be excluded from working. It might take some legal maneuvering though.
I'm also a big fan of side projects. Problem is, i'm a product guy, and the whole point of what I do is to try and make things people want. Not learn a new technology. I still haven't been able to find the right balance. Any advice?
I have features I've built, and entire products for that matter, that were nothing more than a Frankenstein of things I've picked out of side projects. Sometimes I learn 2 things completely separate from each other, and then 6 months down the line have a realization that those two things would be amazing together in application.
Product focused or not, there is no reason that you should prevent yourself from learning just because it doesn't have a TLD.
I've used my various side projects to learn technologies that I then use in my actual job. For example, I first tested Redis on my side project, as well as a JS/CSS compressor and a newer version of Django.
Now as a developer primarily working in Ruby, I always feel the need to have a side project to hack on in addition to my day job. The side projects allow for unsafe experimentation with new technologies. After a reasonable amount of vetting, I find that I'm able to make better decisions in my day job as a result. I think most Ruby developers today work in a similar fashion.
The startups that I've worked for never had much concern about what I did in my personal time, but now that I'm working for an acquired company that's part of a big corporate entity, it's a little different. I get more of the looks, comments, etc and can't be as public about my side projects. Also I can't take the side projects as seriously (i.e. get paid subscribers) because that could jeopardize my employment. I'm okay with this for now, but I understand that many would find this appalling. I think you just have to find the right balance between what's good for you versus what's good for them.