Re: How do you view your employment?

What I'm really wondering is... ok, we all understand just how scary this really is, but is there anything I can do about it now, or am I getting the shaft for the duration of my employment with my current company? Particularly in this economy, it's going to be downright impossible (not to mention hazardous) to ask for an adaptation of an existing IP contract. Does this mean I'm SOL until I can find another employer... hoping they'll allow me some "pushback" as it's been referred to? Or do I simply troddle on, playing Russian roulette with my personal projects?

It really is frightening... contract or no, why should my employer have the right to all of my personal creations when I'm "off the clock"? Even though such a contract is legally binding... should it really be? Isn't there some civil statute that takes precedence over this burdening extension of employer powers?

-fuzzyping

Comment on Re: How do you view your employment?

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Re: Re: How do you view your employment? by dws (Chancellor) on Mar 21, 2002 at 05:45 UTC
Particularly in this economy, it's going to be downright impossible (not to mention hazardous) to ask for an adaptation of an existing IP contract. Realistically, what's the worst that could happen if you were to ask? My guess is that they'd say no, and perhaps pay extra attention to what you were up to for a while. If that's true, then you risk very little by asking. One of the guys in my group went to the company president a while back to get sign-off to work on a particular Open Source project. He persisted in the face of some minor flack, and eventually got written permission. (In this particular case, we were using some Open Source technology, and we were able to make the argument that it was worth to not have to reapply our bug fixes each time the techology was updated). You often risk very little by asking. Sales and Marketing folks know this -- they get told "no" a lot, but they still get the hot dates.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: How do you view your employment? by fuzzyping (Chaplain) on Mar 21, 2002 at 05:51 UTC
The worst? I think tilly has shown us the worst case. Since my donations to the community aren't necessarily as profound as his, I can't compare directly. However, I feel that I would face the possibility of losing rights to all the code I've developed on my own time during the tenure of my employment. Isn't that what this dilemma has taught us? And isn't that bad enough? -fuzzyping	[reply]