Wow I've been going out of my way to insist that my employer does _not_ automatically own any work I do on personal projects while under their employ, but it turns out that California has a law on the books protecting me from this anyway.
(And as such, I don't need to give up something in a negotiation to obtain it.)
Labor Code § 2870: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=2870
ehhh well thanks for saying so but this hard core dude only found out about it *after* the negotiation, from the policy thing 😩
and i didn't push back on their counter-offer that was less than my ask, or getting more time for professional development (research projects), because i feel like i'm at the limit of my leverage 😕
should be useful in the future though. 👍
that California law "employers don't get to own their employees' non-work-related inventions" has been on the books since 1979?
how many inventions started in California garages since that time
or rather, how many innovations didn't occur because of employers in other states who demand ownership of everything that comes out of your brain whether you're on the clock or not
@pho4cexa as a supremely naive young person im a bit appalled to learn that employers would ever pursue this line of reasoning, though perhaps I ought not be surprised.. are there high profile/precedent
-establishing cases you might know of in which companies have actually pursued this position and won the rights to an employee's side project? Aside of course from all the unknown instances you allude to, where the employee might have been shut up before it could ever get anywhere...
@abraxas @pho4cexa I've heard repeatedly that many common employment contract terms are not actually enforceable in court. This thread has one example, of terms that so many lawyers throw into their standard contacts, but that aren't enforceable in (in this case) California. I've heard other terms are only valid if adequately compensated, like getting lots of stock in exchange for giving up some rights. Doesn't help if you can't afford to sue though…
@pho4cexa @abraxas Personally I think it's well worth the money for somebody working in tech to pay a lawyer to review their employment contract terms. In my experience this usually costs a few hundred dollars, and if you're taking a full time tech job that you expect to keep for at least a few months, you'll probably make that back quickly. In exchange you're less likely to get screwed out of much bigger amounts later.
@jamey @abraxas this is a great point. even now, even after being a tech bro for 15 years, the thought of hiring a lawyer for any reason at all feels like i'm about to drop into ten thousand dollars of debt. never attempted to actually price out services.
(might have to do with my parents' ugly divorce and protracted custody battle. impossibly huge lawyer debt was an ever-present topic while i was growing up)
@pho4cexa @abraxas I'm an independent contractor these days so I've wound up spending quite a bit of lawyer time on random wacky contracts from different companies. It's not quite the same thing as employment contracts, but based on my experience I expect that a lawyer who specializes in employment law should usually be able to find the important gotchas in an hour. So even though $300/hr sounds like a lot it's not as bad as it seems…
@abraxas i don't have specific case examples, and i'm afraid researching the topic might be more depressing than i have the spoons for right now 😬
but similar to what @jamey mentioned, it might be more about scaring employees away from fanciful ideas to launch better-performing competitors than about acquiring rights to every programmers' homebrew blogging scripts
but if a side project became the next hot startup i can't imagine any tech ceo who wouldn't want to exploit the opportunity
@pho4cexa My first tech job, in 1999, had in their standard employment contract that not only did they own everything conceived during the term of employment, but everything before and after too!
Fortunately I had a family friend who's a lawyer and was willing to look it over for me, since I was 15 and would certainly not have spotted that on my own. So the story has a good end; we just had a good laugh at their lawyer's hubris.
@pho4cexa you are so hard core I love it. I wish I can be like you someday with my profession