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Comment by anoncow | Hacker News Reader

Always wanted to build something. Tried my hand at a few projects. Worked at it for 3 years, odd jobs kept the money flowing. Recently took up a corporate job. Signed the company contract which takes away my right to work on anything else(profitable or non profitable).

Still want to build. Bidding my time.

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Ask for an out. Explain that it's how you keep your skills up to date, and that it lets you be a more productive and effective employee. In the past I've had this clause in my contracts and had them take it out. They did.

Seems like it could be a long shot in large organizations. The managers close enough to you to be on your side don't have enough clout to override HR responding with "we don't make changes to employee contracts", and the ones who do aren't in touch with the craft enough to understand why you'd want such an exception.

That was the first objection they raised. I pointed out gramatical issues and other flaws in the contract that made them have to send it back to the lawyer anyways, and it came back w/o that clause.

I have successfully gotten a clause like this changed or adjusted in a large corporation twice. Both times I signed first, then raised an issue in an email which was intended to be forwarded to the lawyers. My email included specific, detailed objections ("as written, this means that the company owns the bedtime stories I make up for my children") and proposed alternate language ("We could, for instance, replace the clause 'all intellectual property' with 'all intellectual property related to the company's business or produced using company resources'.").

In one case, an international company with a couple-thousand employees in the US, the company lawyers never got back to me, but the next year the contract was changed and it included a variation of my original proposed language. In the other case, a US company with tens of thousands of employees, the company lawyers got back to me immediately with a statement about how they intended the existing language to be interpreted (and this addressed my concerns).

I can't promise you will get the same results, but I thought it was worth sharing my anecdotes.

In some states, like CA I believe, this might be in your contract, but if you live within the right constraints (e.g. use your own equipment, on your own time, away from your employers facilities, not competing with the employer), then your work is is your own. Of course you should verify with a lawyer if you're really going to pursue anything serious or if your side hobby suddenly promises to become profitable..

Nitpick PS: I think you meant "bide"

Don't you mean 'biding my time'? Anyway, good luck!

I have seen those too. Do people really enforce these?

I would just do my own stuff anyway and just not tell the employer. Fuck whoever says I can't work on my own stuff in my free time.

The problem is, if you manage to create the next Facebook, your former employer's lawyers might come up with a claim that your company is based on IP they own...

How can anyone tell when I started working on my project?

By looking at your github logs perhaps?

I am amazed why is it even a thing? How can employers own what you do in your spare time? (Esp. if it is in an unrelated field.)

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