He had to pay only a quiet low sum to get the IP. The sum was measured by how long it would take him to transcribe (literally type) the algorithms out of his head.
(*I run a tech recruiting agency; happy to help people who want to move to Zurich.)
CA labor code protects inventions developed on one's own time without using the employer's "equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information." [1]
Would "supplies" cover incidental food/drink provided by the employer? e.g. I grab a bottled water on my way out of the office, and drink it at home while I hack on my app after-hours on personal equipment. Does that mean my app is developed with my employer's supplies?
That would seem pretty crazy, however on the extreme end if I was subsisting entirely on work snacks while developing my app then maybe that's different?
[1] http://codes.findlaw.com/ca/labor-code/lab-sect-2870.html
> a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either:
> (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or
> (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer.
So no, it's not just things you did at home on your own time and own equipment. They must also not be related to your employer's business etc ....
What's related would be up to a court/judge if it came to that but there's certainly a spectrum. You work on Call of Duty 27 and try to make an FPS at home. Certainly related. You work on Call of Duty and try to make a Candy Crush Clone at home. Probably related (seems like it would be considered competition for game market). You work on Call of Duty and try to write your own game engine at home. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . You work on Call of Duty and try to make a Tinder clone at home. Now , maybe we're getting in the unrelated territory? You work on Call of Duty and sell baked goods at home. Probably not an issue.
If you work at a giant company like Sony that does ISPs, Health Insurance, Movies, TVs, Cameras, Video Games, Batteries, Music, LCD displays, etc etc well then you're probably going to have a lot of things that are in that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ spectrum
Of course IANAL.
If you want to do something outside of work that's even possibly in any way shape or form remotely related to your company's line of business get them to sign a contract saying they won't claim any rights in your project. If they won't consider working for a better company.
The question is, assuming all else is above board (totally unrelated to employer's business, on your own equipment, on your own time...), can you get nailed by eating a bag of work-provided Cheetos while hacking on your project?
For those who disagree, saying but why?, how?, the company owns that time...
Programmers should get paid for their contribution to a project! Not for their time!
For the love of sanity, in software, there is no correlation between the time you put in and your output! Someone's input about how to solve a specific problem could be more powerful and important than my 40/week of programming for a year (solving it the wrong way)! And those who disagree are topically the ones who measure the progress of a project by number of lines of code!
This policy motivates the hell out of the employees and also can attract smart developers who have other projects! And, you want to hire those who have other projects!!!
I work for Microsoft and our policies are draconian. They of course make the standard claims of anything created on their hardware, using their software, or transmitted on their network. But to be exempt from their IP claim it also cannot be related to Microsoft business, or "anticipated business, research or development of Microsoft." Which of course is everything in the software world. It makes it particularly difficult since we're supposed to evangelize their stack and toolchain. But because of these policies I pay out of pocket for my own hardware, dev tools, as well as exclusively use GCP/AWS.
They do have a program they're very proud of where they let you use software you're given as an employee if you're developing an app for the windows store, but it's so vague as to be legally useless.
Take this for what you will.
There are probably businesses where it might make sense to have IP policies: perhaps those with huge infrastructure costs like the automotive industry. But for industries where the trend is away from patents and licensing, trying to own all the IP does not have much economic value.
> As long as the work isn’t related to GitHub’s own “existing or prospective” products and services, the employee owns it.
It's strange this statement isn't getting much attention. This sounds like one of those catch-all type of clauses which allows Github to go in any direction they want and potentially still claim your work is their IP in the future. I'd have to read the contract to be sure, of course.
Whether they would do that is another matter. Probably not. Maybe another company that adopts similar policies would though.
If you're going to be building a company while working at another, I think it's more safe to just use your own time and property so there is definitely no claim (assuming your contract doesn't have one of those nasty clauses saying the company owns everything you work on while employed with them).
(even in my own time, own equipment, not related to work)
Highly demotivational, knowing they own everything:
- cooking recipes
- yoga sequence
- drawing with my kids
- gardening
- photography
- urine and other waste material
I believe that giving power to the employees empowers them!
But that's in theory. Curious how do such things work out in practice :) I guess you need really strong technical leadership to pull this off, to convince non-technical execs that it's not time wasted, etc.
But hey, they were small companies. Usually with a total staff count until 20. Guess it must be totally different at a multi national corporation with an actual legal team on call and what not.
The larger companies I worked for didn't care so long as it doesn't directly compete with the flagship product.
I'm not a developer but i do code in my free time, and used company resources. and always had to jump through hoops. (doing work on my lunch hour, down times, etc, and ever affecting our bottom dollar or performance of machines).
I even developed things for the company such as directories, signature generators etc.
This is a great step forward for everyone, and i hope more companies adopt it.
But why?
Source: https://www.biicl.org/files/558_16bld2004.pdf
Would be nice to dig deeper and learn more about all the circumstances...
'developed or promoted with existing Company IP' I wonder if someone writ a blog post on their company blog about their side project or something it would be company owned all of a sudden, or if they use an open source Github project?
'developed for use by the Company' what if the company just wants to use it and so claims they would be a customer so it was developed for use by them?
'related to an existing or prospective Company product or service' also sounds vague and how is something defined as related too?
I love how open they are about things but this still seems a bit onerous to me.
From alcatel's view point
1) Code is not necessarily an asset, it is also a liability: needs to be maintained, tested, documented, etc. This has a non-trivial cost.
2) Engineer salaries are usually more expensive than a license.
3) Experience working using internal frameworks/libraries/etc can be harder to trade in the marketplace, especially if you are not the author.
4) It is hard to keep up feature parity with commercial/open source alternatives.
5) Internal projects do not necessarily lead to more employee satisfaction. They can be usually lacking around user experience and can be frustrating to use.
6) Some internal projects have purely political motivations, like self-perpetuating the authors in the company.
Finally, if you absolutely require to start an internal project, but it does not provide a competitive advantage: open source it.
I agree that it happens in companies, but it's definitely not a good thing.
Last December, Joel Spolsky wrote about developer side projects, and honestly, he's right.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
My view: In some companies, depending on their business model, it might be reasonable to ask to own your own work on side projects. But it would be reasonable of them to expect you to give up something in exchange (e.g. smaller salary).
/s
You can't prove he wasn't thinking about his next job while he was installing my water heater so I should own that IP.
Except when the side project is useful for your employer and you've effectively contributed free, unpaid labor to developing it.
I doubt it, but it is not the important point.
> Obviously if you work on projects related to your employer's business that is a conflict [...]
It is not obvious I think. If one interprets this rigorous it would be impossible to work on any kind of low-level, tooling or infrastructure software, as it might be used indirectly by your company (or its competitors), so there is a conflict. IANAL.
Very good and very honest.
I deeply hate the judge who made this verdict. You must be truly devoid of human feeling and common sense to explain this as a reasonable application of the law.
After such an insane verdict I'd like to believe that Alcatel's top talent started jumping ship.
And get charged with sexual harassment
For instance, here's a 2002 report on the loss which doesn't mention the requirement.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/12/alcatel_owns_us_emp...
Is it that uncommon to factor in the situation? I've heard of judges in the Netherlands who find people guilty, but give them just a small fine. Likewise, they might rule that technically, someone is guilty, but that this application of the law is not in the spirit of the law.
In the US, this might be less common. However, Steve Jobs was legally responsible for Apple backdating options in 2006. He plays the "Oh, I didn't know"-card and sure enough, an exception to the law can be made.
However, a woman in Texas was jailed for 8 years for crossing a wrong box on her voting form. Now suddenly "I didn't know" is not a valid excuse.
The law is not that independent. Screwing over someone powerful is likely to yield repercussions, even if it is morally and legally the right thing to do. Screwing over someone without power mostly goes without consequences, so this happens more often.
An employer is paying six figures to an employee. In exchange for said salary, employee works set hours and within that time, is supposed to work for the employer and anything they create within that period is owned by the employer.
However, in the comments. It seems like everyone wants their cake and eat it too? Which is to say, if I'm working for you between the contracted hours of 9 to 5. And if I am working on a personal project that the employer is not going to benefit, I should keep the IP. Even though the employer is paying for my time?
Note, this isn't about working outside of the contracted hours at home, nor is it about staying late and using company resources to develop said project and claiming IP belongs to the employee.
For large companies like github. They could probably be more flexible. But for smaller companies, every working daylight hour to them is needed and required for projects to deliver on-time.
