[btilly]

The truth of this post strongly depends on both where you live, and who you work for.

If you live in New York, what this post says is absolutely true. Anything you do, on your own time, on your own equipment, belongs to your employer. And it sucks. I believe that this is a hidden drag on startups there. And it is one of the reasons why I do not want to live in New York any more.

If you live in California, this post is mostly wrong on IP ownership. The exception is that if you're doing something that relates to your employer's business, then you've got a problem. Even if you didn't know it related. Which is a problem if your employer has a lot of irons in a lot of fires like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, and so on do. However it isn't a problem if you work for a small company.

[cortesoft]

Well, this post was specifically complaining about working for large tech companies. I mean, it is right there in the headline of the post.

[btilly]

In that case the tech companies are hardly at fault for California law.

Push comes to shove they don't generally assert their theoretical rights too aggressively in my experience. However their lawyers don't want to abandon any rights that they have without examining them on a case by case basis. The ones that I have see balance that out pretty well and do have a release process where they approve personal projects.

If that balance doesn't appeal to you, then you can solve the problem by working for a smaller company where it is less of an issue.