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by cj 1682 days ago
> 95% of the code I write is owned by my employer and is under NDA various other privacy / IP laws.

True, but would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP (like util functions, and an integration syncing records from your backend the Salesforce, or something tangential to the business outside the core product)

May technically be breaking your employment agreement, but I can’t imagine it would be too hard to pluck out a decent amount of code, and re-write portions of it if necessary to “anonymize” it for interviewing purposes.

Or if you happen to be interviewed by someone like me, my approach is simply “if you can’t show me the code, show me the UI and explain how the backend / frontend works, and a discussion ensues.
2 comments
haspok 1682 days ago
> would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP

Who decides what is "critical IP" and what is not?

This is a terrible advice, and no, you should never copy code from a work project without being pre-authorized to do it.

It's not just common sense, but you also might trip up over unexpected legal issues (licences etc) that you may not even be aware of.

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david_allison 1682 days ago
> True, but would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP

What? Yes. I expect I'd be in prison for a few years. Your interview approach selects for people who don't follow their NDAs

Sergey Aleynikov went to prison over copying GPL code.

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cj 1682 days ago
As mentioned in my original comment, if someone isn’t comfortable showing me the source code I simply ask for them to describe how it works, challenges in building it, how they built it, etc.
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cutthegrass2 1682 days ago
I could do this and would welcome this type of interview experience. I'd be able to talk in general terms about the problems I work on and their solutions but not the low level specifics.

To add some context, my work is in Financial Services, trading systems and whatnot.

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