These very same companies would argue that all code/IP belongs to them. That they woudn't want employees working on pet projects in THEIR paid time.
Kinda sounds to me, that people here wants 3 things.
1) Pay me a large wage > north of 6 figures. 2) If I code something for me during working hours, it's MINE. 3) If I code something outside of working hours, it's also MINE.
Sounds like bratish entitled behavior no?
Can someone set me straight here? I don't see how this could be good for employers who don't agree with this.
Oh and btw, if you want to work on your own thing, being paid by a company, that you keep the IP. It's called being an entrepreneur and setting up your own company. So instead of saying kudos I wish more companies do this. Go start your own today and you have that freedom NOW!
Look at it from a contractor's point of view: a contractor will have many other things that they can deliver and make money from, so adding a bit of polish to your project vs delivering another client's makes less sense.
Employers should expect developers to work on company IP within contracted hours and any new code/IP is owned by the company.
In addition. Developers who have their own side-projects own that IP and if they work outside of contracted hours and generate new code on THEIR projects. Well, they own that IP also.
One caveat though. Developers should allow employers to go through their generated code, to ensure that developers aren't stealing company IP.
Oh but if a company wants some code that the developer generated in his own time? Well, negotiations should start. The company should pay for that!
or am I thinking of non competes?
http://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2...
These states already assign employees work 'not using equipment', 'not resulting from work', 'not in the employer's area of business'.
Many california-based companies will echo this language in the IP assignment section of their employment contract.
These protections don't help you if you're at, say, a big 3 company with a lot of businesses. I know someone who asked in their contract negotiation at google if G could provide a comprehensive list of areas of business and G refused.
This is close but no cigar: You missed " or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or"
Which for larger companies, is huge.
Admittedly though, this is the thing that employees always seem to miss in that labor code.
"These protections don't help you if you're at, say, a big 3 company with a lot of businesses. I know someone who asked in their contract negotiation at google if G could provide a comprehensive list of areas of business and G refused."
Even if we had, it wouldn't have mattered because of the above :) There's no way we could give a list of current research to random prospective employee.
That said, it would make no sense to try to enumerate all areas of business that and keep it up to date. Instead, when we get requests, we just ask the relevant business owner.
Note, IME, employees have a very very very different viewpoint of what the company's business is than the company.
Google has a fairly simple (IE takes < 1 week, approves 90%+ of requests) for releasing IP in the same situation github is doing this. Most of the conflicts are when people come and say "I want to build an ad auction for mobile search, and if it goes well, i want to quit and build a startup around it", and then want to argue over whether "ad auction for mobile search" is part of Google's business or not.
In particular, the ones actually between employee and employer, employees tend to lose except when it is very clear cut. IE if employer's interpretation of their R&D, etc, is not crazy, they tend to win.
So if employee's has idea for juicing oranges, and works for skateboarding company, employee's probably gonna win.
If employee has idea for juicing oranges, and works for blender company looking into other things, employee's gonna lose, even if employee didn't know about it, etc.
But there's also a lot of cases out there that are just proxy wars between companies where a claim about IP ownership gets tacked on. These don't usually make for useful caselaw.
However, i've seen both sides of this. There really are crazy people, and plenty of them, who will try to use this to extract money from their employer, etc
Generally, i'd say my view falls somewhere into what a small number of european countries do, and i think that would probably work well here:
Employer still owns IP related to business.
For the situation here (own time, etc), if you generate IP in such a situation (IE not related to business, etc), you must notify employer of that IP.
Your employer has 6 months (or whatever) to buy it from you at fair market value.
If they refuse to do so, it's yours.
If they believe it's related to business, and you don't, well, you can fight it out in court if you want.
The only downside to this system is that for large numbers of innovative employees, it generates huge overhead for the company even just to manage the process.
From an economics standpoint I think companies benefit from attracting innovative people. If you are hiring inventors, you want people who do it habitually and the best of those will feel uncomfortable signing away their free time. From this standpoint a company should worry about a new hire who doesn't object to a 24-hour IP assignment clause.
I haven't seen hard numbers on this but I imagine that patent applications went from more individuals in ~1900 (wright brothers era) to more corporations circa 1950 (IBM transistor era). I'm sure there are many reasons for this (larger companies in the 50s, postwar employment trends, less low hanging fruit in basic research). But it would be great to see that trend reverse.
This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms. We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits of work product that, in theory[1], are protected by copyright. Ethics rules and professional norms also give the clients rights in the work product they pay us to produce. A firm's partnership agreement might address this too. But most firms don't even try to address who owns the underlying IP rights.
Moreover, it is extremely common for partners moving between firms to take all of their forms with them. The result is that people treat contract forms as-a sort of IP-free zone. It would not even be possible to ascertain the original authorship of most form contracts that cross my desk.
Historically, this hasn't mattered because law firms charged for hours worked. It will matter a great deal if firms shift toward offering more automated products that can be sold outside the billable hour.
[1] As with source code, there's also uncertainty about which aspects of a contract are expressive and which are purely functional. Only the expressive parts are protected by copyright.
Update: one project I've had in the back of my mind is to illustrate this point by crawling the SEC's EDGAR website and tracing the "genealogy" of bits of contract language in public companies' filings. (Companies need to file certain "material agreements"). If anyone has some suggestions for good text processing libraries that can help with this tracing, I would love to hear about them.
Exactly. One of the sleaziest tricks used by Realtors (most Realtors are not lawyers) is getting clients to sign their forms: their terms usually have the word "percent" hard-coded into the contract. Rather than opening the door to hourly or fixed dollar amounts, they insist that their forms are the "standard". I heard one recently say in a public forum that banks "require" these specific forms that only Realtors have... this is a total lie, and anybody that tells you that you can't negotiate to create your own contract for a deal should be prosecuted for coercion.
I've been trying for a long time to alter the common perception that Realtors add value; they don't. They take value out of transactions -- equity that's taken literal years to build up -- gone in one (fell) swoop. People need to be way more aggressive in their negotiations with real estate salespeople, and it all starts with the contract.
This is still a small, WIP, side project (free, open-source contract templates); however, you can get the idea: http://ecosteader.com/docs
I've heard this before, but when we bought a house, our realtor added a ton of value.
She went out and found houses that we wouldn't have found; sure, most of them came from MLS, but there were a few she found just by driving by or by asking fellow agents. She even triaged a couple for us (by going to look at them without us once she had gotten a sense for what our common feedback patterns were, and only making us come along when she thought it was worthwhile).
She pointed out things we would have never noticed, like windows that had condensation around the edges, which indicated the seals were bad and that when the seals on one window were going out, it was likely they were all on their way out. She'd point out cracks that we didn't notice or water stains (acknowledging she's not an inspector, but it certainly gave us things to ask the inspector about). She noticed when parts of the yard looked worrisome in how it was eroded or angled toward the house. And she could usually estimate for us off the top of her head what things would cost to fix, replace, remodel, or update (or she had someone she could call to ask for an estimate if she didn't know).
EDIT: She also put pressure on the lender when they were delaying the mortgage approval, did all the negotiation on our part with the selling agent, followed up with the sellers to make sure they did all the fixes our inspector found and were put into our contingencies. She also figured out what to do when she reviewed the contractor receipts and found out they had lied about fixing one of the things in the contingencies on the morning of the closing to make sure the deal didn't fall through, as well as how to resolve the issue that the sellers had left a giant moving pod blocking the driveway/garage and went on vacation the day we took possession of the house.
I suppose I could imagine buying a house without her if you had the experience, but there's no way we even came close to matching her years of experience.
Of course, most of the people I talk to have said their experience was nothing like ours. But it makes me think that the problem isn't that realtors bring no value to the table, but rather that maybe there just aren't very many good realtors.
In a perfect world, some wealthy doctor could just pick someone to invest in and do so, but in reality it's generally a network of 3-6 investors all putting a portion of they money into a deal, and the borrower has done this multiple times over the years as well. Coordinating that takes experience and contacts.
That being said when I sell, I definitely do not plan on using a realtor. As you said, it's super easy to sell online and I agree. I even found the house I bought without the realtor, we literally just said "we want to see this house." What she did provide was insight into the market, the area, she showed us comparable houses, explained the history of the builder, etc. This is where she brought value.
In selling a house, the only value they bring is customers. That usually (car sales, medical sales, etc.) is a percentage of sale type of transaction. So, to me it appears fair to give them a percentage. If you choose not to use them, you can!
