[everfree]

I fell in love with programming but I think it's ridiculous to gift my free time to my employer. During my free time I'd rather write my own software (or open source) that has a chance of either benefiting humanity or getting me rich.

I think that people who work on their employer's projects during their own time are unimaginative - they could be writing their own software for their own benefit but they instead choose to make their employer rich and not see any of that compensation themselves.

This is of course assuming you're drawing a salary from the company and you're not mostly paid in equity, in which case putting in free hours might make more sense if you can make the product profitable.