[hippee-lee]

I forget the exact details but my current employment agreement has a paragraph saying I won't do contract or consulting work while I am a full time employee here.

Ethically, I would never be able to interview for your company. Don't most companies like tech companies operate in a similar manner? If so, aren't you limiting your hiring pool to either programmers without those types of agreements or thise whom are ethically challenged.

[nitrogen]

Interesting. Many (if not most) of the engineers I met in my earliest jobs were moonlighting. How common is such an anti-moonlighting clause in employment contracts?

[BSousa]

Quite common.

But in many cases, unenforceable. For example, every contract I signed (both in the UK and Portugal) have it, and while I don't know for the UK, here in Portugal you can't sign your rights away which this falls under. So people just sign it and know if worst comes, the courts will always side by you.

[walshemj]

Legal in the UK I think every contract I have ever signed says no outside work with out clearance from your boss.

You can sign some rights away just not all of them.

[BSousa]

It says on the contract, but is it really legal? I'm honestly asking as I mentioned, I know portuguese labour law quite well (my cousin is a lawyer specialising in labour law and as such, she looks over all my contracts and say what is valid or not.) Have you talked with a lawyer about it over there in the UK? I know the UK didn't sign some EU directives about overtime pay for IT workers so they don't fall on the common EU law, but when I was in England, noone I worked with actually knew if the 'outside work' clause was legal. I personally did freelance work (which my leads knew about) and never got any problem for it even though the contract specified I couldn't.

[walshemj]

BTW Professionals are exempt from a lot of the Directives on working time and 99% of IT workers are considered professionals.

Um IANAL but I am an "approved person" as it applies in the UK (ie I could represent some one at a discipline or grievance hearing)

In the UK and the USA employment law descends from the Masters and servants act.

The argument used would be having another job without your employers agreement is a fundamental breach of trust between the employer (master ) and the employee (servant)

[taude]

Most companies even try to own your "thoughts" while employed at them, even for your after hours stuff.

[wtracy]

I'm not sure, but that sounds unenforceable in the state of California (where a lot of HNers are). If you work outside of California, sucks to be you, I guess.

[marceldegraaf]

Interesting point! As far as I know we've never run into this issue. We are in The Netherlands, so perhaps that makes it easier. However, were this ever to become an issue with a particular candidate, I'm sure we are flexible enough to work around that. The two day try-out isn't set in stone, it's just a way for us (and for the candidate) to see if we like each other. There are plenty of other ways to solve that if a try-out poses legal issues.