Unfortunately, I believe in the state I am moving to I am required to pay for the buyers realtor (although I am not 100% sure). That's typically 6%, but technically, I don't have to sell to them. Sooooo I can negotiate and work with them to get say 3%.
It was a bit of work getting everything right, but it was well worth it.
(Am an investor)
I don't know anything about the law so I hire a lawyer I trust. I don't know anything about buying a house so I hire a realtor I trust.
Last time I did a buy/sell we did a deal with the real estate broker where we paid her $1000 upfront (0.5%) to sell the house for a 3% commission vs 7%. The trick was we gave her 60 days to sell the house exclusively without going on MLS, and she would credit the $1000 after 60 days if it sold on MLS (which means she gets almost nothing).
As long as you can decide not to sign it, it's a negotiation. Pretty shitty and one-sided negotiation, but still negotiation.
>It would not even be possible to ascertain the original authorship of most form contracts that cross my desk.
I highly doubt this statement is true if given Documents X, Y, Z et al are given stringent, professional forensic examination for remnants of markings. Maybe not every single one, sure, but enough in a Universe A of legal examination would, I firmly believe, uncover quite a bit more than meets the eye.
My point is that what you've noted is not an "IP-free zone" it's simply an un-tapped market for "fiscal compensation by way of derivative IP torts" - once the financial motivation is strong enough and there's evidence that can be garnered to show willful infringement...IP rights don't just go away because nobody is pursuing them.
If the Prenda Law fiasco can serve as a Gutter Dweller example of IP enforcement, this is a much more clear cut, deep pocketed scenario that should give every single law firm pause. As much as I'm entertained by cannibalistic feeding frenzy behavior, Law Firm Representing Law Firm(s) vs. Law Firm(s), would, no doubt, be a basic drain on an already over-burdened legal system.
TL, DR: Never underestimate the temptation for tort cases when there's a large pile of money at stake
Don't doubt it's possible, but might be a little trickier than you suspect. My old firm, as a matter of course, installed software on our laptops that stripped all sorts of metadata from outgoing documents. It was actually really annoying since "tracked changes" in MS Word got removed too.
Some large firms in fact do require associates to sign covenants. In particular English firms seem to do this a lot. I consider it to be unethical, as it is anti-competitive and runs contrary to the interests of clients, who should remain free to select the lawyer of their choice (even a disloyal employee of their previous law firm).
This is the same world of theory in which software is not subject to copyright...
I imagine these sorts of agreements prevent employees from developing something in the due course of their work, patenting it, then charging the company for the use of the work they were already paid for via salary. I.e., it's a simple protection against extortion.
On the other hand, it would be a headache if contracts were covered by copyright: If your competitor adds a clause to their contract, can you add the same clause if it's covered by copyright, or are you forever banned from adding this clause? Would someone file a patent on "Using contracts to limit the liability against customers", for example?
First, even if you are able to borrow functional language from a contract without infringing someone's copyright, that doesn't make it a good idea. Heroku's terms were written for them and their specific business risks, governing law, etc. Your own PaaS business may have different requirements. And copying wholesale probably is infringement.
Second, by "IP free zone," I'm talking about people's attitudes and behavior towards the materials they borrow from--that certainly doesn't express a legal conclusion about it or mean what they are doing is not infringement.
You may want to take a look at libraries that provide BLAST or Clustal/MSA Analysis capabilities, then tinker a bit. From my experience, wiring those tools to a separate visualization suite provides the best results.
Source: Not a representative of Intelligize, but I've used their product quite often at my firm.
I thought contract forms are automatically exempt from copyright.
Kudos to github for this, I'm impressed!
Well, I went in and picked up the documents, and told them I needed to read them before signing and returning them to the company. I looked at the IP clause, and it said the company owned anything and everything I created or invented while an employee, in any field of endeavor.
I called the founder to renegotiate.
"What if," I posited, "I write a blog post. The way I read this, the company owns the copyright on my blog post."
> Yes.
> We'd never exercise that right. But we reserve the right.
> Now that you mention it, I'm not sure I want to employ
> someone who uses their creative energy for anything except
> the company's business.
My next call was to a realtor, I put my house up for sale. There was no way I wanted to be in a position where I would feel like I had no choice but to accept an offer like this.
I went through some hard times, but as it turned out, that blog that I did end up writing on-and-off over the years turned out to be valuable. Not directly in money, but in satisfaction. It lead to some work, but even more importantly, it led to communities like Hacker News and meeting programmers around the world.
If I'd agreed to that contract, there might not be a "raganwald" today.
Therefore his thoughts, which were characterised as “invention” in the decision, should be disclosed to Alcatel. The judge also ordered Brown to pay Alcatel’s legal fees, which exceeded $330,000.[1]
1: https://www.law360.com/ip/articles/1899/appeals-court-affirm...
Andrew "bunnie" Huang has written a very good 2-page note on this in: http://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf (first two pages, but the whole book is a good read)
In the US it seems especially bad, since Americans seem exceptionally obsessed with "living the American dream" aka making a lot of money. Many people assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be a good person.
Whenever I've encountered overly grasping IP clauses in contracts I've always had them re-written so they only cover work which is done during working hours or related to <core_business>. No employer has ever objected to this, they usually have just been advised by lawyers to be ultra aggressive by default. One (English) employer struck the whole clause on the basis that copyright law covered them sufficiently anyway as by default works created "in the course of employment" belonged to the employer.
We (developers) aren't like factory workers cranking out widgets by the hour. We're paid to think deeply about challenging problems. For me, that means chewing on a problem for a long time, often when I'm not at work. Honestly, when a problem is challenging, I can't get it out of my mind. I'm thinking about it, at least a little bit, on the weekends -- heck, maybe even while I'm sleeping. And those are the problems I enjoy the most.
When a savvy software company hires someone, they understand that this is how developers operate. They will offer handsome compensation because they expect this.
Ultimately, competition for your thinking time is a zero-sum game. If you're working on a hard problem at work, you might think about it at home. Similarly, if you're working on an interesting side project you might think about it at work. You can't help it.
That doesn't mean companies should never allow side projects at all. There should be room for negotiation. But if we don't acknowledge the basic facts of the situation, then we aren't negotiating in good faith.
Kudos, great decision.
Couldn't agree more. I hope it sets the formation of a precedent in motion. Great to see.
Hopefully articles and practices like these will continue to become more commonplace and influence the current VC dogma.
Even the fact that game developers are allowed to create other games outside of work, potentially with other non-studio teams is a super nice perk of working here.
Also they wanted IP rights for pretty much any ideas we had, including off company time, with the justification that we could come up with ideas to improve a game we were working on at any time, and also because the studio had a 'everyone can contribute to game design' mentality and we'd all be involved in design meetings from time to time. Which is technically true, but seemed so draconian.
I almost didn't take the job because of that clause, and I didn't publish anything during my time there. At least the people there were cool, though, and I still keep in touch with some of the people I worked with there, including the company president, who's actually a really nice guy.
Also the agreement[1] is not completely rosy, it has some strings attached.
For example if you are working on CSS library, Github uses it and contracts you to make some patches, they might claim IP ownership over those patches. That is a mine field for OS project.
I personally would not sign it. It needs extra clause to clarify what projects are excluded.
> The Company owns any IP ("Company IP") that you create, or help create as its employee or contractor, .... related to an existing or prospective Company product or service at the time you developed, invented, or created it
[1] https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement/blo...
(I am not a lawyer, just a hobby)
If they don't want to do that, then write down a big list of every idea and project you've been working on to date, including any domains you own and projects within them, and make sure they can't touch any of the IP you've already created.
Also: Be friendly about it.
That would have been fine and dandy, and probably even acceptable to me. But based on the wording of the contract, the IP clause still applied even after terminating your employment with the company. Which meant that while they might not be able to claim rights to my existing IP, ownership of any future IP could be called into question.
So, while I think your approach is good, there can still be issues with it.
# starts polishing CV #
If I had a company, I'd ask my employees to solve problems and write software that the company needs to sell products or service. I'd pay them to do that and give them the necessary tools to do their work. When they would deliver, we would roughly be even.
Now, if an employee is doodling some code of his own on the laptop given to him by my company, why would I care as long as he will do the things the company asked him to do? If he was doodling on his own laptop the company laptop would just be unused. A laptop doesn't effectively wear out because of personal use. In effect, when it comes to software engineering I would be paying for results.
For reference, in auto shops the mechanics can often use the company tools and facilities for personal evening/weekend projects or repairs. That's because the shop is closed anyway and the shop doesn't consider it a loss if their employee is fixing his own car, or his wife's car, or friend's car, during after hours.
