Programmers. Do you work on your personal projects inside your 9-5?
If you find that, for whatever reason, there's a slot in the day where you can either do / ask for more company work, or work on your side projects... What do you do?
At least not directly. Similar to how a carpenter might learn stuff during their 9-5 that helps them be a better carpenter, the work I do during my 9-5 informs what I do outside of work.
If I were to spend time on personal projects, I'd never use my day job's resources. Early in my career I left an employer to start my own company. That former employer tried to sue me, saying that because I came up with the idea while "on the clock" that they could claim some or all ownership of my new company.
My former employer had no case though. I never used their resources, never even jotted down notes about the idea I had, never even talked about it to other employees. The idea itself was one that wouldn't even compete with my employer - two totally different industries/markets.
That said, my lawyer at the time said that if my former employer even had a single email I sent that hinted at the idea, or scrap of paper with any reference to it, they might have been able to get a case in front of a judge or arbitrator.
For those considering working on side projects, and you want every chance of protecting those side projects, it wouldn't hurt to talk with a lawyer about how to protect yourself as early as you can.
Now, obviously you wouldn't use company resources. Be smart and have separate devices, etc. But unless you are paid hourly I would really discount the idea that you are somehow cheating your company. Why should the rules be "for thee but not for me..."?
If I wanted to work on my personal projects during the day I'd take the day off.
I would check the employment contract asap.
this assumption is correct for vast majority of employed people
you would have to refer to your specific employment contract. for me personally it always stated the amount of hours I'm expected to be working per day or month.
spoken gentle-human's agreement is one thing, what is written in the contract is another and always legally binding...
I would like to hear someone tell their boss they spend 1 or more hours every day working on a personal project on company's time, if its not dishonest it should not be a problem and will be met with praise and compliments I'm sure...
If I can put up with work getting in the way of life (on call, no overtime pay, etc) employers can put up with life getting in the way of work (appointments, off topic research, etc).
Nine times out of ten it ends up helping them too. The research ends up being mutually beneficial. A healthy me keeps coming to work. The list goes on.
I just try to be honest and reasonable about it. So far they have too. Please let me know what needs to be done, and it will get done.
Company time only exists when the company is paying for time, salaried employees are filling a company role not being paid for any specific period of time. If the company gets too specific about what time belongs to them they risk losing the exempt part of salaried-exempt and would owe back pay for any time over 40 hours that you may have worked.
Another wrinkle is most workers aren't really aware of the legalities of salaried work, you'll see people making statements like the OP here about "company time" for example. Originally the arrangement was designed for people like CEOs and executives of companies where it wouldn't make sense to track hours as they had a stake in the company, but it has been expanded mostly to side step things like mandatory overtime pay.
It wouldn't be ethical to drive into the company office, then work on your side gigs using their computers, bandwidth, software, etc.
There's nothing unethical about working on personal projects while not at work. In a lot of US states, an employer can't legally stop you either, salaried or not, unless they can make the case that you working on your side projects directly harms them. That can be a hard case for them to make as well, since, typically, someone who practices their craft outside of "work" improves themselves in a way that benefits their employer.
When I hire programmers, I very much want to hear about their side projects. Not because I want to lay claim to them, but because I want to have a broader sense for what makes a candidate tick. All things being equal, I'd hire a candidate who works on interesting side projects over one who didn't as well.
That's in part because what I consider to be "immoral" is likely different than the OP. I could be an anarchist that believes the only moral act is to undermine my employer. Or I could be so dedicated to my employer that I'd consider merely thinking negative thoughts about them immoral.
In the end, it's not about what's "immoral", it's about what's legal. Which, of course, depends on where you live and how smart your lawyers are.
There's a reason why the GNU project requires an explicit waiver from the contributor's employer for all contributions. Anything less puts them at risk of civil or criminal liability.
Sometimes I write code for myself that I later decide to use at work. That gets published to GitHub under some reasonable license then imported at work if it makes it through review.
In previous jobs I would "skill up" during every free moment like lunch, afternoon slump, extra time after completing something hard that day, etc while ensuring my job duties exceeded expectations. Sometimes I would build personal projects for my work that mimicked what I was doing outside of work so I could build the skill up and provide value at the same time.
I typically look at any moonlighting rules for the company I work for and then keep those limitations in mind. Most are pretty lenient to say "don't use our resources and don't work on your stuff during our hours".
Task switching sucks and I imagine it'd be somewhat stressful to feel like "you're gonna get caught out".
Best to keep the two separate unless you're like one of the guys sitting on the rooftop in the Silicon Valley TV show
You mean apply for a new job, right?