[jensneuse]

Very good food for thought. Developers usually never succeed with side projects. They have no clue how to create a business. They love to code. They love to tinker. Let them tinker around. Will they be distracted? Yes! But who cares if your employees browse Hackernews and reddit or build side projects?

Will they leave if it succeeds? Maybe. If it's the case for one of my employees, I will help them, be their Angel, invest into them and help them with my network. I started with a side project myself. It was so hard. We need more smart entrepreneurs and I want to support them.

Will they be less interested? It's possible. At the same time, it's the employers job to offer interesting work.

That said, I don't disagree with you. It always depends. But don't worry so much about the success of side projects. Less than 1% of your employees can turn a side project into something successful.

[laserlight]

This is very much how I would reason about the case. My take on how an employer would approach the problem was cynical on purpose, because that's how “business professionals” think. Unfortunately, the corporate world is riddled with such “professionals” who have no clue about how knowledge work works. And, again unfortunately, laws favor corporations in expense of individual liberty.