I understand why companies require their employees to not do the same work for competing companies or for free. That would be like letting the employees cash in twice for the same solutions, and contributing to the competition.
But trying to own what employees might do with company computers on their spare time doesn't make sense, much less trying to own what employees might think on their spare time.
If such a rule is enforceable an employee who did get a profitable idea not related to his line of work would just keep his mouth shut, quietly resign and slow-start a company of his own or sell the idea to some other company. Nobody would be so stupid anyway as to invent something while being bound by a possessive employment contract, and then bring it up just to tranfer the IP to their employer for free. On the other hand, if the employer is reasonable and doesn't try to own the idea it's much less of a hassle to make a deal with them and continue with the current employer and letting both parties profit from the idea.
My Lawyer advised me that a "fire sale" of the assets would make Salesforce liable for the difference in devaluation. So I stood my ground and kept the IP.
Claiming prior art as competitive is a different stance than claiming ownership, but it ultimately resulted in terminating the relationship.
The irony was that I drank the Salesforce start-up Kool-Aid and developed the IP on their platform prior to joining.
They often put out memos about the types of things that were not okay and later when they were ok. For example then they were exploring games in google plus back during the Farmville crazy they said "Sorry but for the time being no games please .. unless of course you want to make open source demo games for our APIs/Platforms". A year or so later they said "okay, games are fine now so feel free to submit to get your contract signed"
The best thing about that is there's no ambiguity because you have a contract for your project. Github's policy is awesome but you're still at their mercy if you thought your side project was unrelated but they happen to think it is. In fact the larger any company gets the more likely you don't know all the things being worked on. A contract for your side project clears that up.
Granted, this can have downsides too.
The cost of not using company hardware or time is that of a laptop and working outside your "9-5"; simple insurance against the potential costs.
Needless to say, I decided against that job.
Looks cool (fighting the "infected mushroom", ha).
One the one hand, they want capable people who go out of their way to achieve results + love their craft. Guess what, that often happens by working on side projects (whether ultimately commercial or not, is irrelevant).
As an employee the only concession I would personally be willing to make would be to not compete directly with the company you're employed at. And only if you're not employed at a company doing everything, i.e. a Google or a Microsoft.
I had other reasons to quit which had nothing to do with the job itself (I loved it), but that was a major one. I get paid more, per hour, from my businesses than any job I've had so far.
That's unusually awful for an employment agreement. Most employment agreements claim everything developed by the employee on company time and resources, and many claim everything developed while employed, but this is the first time I've ever heard of an employment agreement demanding all past work. Good call on just leaving; not worth even negotiating with a company that tries to pull a stunt like that.
Also, a bit of an aside. What's the game you released called? I get you probably intended to avoid the plug but I'm curious.
Edit: And of course, props to GitHub for this!
Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control over your future other than maybe running away to another feudal manor and some have non-competes to try and enforce that kind of slavery. So they're worth nothing to you as an employer unless you want to LARP that you're a feudal peasant in 1300 and you're worth nothing to them as they'll fire you or steal from you in a blink of an eye if they can make a nickel off it.
Meanwhile a competitor smart enough to hire you as a consultant will crush them in the market purely for organizational superiority reasons. Companies that hire contractors are inherently more modern and superior and more likely to succeed.
The future, being unevenly distributed, some folks still think employment is alive, but one effect of post-industrialism or service economy or infinite benefit prices is employment is good and dead. In a dying business model, the employer needs employees a lot more than employees need the employer.
1: Technically, the policy is "ask your manager" but everyone knows what the answer is.
I didn't know the full extent before I started, but they threw more money at me than my wife and I have ever made combined, so I probably would have still taken it if I had known. Plus, I'm in NYC now.
Sometimes I get the feeling that even my own country (Portugal), with all its issues regarding work conditions, still appears to be in better shape.
That's the real reason things are pretty messed up all around protecting IP.
As we've survived without funding so far, we're thinking of relaxing this as well. Kudos to GitHub's investors for staying away from this nonsense.
I have been working on mplyees.com, a site where employees can share what needs to change publicly and anonymously. Hopefully we can bridge this divide since employee happiness is key to a successful business.
Wow. That statement alone tells you everything you need to know about that person and what kind of manager they are. The fact that it was the founder is just...wow. Since it was the founder, if I was in your shoes I would have asked this fool if they took that same approach when they ever worked for someone else - that they never did a single thing that was creative outside of work. Yeah, we know the answer.
Also - "We'd never exercise that right. But we reserve the right." Don't believe that for a minute. My father once worked for a fortune 500 financial company (but he was an IT person) and his hobby was music. He self-produced an album. A little while later they let a bunch of people go who were all 40+. He declined their package so that he could sue them for what was clearly age discrimination. That company then tried to claim that everything he did in his free time was owned by the company and they counter-sued him for royalties related to album sales and public performances. Keep in mind his contract did not include any of the draconian language like what you turned down. The only thing it said was that he was an "on-call" employee who needed to make sure he was available on short notice for systems-related emergencies. So they used that to say that because he was "on-call" they therefore owned every single second of his existence.
You can't make this shit up.
In the past people would coerce you into doing things by surrounding themselves with big strong men. All that's changed is the now they surround themselves with suits and it's supposedly legal.
Cool, so I get all those years of back pay with OT. Feel free to deduct the $10k royalties from the hundreds of thousands you owe me. Every time I thought about music, wrote music, played or practiced music, I was on the clock the entire time. Thanks!
Now extend that same concept to programming: I make games and digital interactive art in my spare time too. Should I really be forced to give it to my company where they will promptly throw it in the garbage? Or should I be allowed to make it and share it with the world independent of my corporate life?
Eh, I can see it. Any company where potential new hires directly negotiate with the founder is one where the founder is waaaaaaay too hands-on for comfort. A founder who's that involved in the day-to-day is likely to be exploitative.
I don't think I'll ever understand that attitude. If you're a founder, the business just may be the work of your life. To expect the same level of dedication and obsession from your employees is utterly obscene.
If you're lucky enough to find someone who genuinely feels that way, great. But to expect or even demand it should never be the case.
Just minutes ago, I pushed "Send" on a resignation letter from a company that after 6 months of UX dev & design asked me to sign a similarly overly broad IP agreement. I'd been struggling with the decision, toes on the edge of the proverbial diving board for days. Reading your story gave me an extra boost and reminded me I'm making the right choice.
Here's to tipping that first domino...
What a thuggish company, with such a feudal view of its workers! Hopefully most companies understand that they don't own their employees outright.
Dumb but not thuggish. In fact the view that it is thuggish is feudal, since it implies that the employers are lords handing out favors and punishments to their subjects below, and thus have a duty to be fair and compassionate about it. But the employer is really an equal at the negotiating table. Some people argue that capitalism can be coercive in the relevant way (a point I have no wish to argue for or against here), but it's demonstrably not true in this instance, since Braithwaite was able to walk away from a crummy deal. No doubt the employer was worse off for it. That's how it's supposed to work.
> "Fine, a standard salary is based on an assumption of working ~40 hours per week. You want me to work 168 hours per week. That, with factoring in opportunity cost, means my salary demand for that scenario is $6,000,000.00 / year. Sign here."
For me, that's the biggest takeaway from your story. When you're in a situation where you need money NOW, employers and creditors have all the power and can make your life hell with impunity. Most of us don't have F U money, but everyone should have a 3-6 month emergency fund and live comfortably within their means. It makes decisions like this one a lot easier. You can't put a price on having options.
But remember... I may have pointed the way, but you walked your path :-)
I don't stop thinking about work when I'm at home or it's after 5pm. If the solution for a bug comes to my mind in the middle of the night I'm not going to sell it back to the company because I own it. Like it or not, the kind of job we do is like that. I think the key is to ensure that your compensation is adequate for this expectation. Similar IP clauses are part of standard contracts for almost every company in almost any geography. In some ways they protect you as well because they help ensure your coworker doesn't steal company secrets. Companies going after employees for random side projects or blogs is almost unheard of (I've never heard of it) even though pretty much every employee signs similar contracts.
A standard contract probably also says something about it being subject to change and about needing to follow other company policies. So even if there was no explicit IP clause it could be hidden in some company policy.
