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Comment by bphogan | Hacker News Reader

This concept irritates me. You basically can't create things on your own if you work for a company? I just completely disagree with these kind of no-compete things.

That said, I also think it's silly to sign a contract that states this as a condition of employment. I've walked away from a couple of consulting opportunities in the past because of contracts like this, but gotten a few others because I just politely asked if they would strike out that part of the contract.

I understand wanting to protect your own intellectual property, but I think it's sleazy to claim ownership of things people do on their own time. It's right up there with "no competing with us for 2 years after we fire you" clauses.

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My boss crossed off that section of his contract when he worked for Booz Allen, and nobody made a peep.

It's nice to see more evidence that people do this. I've always believe that contracts are negotiable, so it's good to know that I'm not the only one that does this.

I negotiated my contract with Apple; it had to go through legal and get VP-level approval, but the changes were approved.

I doubt everyone can do this, though.

re: your last sentence, what made your situation special?

The lesson though is that the answer is always no unless you ask.

This suggests that a lot of this stuff is boilerplate. Often, it gets added to contracts because there's no cost in doing so (except to the laywer's client).

At the same time, it's not necessarily part of a broader strategy to which the company is firmly, if quietly committed, and which they'll stick to, even as the costs of doing so escalate.

If the baseline cost of finding and hiring the right people is at all significant, economizing by lowering resistance is a no-brainer. Just treat this stuff like default settings from a useful, if not totally UX-savvy provider of software, and don't raise any eyebrows unless you get unexpected and seemingly arbitrary or mindless pushback.

I've always done this with contracts, in any part of life. If I don't like a clause then I amend it or spike it. SOP as far as I'm concerned. No-one has ever complained, although there might be some discussion.

I did this at a Japanese megacorp (which are, ahem, not historically known for their embrace of flexibility in employer/employee relations), as a condition of my accepting their offer of employment. My bosses were supportive.

I also got them to OK my ongoing participation in OSS.

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