I'm pretty careful to keep personal stuff segregated from work stuff. That means that I generally don't install personal scripts at work (unless the personal stuff is publicly available as open source). That also means that if a company expects me to work at home, they'd better cough up equipment, because I'm not going to "taint" my personal equipment with their licensed software or intellectual property. I figure that keeping a strict separation is a good way to ward off problems. Am I going overboard? Perhaps. But I witnessed a couple of ugly incidents early in my career, and keeping a wall between job and personal work has just seemed like the safest, most ethical way to go.

The other benefit of leaving work stuff behind is that if I ever write the script again, the result is generally better. Rather than reusing something that I'd probably written in a hurry the first time, my subconscious has had a chance to watch out for new tricks and techniques that could be applied to a rewrite. Ever found yourself looking at a snippet and thinking "Oh wow, I wish I'd known that when I wrote XYZ!". By leaving work code at work, I'm giving myself the chance to take advantage of those insights.

The other benefit of leaving work stuff behind is that if I ever write the script again, the result is generally better.

What happens if you use a bit of code that's identical to part of the original? If you came up with a great method of doing something, does that mean that you'll have to deliberately code it badly if you ever rewrite the script at another employer?

What happens if you use a bit of code that's identical to part of the original? If you came up with a great method of doing something, does that mean that you'll have to deliberately code it badly if you ever rewrite the script at another employer?

I never deliberately write bad code, unless I'm writing down an example of how not to do things.

If what comes out of my finger tips the second time around looks alot like the initial effort, that's either an indication that the first attempt was good, or an indication that I haven't learning anything in the meantime. It's often hard to know which of those is true.

I also know that some of the scripts that I've written at work could be seen as containing sensitive information; something that might be useful to a competitor or whatnot. Another mess that you just don't want to get into.

Granted. I know what kind of situation I'm in here. My question really goes to people's opinions on the topic as a whole. Should we be ensuring that we can take our work and learning with us? If for nothing more than the processes we've learned? If I come up with a faster sort algorithm that is being used for high-speed data collection, does that mean I shouldn't be able to use it at my next job? Many of us sign non-competition agreements anyway, so it's not like we're going to the nearest competitor, getting a job and doing a core dump. If we are, then that's another ball of twine...

Thoughts?

C-.

Another way around the problem: I recently contracted on a project with a lead developer who was open-source-friendly, so during our first spec discussion, I asked if I could contribute my work to CPAN when we were finished. He thought it was a great idea, and it helped me decide to take the contract.

___
-DA