EDIT: I doubt the hiring manager meant that you can't play the guitar or engage in any other creative activity in general. But OTOH I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an employee not to engage in activities that would negatively impact his job performance. E.g. not to hold two full time dev positions concurrently in two companies and similarly not to have a full time, or something approaching full time, side project. If you burn out because you're trying to work on a side project while having a "full time" dev job that's really not playing by the spirit of the employment contract.
Damn, that's poignant. Well, I hope you know you've had a massive impact on a lot of people. I greatly appreciate your technical and non-technical writing, and I evangelize Javascript Allongé whenever I have the chance.
I worked for a company for six months before we decided to renegotiate our contract. Thinking back on it, they offered me a few days of extra PTO but like any good business, they used it as an opportunity to sneak a few of these IP clauses in. (and a few other clauses).
It literally said what you're saying: anything that the employee creates or invents, in any field (competing or not) and at any time belongs to the company.
I had a hard discussion with my employer about this clause. It was one of my first jobs so I was pretty frightened. I also had a pretty awesome blog and some open source work. One of my open source projects was a Wordpress theme boilerplate (I was at a WP shop). I worked on it for weeks, trying to get it right, trying to use it to quickly generate new themes. I worked on it in my spare time, never during work. And I worked on it on my own equipment.
I was really proud of it (and still use it today) and got a lot of great feedback on it in the community.
So imagine having that discussion and knowing there is already something that they could claim their rights to.
I asked my boss directly about my theme.
> You used your experience from your job. We SHOULD own the rights to it and use it. What if we wanted to sell it and make a business out of selling Wordpress themes based on that boilerplate? We have a right to that theme.
> We reserve the right but we would most likely not exercise unless it would really benefit the company.
> Yes, that does fall under the IP clause but why would we want your sci-fi book?
> You should not be devoting any energy to anyone else. If you're working, you should be working on our projects. You're wasting mental energy on other work. If you can work extra hours freelancing, you can surely work extra hours for this job.
> It's industry standard. Do you think Google lets their employees keep IP to the things they make? Of course not, that would bankrupt them. And Facebook? Or any other tech companies?
> You may not work for any possible competitor that may reach any field that we have ventured into or may venture into within a 40 mile radius of the company. This includes tech, marketing, sales, etc. for the next two years.
> Well, it's a pretty big city! And anyways, it's industry standard. You'll find the same clause at Google.
I resulted in signing the contract - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13929845 - and I was unhappy right from the start.
:(
"Then you'll get employees who don't have very much of it."
As long as you don't compete using their code, everything is fair game.
Such bullying lawsuits would irreversibly damage the credibility of you and your organization.
Many of the replies to your comment are rude and go against HN rules, not to mention UNFAIR to the founder and company. It's a free world, if the founder sets a price you believe too high, you can politely turn it down, just like any other high-priced product. You can even state you think it's a bad deal, even terrible. The founder, or anyone selling a high-priced item, does not automatically become "evil". I'm sure the founder is a polite person. Maybe he's afraid of you running away with secrets? Whether he has a reason or not, that's his prerogative.
Please don't resort to this: -"this fool" -"utterly obscene" -"What a thuggish company" -" psycho" -"bullying"
Very upsetting. A comment that mentioned "It's not thuggish" was down-voted.
I've not had this luck, personally. They are always willing to forgo the job offer just to ensure that everyone has the same contracts. I'm guessing that it's going to be a size of business issue.
And the IP assignment clauses are, for the most part, getting worse and worse; my current one extends the assignment to a year after termination, voluntary or not.
For you Captains of Industry who are somehow able to negotiate your employment agreements, congratulations on having that opportunity--but I think that situation must not be very common.
Sometimes "taken seriously" means they scratch something out.
Sometimes "taken seriously" means they spend 3 days talking at me about why I should sign it, because everyone else has.
Just like you don't train a dog with punishment but with rewards, it seems like a good idea to reward companies for doing the right thing. Plus, criticism is empirically proven to have mostly zero impact on businesses, so why not try the other way?
Is that just in England or is that the norm in the whole UK or even former commonwealth like Canada? I've never had a Canadian client so I donno. I would imagine simple rule changes like that would have interesting effects on the whole employee vs contractor relationship.
I'm not a lawyer either but this is not true in the US afaik. "Works made for hire" are automatically copyrighted by the hirer, not the contractor.
Copyright assignment clauses in contracts exist to remove any potential ambiguity over whether anything supplied to the hirer is technically "specially ordered or commissioned" or otherwise legally qualified as a "work made for hire". It's to prevent situations where someone claims "Well, I actually did that important part of the work without billing for it, so I've retained the copyright and if you use it, I'll sue you." (I've actually had a contractor tell me this before!)
See this circulation from the Copyright Office for more discussion. [0] [PDF]
What I build in my offtime is mine; this is in fact where every entrepreneur starts. What you're proposing is that all innovation should stay in the hands of the employer, and you as an employee are shackled at all hours.
I know that some states have different laws in this area, but CAs are strong, and no one owns what you do when off from work and using your own equipment but you. Do not ever give up that right or we all lose.
As it turns out, many companies do exactly this. And (apparently) their developers decided it was a fair deal. But if you don't like that deal, that's an entirely reasonable choice. In that case, just don't work for such a company, even if they offer better salaries.
It would be unfair to say "don't take the job if you don't like the deal" if there weren't other options, but the fact is that there are lots of other options. There are plenty of software jobs that don't include such clauses, especially in the non-profit and academic sector.
Don't put the bad faith on the side of the employees when the contract goes "we own everything you do while employed, anywhere, anytime and forever".
This isn't really the _reason_ that companies have these kinds of policies though... Ultimately companies have a legal problem of sorting out what they own from what they don't. This is especially important when the company sells it's assets. The default/simple approach is to try and "own everything". (Not saying this is good for employees, but it is simple for companies.)
I think it's fair to say that there are multiple reasons. The one you listed is definitely one of them. Joel Spolsky wrote about this a few months ago:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
I don't know exactly what my contract says about side project IP but I'm assuming it's a vanilla "we own what you make on company time and/or relating to company business".
I have zero problems with that.
What would the alternative be from the perspective of my employer? Assuming they own the game I make on weekends because I'm an employee? Or hoping that because they pay me so well, I'd spend any time coding on evenings doing stuff that benefits my employer?
Of course I think about my side projects while working, just like I think about my work problems at home, or my family while working. It's hard to imagine not doing that. I work 8 hours per day and if it's interesting work I might think about it in the evening. But no compensation would make me an employee in my spare time.
Some are; some aren't. Some are working on CRUD apps.
And then if it didn't sell in 60 days, she would get almost nothing, and would also have to split almost nothing with the buyer's agent?
And she agreed to that?
This particular realtor focused on building a client base and having the shortest listing time. Her average time on market was 1.2 day.
The 60 day thing was a luxury for her. It's a metric hack that allows her to get more listings and be more selective. People make all sort of wacky deals to spike metrics.
We also ended up buying another of her listings, so she did well.
Basically, the realtor provided a barrier between the builder and my wife who super loved the property. The realtor also had a relationship with the builder, so when I asked the builder to do X, I got a response super quick at 11:30 at night.
Don't underestimate the value of having connections. FYI my house appraised at like 10% higher than I purchased it, so we did get a deal.
This is literally the second most breathtakingly naive comment I've ever read on the internet.
If I am willing to pay Y for an item, regardless of who is involved in the transaction then it doesn't matter if a percentage is taken. i.e. if Y = Y x 0.97 + Y x 0.03, who cares? Now you might say I could have negotiated that 3% off, and I'd argue that's probably not true.
I seriously lowballed the builder on the sale, the only reason I think I got it was the relationship the builder had with the realtor. The builder has incentive to give a discount to a realtor, as he has 50 other houses he has to sell. She also has an incentive because the quicker she can get me to buy a house, the less she has to show, i.e. the more she makes per hour.
All of this isn't exactly explicit, but in my case, the realtor and I discussed this. It was actually quite refreshing and definitely worked in my benefit as I picked up my house for around 10%+ less than the people around me. The realtor was similarly happy because I only took around a day of her time, and the builder was happy because he was in serious need of cash flow.
Because you're the buyer, you pay for everything. You're the only one who brought money to the deal.
Yes, the job in question was in the gaming space, working on an unannounced virtual reality title.
This has been the only time a company has ever asked me to divest interest in my own company and/or IP before being hired. Granted, I have only recently begun looking for work, but I cannot imagine this being a common scenario.
Instead, I imagine these guys as sharks that do not have my best interests in mind; only their own.
