Comment by EvanMiller | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EvanMiller | Hacker News Reader

Man. This article, and the business-book morality that underpins it, is utter tripe.

I heartily advocate that when it comes to managing their own time, employees do whatever they can get away with without getting fired. When it comes to negotiating compensation, companies exercise an enormous strategic advantage over employees, which they've proven completely willing to exercise in dishonest ways (cf. Apple/Google "non-poach" agreements). So when it comes to time-management, in the general case, I say fuck 'em. Get your work done, but when the door's closed, get out the clown suit and practice your torch-juggling routine if that's what you feel like doing.

Of course if you actually like your boss, or you don't think your company is run by dicks, and you'd feel bad about getting clown makeup on the company furniture, then don't do it. But only YOU can decide what's right in a given situation. No one needs employment morality lessons from business book authors.

It's non-sensical because it conflates two different types of employment contracts: contracts for time and contracts for results. If you're paid by the hour (or by the six minute increment in my case), its absolutely true that you shouldn't be working on a side project when you're charging your employer for time worked. But if you're a salaried employee, you're paid for work product, not for your time. As long as you're within the expected range of work output, it matters fuck-all what you do with your office doors closed.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you're not paying your employee extra when a deadline is approaching and he's working 13 hour days cutting into his personal time, you damn well can't complain if he works on personal things on light days when he doesn't have much work.

I completely agree with you here. If the company leverages everything they have to keep you compensated as low as possible to keep you, then you should in turn leverage all of your work against them and do as little as possible for them to keep you. That's the only honest way to progress society. Reward good business practices with good labor. You aren't doing anyone any long term good by pretending you owe your boss anything. Provide them with the labor they pay for and nothing more. Teach employers that payment can come in a huge variety of ways. From your standard monetary compensation, ranging all the way to simply respect and healthy work environments.

>You aren't doing anyone any long term good by pretending you owe your boss anything.

The best bosses know this and will tell you as much, they will help you find out what you want to do. They realize that your first job is not going to be your last and help you focus on developing your skills. Then they hi five you when you get a better job.

Agreed, pretty much 90% of that article was hedging to pander to "outraged" stupid people. Except I think the people that were "outraged" by the original article are probably mostly fictitious, or at least exaggerated.

I mean, what's the takeaway from the article? "Have a diverse skillset". Got it. Mind blown. (Except not).

Spot on. As a web development company, we not only encourage it, but also fund and help develop employee side-projects. Bottom-line, if you hire passionate people, you should expect they'll want the same things you do as an employer (I.e. being able to steer you ship). Why fight this?

I know this methodology doesn't quite work well for the likes of Apple and Google, but I think if more companies realized this inevitability, they could actually use it to their advantage and prevent a lot of drama.

Out of interest, how do you approach the legal aspects of funding/supporting side projects? In particular, what happens if one of those side-projects becomes insanely profitable?

Do you just ignore it?

Do you formally give your employees full rights to their work (which is part funded by you)?

Do you have a formal agreement giving you a stake in their work?

We started out wanting to do a co-op, but after some legal woes we realized that wasn't going to be easy. This was our compromise.

> In particular, what happens if one of those side-projects becomes insanely profitable?

So far that hasn't happened. Much like the Y-Combinator model, we have a small stake in the company. If one of the projects became insanely profitable, we'd stand to benefit immensely. Just the involvement would likely generate all kinds of spinoffs (i.e. media coverage, etc)

> Do you formally give your employees full rights to their work (which is part funded by you)?

We try to stay away from owning or licensing code in general. We have a bit of a mantra here, we build ships, we don't sail them. In that regard, we'd rather benefit from the spinoff potential than the possibility of a windfall.

> Do you have a formal agreement giving you a stake in their work?

Yes, but not in perpetuity. We're interested mainly in fulfilling progressive ideas and seeing them through. After working in the biz long enough, you start to see a pattern among passionate people. They pour their heart into their craft - for someone else, and that works for many people, but for those who want something more, you lose an employee regardless - might as well benefit from it.

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