[autarch]

Well, if the employer finds out you violated your employment contract in this manner they could sue you, or perhaps even the other party that paid you. But IANAL, I'm just saying that contracts forbidding side jobs are not unheard of.

[learc83]

>or perhaps even the other party that paid you

What are the damages?

As for suing you? Again what are the damages?

It’s almost certain there are no damages assuming you are just working on a take home project not something that they are going to actually use to compete with your employer.

Just because something is in the terms of your contract doesn’t actually mean you really need to worry about a lawsuit.

A company might fire you if they find out, but the chance that they fire you is to small to worry about.

And even if you don’t do take home work for pay, you don’t want your company finding out you are interviewing. Taking a token payment doesn’t change anything practically.

[autarch]

IANAL. I am just saying that some employment contracts forbid side work. I imagine many companies would prefer not to get in the middle of that, and so might be reluctant to pay people for work done in interviews.

[learc83]

Some people have contracts that forbid divulging any information or techniques they learned during their employment. This doesn't stop companies from asking questions about previous work projects, or asking them to solve problems on white boards despite that fact that some candidates are certainly violating the letter of their employment contracts to do so.

People have contracts with all kinds of stupid things in them. If they aren't practically enforceable, they can safely be ignored. Any company saying they don't pay for take home projects because of employment contracts is just using that as an excuse not to pay.

There are people out their with contracts that say they can't even interview at rival companies, how many companies out there refuse to conduct interviews because of this?