[mattrp]

I have this concern too that by putting something out there without permission as an employee you may have done harm to the company. You need a lawyer. You may also want to consider hiring a coach to help you develop a voice within the corporate setting so that you can better influence the direction of products without having to build an alternative in your precious spare time. And if the company doesn’t currently have policies like described above maybe this example can be used to help shape them with your input.

[mch82]

Can you please elaborate on “coach to help you develop a voice within the corporate setting”? What are these coaches called? Can you link to an example?

[mattrp]

It sounds like to me that rather than interact with his colleagues to ensure their enterprise product was built incorporating the approaches he took in his package, he just went a built his package in isolation and then pushed it to github. Was that because the organization was ignoring his input, or he wasn’t in the right position to influence the direction or maybe he saw an unserved niche that the company wasn’t serving. or maybe it was just a drive to do something that needed to be explored. Either way, something got created. And that’s good. You never want to stifle creation sometimes that drive to create outside of work helps exercise part of the brain that helps you break through hurdles at work. Whatever got produced was a gift. The question is now what to do with that gift? I get the sense that OP is searching for how exactly to communicate with his company. The advice to seek counsel is sound. But counsel isn’t going to all of a sudden make him a great strategic-thinking leader in the eyes of his employer. That is something that will take work and practice if that’s what he is seeking. He can read books, he can take classes or he can find a business coach that will give him critical feedback and mentoring. In the past senior members of the organization might mentor junior people into leadership positions but I think unfortunately that art has been lost. So probably the best path would be to find someone who can do this 1:1 outside the org.