[xevb3k]

Yes, it’s understandable, particularly if side projects are not important to you at the moment. But it still reflects poorly on the company (from my standpoint).

As an aside (while it’s the de facto standard) my understanding was that it’s illegal in Japan to restrict your work outside of company time. If anyone has a good reference for this, it would be welcome.

[aidenn0]

It's more or less illegal in California for employers to restrict off-hours work as well, but it's not illegal for them to claim copyright for off-hours work that is related to their business.

[dschuler]

To quote Joel Spolsky (being more succinct than I would be):

"Anything you do on your own time, with your own equipment, that is not related to your employer’s line of work is yours, even if the contract you signed says otherwise."

(For California only)

So as usual, it's a bit more complex, but the key is whether it's related to your employer's line of work. Of course the employer may try to claim _anything_ to belong to them, but they may not prevail in court. That outcome is less than ideal for the employee - best not talk about side projects at work or do anything related to them at work.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

[xevb3k]

Interesting, yes that’s fair. I even think non-competes while being paid (not post termination) are fair. But being totally restricted (or largely restricted) from non-competing work doesn’t seem so fair.

[xevb3k]

Really confused as to why this would be downvoted. Can anyone enlighten me?

[TomMarius]

People (probably the newcomers) don't know the purpose of downvotes here. I'm being downvoted into oblivion for political opinions there.

[jsoc815]

You are not alone. Seems quite a few people really do prefer 'conversations' in which theirs is the only viewpoint posited.

I question how many people here are interested in learning versus simply proselytizing. (shrug) Whatevs...

[klibertp]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed - there's always some percent of users who didn't read the FAQ, but I feel like it got much worse in recent months. I wonder, did karma threshold needed for downvoting get smaller or something? It's really sad to see interesting opinions get paler and paler due to downvotes of people who apparently disagree, but are too lazy to state what they disagree with exactly in a comment. Relatedly, posts that reiterate some common memes/ideas/misconceptions in a couple of sentences get promoted to a much higher degree than they used to. It's not to the point where HN would be unusable, far from it, but it certainly doesn't improve the experience.

[jsoc815]

'Amen.'