*boggle* Do you really think your (now former) company plans to sue you for using a 3-page script that only you use?? Of course you don't. Then why aren't you taking it with you?? Now, if you took this script to another company and ended up developing it into a product that the new company sold, then I'd start to think you were in a "#f4f4f4" (as in, "not very grey") area.

Just taking it in hopes that you might have some use for it at your next job is a "#fefefe" area to me.

The company paid to send you to training. Have you surgically removed that part of your brain? Did you make a solomn vow to never use that information again?

When I leave a company, I take with me nearly all of the books that they bought for me. Why? Because 90% of them won't be of any use to the guy that replaces me (if there even is one). (If there are some books that have more to with my job than with me, then I leave those.) Just because the company paid for them doesn't mean I have to let them throw them away!

On the rare occasions when the company buys software that only I used (because it worked for me, not because it was particular to the job that only I did), I take that with me too for the same reasons.

And the code that I write for my personal use, I also take with me.

At my previous job, I wrote some code for my personal use. I ended up extending and using it as part of the build procedure for "our" product. I took it with me and it has been of great help for me and some friends in fixing problems with the computers on our desks at work.

My former company has now thrown away the years of work that went into that entire product, including my code. Does anyone really expect me to even feel bad about the fact that I kept that code??

[ Posted anonymously because I didn't want it indexed to my name for eternity, not because I have any moral qualms about this practice nor that I think there are any legal problems with any specific cases of this, but because I don't want some lawyer some day to worry that some case might be a legal problem... Somehow I suspect some will be able to guess the author, which is fine. Just please don't post your guesses here. (: ]