As for my game, it's called Ethereal Legends, and is now available on Steam. To bring things back onto the topic of this thread, the code for my game is also available on GitHub!
But turning down such people in favor of those who respect your IP is always the better investment down the line.
So we must resist it at all levels. And again, what you state is actually not enforceable in CA, as our laws protect your personal work. It might in fact be one reason why the valley exists here.
You can't imagine a world where that was more important to him accepting your offer than the realtor bringing the offer to him?
> The realtor was similarly happy because I only took around a day of her time
So, for a single day you paid maybe 6-15k or so (guessing 200-500k house * 3%). Don't you think maybe that's a bit much?
I am no lawyer, but I don't expect that under EU work law anything done outside work can be forbidden in the work contract, in any member country.
The only issue I see from law point of view, is if whatever is being done, in terms of private projects, is related to knowledge acquired during the work activities, sometimes under NDA. Here yes, there can be issues.
Now if the projects are done in technology stacks or business domains completely different from what happens at work, then it isn't enforceable.
However I am no lawyer.
From that circulation,
> A work created by an independent contractor can be a work made for hire only if (a) it falls within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2 above and (b) there is a written agreement between parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire.
The nine categories are
> as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas
> If an employee created the work, part 1 of the definition
> above applies, and the work will generally be considered a
> work made for hire.
> But note that the term “employee” in the definition differs
> from the common understanding of the term. For copyright
> purposes, “employee” means an employee under the general
> common law of agency. See the subheading “Agency Law”
> below.
> If an independent contractor created the work, and the
> work was “specially ordered or commissioned,” part 2 of the
> definition above applies. An “independent contractor” is
> someone who is not an employee under the general common
> law of agency.
This is discussed further under the heading "Agency Law", where three points are given for consideration of whether the contractor is acting as an "agent" of the employer or whether the contractor is acting independently.
The phrasing of the law probably would've been better if it said "external vendor" instead of "independent contractor", since it seems intended to protect vendors that are providing a simple product to the employer rather than contractors that are used like temporary employees.
Regardless, a copyright assignment is a simple and important way to clear any ambiguity and prevent hairy disputes over the status of a work from going to court.
Again, I am not a lawyer.
I see no conclusive evidence in the parent comment that proves it's Google. I would've actually guessed Apple.
My understanding is that Google actually has a reasonable process for this, and that people have taken advantage of it to start or contribute to projects in a personal capacity.
They do approve side projects in rarer cases where it has nothing to do with Google's business - for example, my friend recently wrote an app for sex positions. But most things that I want to work on have a messaging / ML / AR component to them somewhere so I haven't felt comfortable building anything while I've been employed there. Hence the main reason I'm leaving Google at the end of the month, to build those things :)
Long hours is not the same as owning me.
Because that would go against "using any and all your creative energy towards the business of the company"
There's nothing wrong with people who don't like Star Trek, but they're not going to have a very good time at the convention.
* At hire time provide a list of "my ip" and "ip from previous employer that may be controversial here"
* At personal project start time, get a document signed from management saying "this is not related to $employer, and does not count as related work"
* At exit time (particularly when there is post employment IP or non-compete) get a document agreeing that "this IP was from the employee to the company, this was not.
It sounds like a bureaucratic mess, but it's like 10 minutes of hassle here and there, and saves a bunch of issue, even in the future if say, the company gets bought out and the new owner has different views.
The actions described by the GP are not the culmination of deep legal rumination on the topic.
When I first purchased a home my credit history was.. interesting. The value the realtor provided was putting me in touch with the right grants, forms, etc and ways to build and fix my credit. They helped me not get scammed with a high interest or ARM loan. Their knowledge helped me. Also she steered me away from a couple houses due to inspection concerns that would have cost me time.
Fast forward to now my credit is awesome, the homes I can afford are in a far different category and my last home purchase was fairly routine, so my realtor didn't do as much but I still value their knowledge and experience because you won't need it until you need it.
I bought a home recently and work in the mortgage industry. My opinion: the buyer's agent should be a flat negotiated fee, maybe an hourly rate. There is very little that most do that the buyer can't do themselves. If the buyer doesn't want to do it themselves, then that's a choice they make to pay, and for items like inspection reviewing and negotiating, I'm not sure I see why it's significantly different if I'm buying a $200k house vs an $800k house. I don't agree with their fees being a percentage of the home prices.
Seller's agents on the other hand...those guys are salesmen. I can see way more value in incentivizing that person to get maximum value for me.
For example let's say a selling agent is getting 6% on a house listed at $500k. If it sells at $500k he gets $30k, if it sells at $520k he gets $31k. If he were to get a $500k offer it probably isn't worth his time to put in a lot of extra effort to try to get that extra $1k, but to you that extra $19k is a lot of money. You might want to do another open house but the agent will convince you to just take the offer in hand. I think this is one of the reasons that agents use all these short deadlines and pressure tactics, it's not just to get the buyers locked in, they want to be in and out of each deal as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next deal.
Not sure how to fix that, but it is an issue to be aware of.
A fee sounds good, an hourly rate seems to incentivize the wrong behavior (as does a percentage of the sale price).
I fully believe that there are realtors out there who make their clients money. There is, however, no reliable way for me to differentiate them from the lazy scumbags.
When realtors' business model gets disrupted, sellers will not end up getting the same prices for their houses as they do currently, or get to keep the 6% that now goes to agents - that money will simply drop out of the cost of buying homes (except for the new, smaller, cost that will be captured by the new business model).
And I don't know where you are located but I've always known the standard commission to be 6% (3 to buyer and 3 to seller agents). But everything is negotiable, I got mine done at 5%. She knocked 1% of the seller agent fee to be my buyer agent on the next transaction when her fee wouldn't come out of my pocket. She got me a second great deal, could I have gotten the same? Maybe, but knowing that negotiation isn't my strong suit, probably not.
But then again, most people buy houses so infrequently that one or two experiences either good or bad is going to color your whole outlook on the industry. I've been lucky enough that my few experiences look like net wins from my perspective.
My friend has also worked with my sister, so all told he's helped myself or someone close to me with buying and/or selling 6 homes and maybe a 7th.
Personally, if I don't agree with and and/or aren't willing to stand by it, I don't sign it. Of course for some less fortunate desperation means they have to compromise on such ideals.
there's just so many ways around it and I'd LOVE to get some case law made just to get some unknowns clarified. Like when I contribute to an already existing open source project on company's time/resource/IP-appropriation-regime, do they get to rewrite the Apache license because one contributor had signed a contract? when running this open source software that happens to generate a transferable token with a liquid secondary market with no proof of ownership, is that the company's?
would love some broke startup to spend time on that case
That depends very much on which jurisdiction you're in. You'd be crazy to assume, without taking proper legal advice, that retrospective assignment would not stand up as part of an explicit employment contract.
Like when I contribute to an already existing open source project on company's time/resource/IP-appropriation-regime
If you did that without your employer's permission, then probably both you personally and anyone redistributing the OSS project would be infringing the employer's copyright. If that upset your employer, you could expect to be fired and possibly sued, and anyone involved in redistributing the OSS project could expect a C&D from your former employer's lawyers pending removal of any infringing work you contributed.
Depending on the scale and sensitivity of whatever you contributed, a bad result could be that you are out of a job, bankrupt due to damages and legal costs, and known for being untrustworthy since any future employer who looks you up is going to find the lawsuit, while the OSS project is significantly inconvenienced and doesn't ultimately benefit from your contribution anyway.
and I do factor in the jurisdiction in my own personal assessments and everyone else should too
there are many circumstances where the consequences are completely opposite of what the contract says (or how their employer's actually operate, care about, or will ever find out about) and people's behavior will conform to those consequences
If it’s bad faith to sign off on a contract which contains clauses you do not intend to honour (because they are unenforceable) surely it’s equally bad faith (if not more so, given the power relationship) to keep unenforceable clauses in contracts purely in the hope or expectation that they will frighten uninformed employees into conforming with them?
or that my foresight and source of legal counsel is better and people may find value in that?
or I better hope my side project takes off right!
The reality is that the US is a very generous place if you have money, so if you are a software engineer you can have a luxurous life in comparison to what one would get in EU. The situation is opposite for lower paying jobs.
Also in the UK taxation of employee shares is a lot saner plus GCT is a lot lower and you get a 16k Pa allowance for CGT
Otherwise, it of course depends on what they're doing. It might be really interesting work that you get the chance to work with a lot of other very brilliant people to build something amazing.
