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Comment by borgia | Hacker News Reader

>At a recent interview I mentioned I like tinkering with code on the side and was told I'd have to give that up and stop contributing to open source.

I faced similar in my last company (not with Apple). Now find it very difficult to get working on a side project or similar at home after having not done anything in that regard in a few years.

Ideas I once had to develop are long gone. Bleh.

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IBM had us sign something that said we couldn't work on outside projects without permission. It seems like it's not that difficult to get permission. Most people just ignore it.

When we got notice of the acquisition a group of devs had a lawyer come in and from what I hear the lawyer basically said "don't sign this if you want to do anything outside of work ever".

I just thought this was common for these megacorps. Is that not the case? I also wonder if they can actually enforce something like that in California.

It's incredibly ironic that Apple was founded with the intention of being the anti-IBM.

Check out California code 2870 which basically says anything you work on at home, on your own time, using your own equipment, and not related to your employers line of business, is yours. The company can still fire you for your side business though.

When checking out California Labor Code section 2870, also remember to check out California Labor Code section 2871, which expressly states that the restriction in 2870 does not limit the employer's right to require the employee to provide confidential disclosure of inventions during the employee's term of employment, and also to require a review process by the employer to "determine such issues as may arise" related to the disclosed inventions.

Sure, but I imagine the consequences of noncompliance are limited to you being fired.

The "not related to your employer's line of business" is the tricky clause. With a large diversified tech conglomerate like IBM, Apple, or Google, they could conceivably argue that anything tech-related was in their line of business. They may not win, but you don't really want to fight one of their legal teams in court, and so it had a chilling effect regardless.

Exactly. There is literally no market I could enter that IBM doesn't have some presence in.

I'm not actually in CA I was just curious about CA laws because they seem to lean the most on the side of the employees compared to other states.

At macromedia I had to list the projects I was working on outside the company - not a problem, but it needed to be done.

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