[sessy]

1. Be fair to your company. They are paying you to make their product succeed. Imagine a future situation where you are running a succesful company. Would you want your employees taking your money while working on their own pet projects?

2. An hour or two every day and code marathons on weekends can get your a basic version of product out in a few months.

3. Never give in to temptation to steal office hours to work on your project.

[glutamate]

Re 1: put yourself first when it comes to careers. As long as you are putting in the required number of hours (physically and mentally) at your employer, there's nothing wrong with spending your free time on your own projects.

[rubyfan]

That’s not mutually exclusive. Do spend your free time on your own stuff and advancing your career, don’t spend company time on it.

[captainbland]

> 1. Be fair to your company. They are paying you to make their product succeed. Imagine a future situation where you are running a succesful company. Would you want your employees taking your money while working on their own pet projects?

On this point in particular, if you're doing pet project work outside of working hours, then your employer should have absolutely no say on what you're doing. You wouldn't have them manage your hobbies, your social life or your dating life, that would be unreasonable, same goes for side projects.

[Grustaf]

1. Why would the company care what he does in his free time? Assuming he is not using company IP or working on company time, it should be completely up to him.

Sure, the company will not want him to suddenly leave to launch his company, but the way to combat that is by making the position more attractive, and screening for it when hiring.

The American view on labour seems quite similar to slavery.

[jt2190]

The simple answer is that the employer needs a clear picture of what they own.

Let’s say you’re a scientist. Your employer sets you up in a lab (that you could never afford on your own) and gives you the task of solving a problem that, if solved, would be worth millions to the company. One night you go home thinking about the tough problem. The next morning at home you have a shower and suddenly you realize the solution!

Who owns the solution? Did you solve it by yourself? Can you now take the solution and launch your own company? If the company puts itself up for sale can they claim ownership of the solution?

This is why in the U.S. these “the company owns everything while you’re our employee” clauses exist. Consider them legal laziness: It’s easier to declare ownership of everything than it is to negotiate with every employee over who owns what under what circumstance.

Edit: These clauses are enough to take to trial. At the very least a deep-pocketed employer can scare off investors from investing in the employee.

[Grustaf]

Clearly anything related to company IP belongs to the company, even if you come up with it in the evening.

I am of course talking about innovations or just work done in unrelated areas, while employed.

The idea that an employer owns everything you create is offensive to human dignity and happily that is not how it works in Europe.

You are even encouraged to start your own company, in some countries you have a legally enshrined right to take a LOA for six months and work on your business, and then come back to your old employer.

[downrightmike]

Wage slave is a real thing.

[ilaksh]

He explicitly stated that the contract is inclusive of that context.

[Grustaf]

Sure, but my point is that this is pointless, absurd and immoral. And probably not enforceable.

[matz1]

>1

yea if I am the owner of the company, but if I am the employee, i would want to work on my own project while also taking money from the company.

Different position some time need different way to handle things.

[illys]

I do not think the issue here is (1) to be fair to the employer, to take the employer's money (the money I earn while working is my money), (2) to find personal time or to (3) steal office hours.

The problem is that the employer pretends to own all Intellectual Properties produced by the employee while in contract. Be it during code marathons, night hours, week-end time...

I used to have a contract of that kind, and I found another job to keep ownership of my weekend pet projects.