If that's not true, then no, I'd probably go and start just writing fun open-source stuff all the time.
Heck, programming is literally done by schoolchildren for entertainment, myself included, yet people are quite happy to hire us because they understand the value of delegation.
To a first approximation, 0% of real estate people are trustworthy.
Doubly true in hot markets.
I used a realtor (with a discounted fee) for my first house. Now I'm buying the second by owner, because I know how the circus operates.
Hire a flat-rate agent/broker. They'll technically be your agent, but you do all the leg work.
You can hire a lawyer for exactly the same purpose. You will still need to hire inspectors, title companies regardless.
That sounds like one of those things that people assume everybody else must think, but nobody actually thinks.
In a presidential election, for example.
This is in no way exclusive to Americans. In fact, from my admittedly limited experience, this is much more explicit in other cultures.
Politics is a totally different ball game. You basically must be wealthy to be successful in national politics (not necessarily in the Trump or Clinton stratospheres, but still need significant personal wealth and resources), and this is also the case in not-America as far as I can tell.
I used to agree with that, but now politics has cleaved this into two.
A) If you're a democrat/progressive (Soros, Hillary, et al.) you're corrupt, greedy, immoral. And you got all that money via ill means. They must be stupid and anti-American be
B) If you're a republican (Trump, Murdoch, Ted Stevens, et al.) your earned it from picking up yourself by your bootstraps, the American Dream. And they must be smart people, they have lots of money!
And vice-versa.
As an aside, I'm increasingly seeing spammy "Soros is an anti-american progressive socialist communist" comments on other low quality forums. Which is interesting considering his investments, wealth, views on Russian, path to citizenship, and interest in helping economies move away from communism into capitalism. Post-truth, I guess.
I don't begrudge anyone who wants to pay someone else to take a task off their hands, I do it all the time with various things like my lawn service, housekeeper, etc. But was the time they saved you worth the commission they made? When you're making 7% of the selling price, the answer to that seems likely to be no in many cases. There's a price point where it's no longer worth it to outsource the work, and I suspect many home buyers run over it without realizing it or considering they have a choice.
It's not clear to me that that is true. All economics tells us is that in the current system, sales clear, which means that buyers are fine buying at the current prices and sellers are fine selling at the current prices less commission.
If the commission were to suddenly disappear, it is not clear if the buyer, the seller, or some mix would retain that money. You're suggesting that the buyer would retain all the money without evidence, whereas basic logic would suggest that the seller has more economic power (because housing prices generally appreciate faster than inflation), particularly in hot real estate markets.
But I think it might be partly true, too. As you said, currently "sellers are fine selling at the current prices less commission". When those commissions disappear, sellers who were previously content to get Price - 6%, should still be content to get Price*0.94, since those are the same, and at least in buyer's markets, competing sellers have an incentive to undercut one another in the effort to get their house sold. It seems probable that those would lead to houses moving to a new normal pricing structure 6 percentage points lower than the old normal (less whatever amount the new model is capturing).
(1) inheritance,
(2) something nefarious (greed, cheating, etc.)
(3) working hard and the equivalent of winning the lottery, being rewarded for that hard work
I don't think there's anyone who doesn't know that Trump inherited his wealth.
For a $100k home, it's fairly easy for the value added to surpass the amount paid. For a $500k home, the value added needs to be much higher. Then again, if you think of it as less value added and more like insurance (although unfortunately without a specific set of coverage), then what you're paying for is their ability to identify and prevent problems before they happen. Having a realtor notice items before calling in an inspector is useful. Having a realtor apply their knowledge of the market, and what people are generally looking for on both the buying and selling end when making suggestions for how to change the deal (such as requesting fixes prior to sale, or money back for the fixes) is useful. Does that usefulness surpass the cost they get in their fees? It probably depends on the specific deal, the cost of the houses being looked at, and the experience of the realtor. I doubt it's as black and white as being useless though.
Even if you disagree (and the answer would be different for everyone I imagine), it still doesn't indicate that the realtor brought _no_ value to the table, which was the statement I was responding to.
EDIT: Also, I should clarify, where I'm at it's 6% _total_, split 3% each between the buying and selling agent. So, on the other hand, was it worth it to the sellers to pay 3% to their selling agent, who screwed up pretty much every part of the process and didn't seem to do much from what we saw? Probably not.
EDIT 2: I'd probably realistically downgrade my "absolutely it was worth it" answer to, "eh, it was definitely worth something". If I had to put a value on what they brought to the table, it'd be hard to say, but maybe they were overpaid by ~30-50%. Again though, saying they didn't add _any_ value certainly wasn't the case for us.
First there is an inspection for the potential buyer, paid for by the buyer and thus owned by the potential buyer. This tells you if the house itself has problems like cracks and rot.
Second there is an appraisal to establish the home's value. Strangely, this person might not even enter the home. (they mostly look at sale prices of similar homes) To avoid corruption, the government randomly selects an appraiser. The appraisal is paid for by the potential buyer, then given to both the buyer and the intended loan provider.
Third, there is an actual survey. This measures the land and maps out the positions of buildings and fences and pavement and pools. I think the seller pays for this. I first heard of it as a buyer when I got a copy as I signed the final paperwork, which is pretty terrible actually.
If the sale is cancelled, the inspection and appraisal become worthless. The seller doesn't own them and isn't supposed to have a copy due to copyright. The next potential buyer will probably start with nothing.
You could have a much bigger houses as well. If you move to munich or berlin(even though the latter is one of the cheapest cities in europe) a house is really expensive in comparison to what you can get in a city like Austin, Denver, even Seattle if you commute a bit.
"We are kinda indifferent. If you piss us off, we will look for ways to make you miserable. If you leave and start a competitive company or even a half-competitive company, we will use this contract to bring you to tears. BUT, if you don’t piss us off, and serve us loyally, we’ll look the other way when your iPhone app starts making $40,000 a month."
FYI - my father's situation happened about 20 years ago in the late 90's.
I am now very sad.
"be careful before taking legal advice from the Internet." - Indeed, Joel. Indeed.
I will point a couple:
- He says that contractors "by default" own the IP of the work they do for their employers. This is actually exactly the opposite: "work for hire" means that the employer owns the IP by default: http://contently.net/2013/07/09/find-work/work-made-for-hire...
- He glosses over / minimizes the fact that most of these "invention assignment" clauses are doomed in a court of law more often than not (even ignoring the states that outright prohibit them) if they do not fall within the scope of employment (sorry, I don't have a reference here, but I have heard of many such cases being thrown out in court)
As a business owner, he comes across as having a very clear agenda which is at odds with the reality of the law and the actual outcomes of these cases in court.
That agent was very helpful in a lot of ways, but didn't get me a particularly good price -- another, nearly identical unit in the same condo complex sold around the same time for about $30k more.
I think the next time, I will stick to my guns on the terms. That probably means I'll have to find an independent agent. This is not necessarily a bad thing; I think the agent who sold that other unit in my complex was independent.
Lots of things like that. And then both parties having to pay 5.1k for his 'service'.
It really pisses me off that in this day and age they think they can be "gatekeepers" of the information.
And they provide an extremely shitty service, they don't even take the care to take good photos of the property.
They've long lobbied for more regulation in my country and are extremely angry that most people are not using their services (I wonder why... :) ).
They did manage to make their services mandatory for state-owned mortgages :( .
And no, an inspector's fees aren't over $30k (of course I imagine this varies by state, but where I'm at, if your buying agent's fees were over $30k, that would mean the house you bought was over $1mil, since their fee is half of 6% of the selling price of the house, i.e. 3%). The inspectors we talked to were between $500 and $2,000 per inspection, depending on the level of inspection you wanted, if I'm remembering correctly.
And we looked at around 35 houses (which apparently is on the high side by about 10x based on discussions with our friends who have bought houses). So for us, if we called an inspector every time (assuming we could find an inspector whose schedule matched the appointment availability every time), it would have been around $17,500 on the low end to do that for every house, which is more than the buying agent's percentage.
Of course, we could just hire an inspector on the ones we liked, and it'd be much cheaper, but that means we'd have to look at it, then call an inspector and schedule a visit, which would add an additional several-day-waiting step to the process, which could lead to us missing out on the house, since it's not uncommon to lose a house to someone else getting an offer accepted first (that happened to us for two out of four houses we liked).
So, nothing wrong with calling an inspector directly, it's just a different job than what the realtor does.
I am pretty happy with my employment. Paid vacation, paid sick days, reasonable hours and all that good stuff.
With 3 months notice and strong union protection (public sector) it already isn't.
I'd much rather work for a single excellent organisation where I know I'm doing good than many who can't hold on to good staff and need contractors.
No, I wouldn't. I value stability and simplicity in my life, and I will gladly eschew higher pay for a more traditional lifestyle. I'm a conservative suburbanite with no ambition, and I'm proud of it.
On top of that, non-employer insurance is terrible. In some states, you actually cannot get a PPO unless you're on an employer's policy (I refuse to get an HMO for moral reasons), and large megacorps (we're talking Disney-sized corporations here) will package their own insurance and offer benefits that go above and beyond what you can get anywhere else.
> and the ability to work for multiple clients
That's a negative for me. I'm a strict 9-5er. I just want to show up at the office every weekday, put in my eight hours, then go home and relax. I actively do not want to run my own business or do anything that resembles negotiating with anyone. I'm not an entrepreneur or a risk-taker of any kind.
Employment isn't so bad in those cases.
For whom you have to spend roughly 1/3 of your time on collection because companies don't get rich writing a lot of checks. If it fits your psyche, great. Not everyone is like you.
Generally higher income is not much higher either way, at least around here. Nobody wants to hire contractors for more than they have to pay full time employees.
You still get to pay your health insurance (typically covered by employer automatically here) and taxes.
That would have been wonderful!
And at some places, this lets you focus on larger problems that you'd never get solved working from contract to contract.
The big advantage is when you have strong rights and we're talking about long term illness. For example in Italy you can't be fired if you are truly sick for months: your employment will be retained, however you might not get paid, or not get paid fully.
Other advantages might be related to discrimination: for a young white male it might be easier to get a developer job, or for a seasoned white male might be easier to get a lead/manager role. It's the same with employment, but as a contractor, passing job interviews becomes a significant part of your job, as well as cultivating relationships.
I keep reading this here, but this doesn't square with the reality I see all around me (this may be specific to the USA). I've observed plenty of people getting fired, sometimes on short notice and for non-obvious reasons, often only known to the employer and employee. As someone who does not run a business, could someone explain to me the details about exactly what makes firing someone "difficult" for an employer?
Is there any stronger argument in opposition than "I got mine..." or "In a utopia..." ?
I have yet to see anyone comparing using the WORST case of EITHER of these scenarios - and I think I would argue that comparing worst cases, contract work fails harder, since the availability of non-contract employment (at least in the tech industry) is certainly easier to find than trying to self-market for high-ish prices as a contract worker with no prior experience to show for it and no current clients, especially since there seem to be SO many pitfalls for new contract workers to fall into that could hopelessly screw them over, at least in the short term.
Edit: To clarify my point: Worst case non-contract: Shitty job, terrible company/management, average to below-average salary, and terrible (if any) benefits and healthcare.
Worst case contract: No clients to speak of, unable to get your business off the ground, still struggling with self marketing, and when you do find work (few and far between), you are underpaid because of a combination of unrealized self-worth and bullying clients who refuse to pay that amount.
In the case of "worst case", at least the non-contract worker is getting PAID.
I'd propose that above the very bottom of the barrel, contract work is slightly better because it is like speed dating and the odds of meeting the right client for you are higher than could be experienced in slower paced long term employment.
Up to you to decide which path you want to take. Depends what you want from life.
Exactly, which is why his post is totally self-serving propaganda.
Though he tries to present the post as "here's a totally objective explanation of how side projects interplay with employment law", ultimately his point comes down to Business owners have all these complicated issues to deal with, so just accept the fact that they're going to screw you over, while they make millions of dollars
There's no credibility given to the fact that companies have choices here and there are other options that don't screw over the employees - those options are too hard, and they might introduce legal risk to the company, or (!gasp!) scare away investors.
It's just accepted as given that business owners must do whatever it takes to protect their company's interests and employees should shut up and deal with it. Employees carry the legal and financial risk because it would be inconvenient for the company to do so.
The company is simply acting in its own self-interest and it's not actually trying to screw you (probably), that's just an irrelevant side-effect that they might take advantage of in the future when they do want to screw you. Now that know that you understand that, you're totally cool with it right? It's just business.
I don't think Joel is intentionally trying to be manipulative. I think he honestly believes all of that. As a business owner he's dealing with all those issues and he thinks he's making appropriate choices and has no particular intention to screw over his employees. The purpose of the post is so that everyone can see that he, and business owners like him, are not a bad guys - they're just acting rationally and you only thought you were getting a bad deal because you didn't understand the choices they're making.
"What are you doing sitting there just cruising the web, Ms Contractor" > "Oh, I'm just waiting for this quarter's invention to pop into my head. Thanks for the payslip!"
I'd say not a requirement in the Nordics. I'm sure it won't hurt though.
The talking point of "Would you rather trust someone who can't get promoted past a mid-level position in his company to play with the big boys, or someone who has managed his life such that he is in charge of things and has been able to accumulate vast personal resources?" is always going to be persuasive, IMO. "If he can't manage his own affairs..." and all that.
It's not an absolute non-starter, but I'm skeptical that any "regular Joe" would be elected for a significant national position as long as there are people who are massively more wealthy willing to compete (and there will be).
I don't have any data to back this up, but I have a feeling people tend to vote the same class as they are, with a hope that a similar candidate is better suited to understand their concerns. A working-class member would be very, very wary of voting anyone with wealth.
This is of course made possible with a true multi-party system. A businessman is a rare sight indeed within the ranks of (true) left-wing party.
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
A “work made for hire” is— (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.
If contract work is getting paid the same as FTE, then something is messed up. I literally charged double what I make right now as an FTE.
And yeah, I even called out the missing benefits, but that's something you pay for out of the income differential.
I've been a contract worker several times in my life. I'm currently a FTE and like the people I work for. Going contract is certainly not for everyone and is perhaps a panic inducing decision depending on your current situation.
I just sold a condo in Minneapolis using a flat fee company -- fantastic experience and will never use a realtor again, save for maybe if looking internationally in a very unfamiliar area perhaps.
If you want an industry ripe for disruption, consumer real estate is HUGE. Got a couple start ups in my area trying to do that.
The price is 6% higher than the actual value, so that the buying and selling realtors get their cut.
But if you don't have a buying realtor, any offer you make it looks 3% higher to the seller, and you can recoup most or all of that.
I think I was probably misremembering my experience as a software contractor, in that I don't think I ever signed a single contract that did not include the "work for hire" stipulation.
Ironically, it seems far from clear that "work for hire" even applies to software: http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=59a4a8c4-c446-...
A primarily digital brokerage would be (is) a huge improvement.
I had my own private PPO for a decade (geez!) at least, and the policy provisions were better than most employer policies I saw offered to me. Well, at least until the ACA came around and shook everything up a little.
I'm happy you're a happy 9-5er with zero business desire and that you are 100% risk averse. You are not the target of my comment.
Can you elaborate on this?
Medical gatekeeping is a violation of the fundamental human right to body autonomy.
Makes for happy and productive workers, and also benefits companies who don't have to worry about loosing their best worker without notice.
I've been a contractor as several points in my life and loved it mostly. It is sometimes stressful making sure everything is on track, but the freedom of not depending on any one client and the difference in income that allowed me to work less If I wanted was great.
I currently work as an employee and also like the benefits it provides and the people I work with. But, I also know that ultimately companies now days have very little loyalty so my mind never lets me think of being an employee as some absolute guarantee of stability.
So you broadly claim that "employment is dead" using big words like "feudal system" and how you can make so much more money contracting etc. etc. and then it turns out you are an employee after all? Seriously?
I'll take my impostor syndrome and constant medium-high anxiety thank you very much.
So, please don't put words in my mouth.
Means you're unlikely to get another job in the industry.
>bullying a leaver for all of 3 months to discourage other people
Would result in an easy case for constructive dismissal.
And then there probably is a way to shorten the notice period when both sides agree (I extrapolate to Norway how in my country it works).
I get that it's apparently an employee protection but it does seem kind of ludicrous. What happens if you rage quit? Win the lottery?
Well, I'm a professional, so I finish my job...
I shouldn't be changing job more than once every 2 years, so 3 months is nothing. The notice period is often reduced for the first 6 months, or you can ask for that before signing your contract.
In reality a company has no real desire to keep a disgruntled employee longer than they have to, so you can burn bridges and leave earlier if force the issue. It's a pretty unprofessional thing to do though.