Sounds like they didn’t find it valuable enough to bother with.
I agree, lol. This was inside the IT department at the HQ. On one hand, we all needed elevated privs, but on the other hand, think of the damage if one of us was compromised.
[quote=“anon62122146, post:81, topic:79369”]
If you were hourly, maybe, arguably. If salaried, almost certainly not, even in California. However, it sounds like none of them were competent enough to realize that.
[/quote]Just a contractor, but they were looking for temp-to-hire candidates. I didn’t develop my commandlet builder in secrecy. They encouraged me to do it. They knew I wasn’t working on it at work since 300 backlogged tix kept me furiously working all day long. I CMA.
Generally the fact you do it in your spare time doesn’t much matter. For them. On equipment they owned (just a guess). They stuff when you sign in to work computers these days all has language that says “this is for work only”. It’s partially so that whatever you do there is considered theirs. And you may have signed stuff along these lines.
Just for anyone who wants to build something while an employee or even contractor … A) do it on equipment you own b) never cross contaminate that and what you work on for work c) do it on your own time d) if it’s in the same realm as what you do for work (e.g, it some software that is for health industry and you’re in the Heath industry ) be extra diligent and perhaps get something in writing from your employer. E) do not without compensation start using your personally outside-of-work product (finished or not) without a legal agreement.
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As a contractor, managing to make myself redundant is pretty much my definition of success. My job, which is why they pay me, is where possible, to automate enough of my job and teach enough of my skills to the full-time workers so that they no longer need me, in which case I would expect (and usually do) to get terminated.
That’s been the usual course of events. After all, I am supposed to make the company rich… (okay, improve the bottom line a bit) and in return I get a paycheck for the duration of the gig.
After all, if you’re any good, you’ll make 20% salary over full-time workers to make up for having to look for work every few months or a year. And if you do a decent job, most company’s will want you back when they have work for you. And usually the full-timers are pretty grateful, which is also a perk of the job.
(I always felt bad for the full-time workers who got laid off. When I was terminated, I got a few weeks notice to leave things in good shape and usually the full-timers would throw me a good-bye nice lunch (and make me feel guilty for leaving :-)). A full timer who got laid off just got “de-personed” and escorted from their desk out of the office. It was quite awful.)
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Exactly. There’s also a whiff of the Morality of Hard Work trope that annoys me. Success is not inherently proportional to mere effort. We know this, and should stop pretending we do not.
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Oh yeahhhhhhhh, you should hear how I cheer when a contract, which I am paid hourly for, wraps up 2-3 weeks early!
Thanks to recruiters lying about the amount of work to do over the promised contract period. Or Clients bringing in a bunch of extra techs a few days into the project. Or stupid gung-ho nube techs with some misplaced sense of competition.
I often have to make the choice between a short contract with high pay and a much longer one with a lower pay rate. When I take the longer one so that I don’t have to worry about downtime, I am accepting a promise and granting my commitment. When that long project turns out to be a short one with less pay than another option offered, I am betrayed.
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Yes, but those things you mention (cultural creations, essentially) are often NOT owned by the actual creators. It’s fairly recently in the history of the recording industry where songs were copyrighted not by the label, but by the songwriters themselves. Prior to the 1970s or 1980s, songwriting was considered a “work for hire” in the same way other kinds of work are treated. I’d rather that intellectual property across the board is by default owned by the creator rather than a corporation. The recording industry is trending that way, but obviously TV and films are a much more complicated thing, as its the creation of multiple people, not just one or a couple…
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Intellectual property is, by default, owned by the creator. Only by contract can they sign over their rights. A work for hire agreement is a contract that signs copyright over, essentially in advance, to someone else, but it’s still just a contract.
I didn’t mean to threadjack this in to a conversation about the evils of copyright and the recording industry. I was just pointing out that this is a similar situation in which one person essentially scripted his job and sat back and collected a paycheck, which is very much like a musician who records a song. The only reason we think one of those is lazy and the other is not is because of the ridiculous protections that copyright affords “artists.”
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Well, I’ll admit I don’t cheer when a contract is cut 1-5 months early (as has happened a few times in my career) it is an indication of success (and usually means they’ll rehire if they get the opportunity or at least give a glowing reference). The main thing is knowing ahead of time. I’d avoid an employer who gave me less than 2 weeks notice that they’re cutting the contract.
To be fair, it can also work the other way around. I’ve had contracts extended as well - you win some, you lose some. (Although I will admit to grinding my teeth when companies want to renew, but only get final approval days before the contract ends (or in one case, days after the contract ended leaving me in danger of working for free…))
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No, the difference is that the one is guaranteed to get a paycheck, while the other has a 99% chance of making essentially nothing. This has nothing to do with intellectual property, and everything to do about being in business for oneself, along with all the massive risks (and the occasional reward) that entails.
I don’t know, but the idea that I should be able to enjoy both the benefits of being an employee (stability) and the rewards of being one’s own business (I am rewarded the money I bring in) without the attendant risk that goes along with it (massively high chance that my earnings are negative) seem a little… entitled.
When I am the one betting my house, then I feel entitled to keep all the upside as well. But given I don’t, then I’m happy to be hired by the guy who has. Unlike him, I get a guaranteed paycheck for my best efforts to make him money.
(Contractor is slightly different - I am paid more per hour to utilize the fewest hours that my skills allow me to perform the task.)
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I do know all that, actually. I have been studying this topic for a while now, at least tangentially… 
In my fact my dissertation adviser wrote the book on piracy and intellectual property in the music industry…
Which until recently was standard procedure in the recording industry. It does still happen, especially for pop artists. There was (and in some cases continues to be) a high level of exploitation between labels and artists, especially black artists. On top of that, most songs or albums are not worth nearly as much as all that, either. Not everything is of equal value to the Beatles back catalogue. Touring is a time consuming endeavor, can be exhausting, and is not always the best way to make a living as a working artists. Most of the time, they have no retirement fund, and work late into their lives. A solid back catalogue can make all the difference between a retirement in dignity and a retirement on the road. And frankly, I’d rather see the creators of the works directly benefit from their ownership of intellectual property than the execs at Warner Brothers or EMI. Why do they deserve it more for NOT having actually created anything?
if I’m not mistaken, much of what coders create (as salaried employees) are considered works for hire, are they not? Isn’t that covered under many contracts. And isn’t that generally because the company one works for states that they need to own the intellectual property created by their workers in order to realize a profit?
I’m all for forking this, as I think it’s an interesting topic that might bring about a good discussion.
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And for much of the history of the industry, it was execs who benefited from the work of others, which seems more entitled to me - sure they sometimes did the promoting, setting up tours, etc, but more often than not, they didn’t - they would outsource that work elsewhere.
We’re not talking about the majority of artists making Prince or Madonna $$$ here. Most of them, who own their intellectual property, make a lower class living, actually. I don’t think that’s really being entitled, being able to benefit from something one creates when the system that has been set up, has consistently benefited others. An artist owning their intellectual property makes sense to me. They can replicate it, sell its use, or hoard it (the Prince model) as THEY see fit. There is certainly an argument to be made for major overhaul of the IP system, which includes much shorter term for copyright (something closer to patents), but in the current climate, I’d much rather the creator be the direct beneficiary of their labor, as opposed to a corporation.
Do you guys have a case to be made that coders should not function under work for hire clauses in their employment contracts? I think that’s a case to be made, but does it make any sense, do you think? Obviously, when one makes a project on their own, they own it, but what about stuff you make under the terms of your contract? Should that be your or the companies property? What about this case, where a guy automated his job?
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Ha! That’s actually kind of funny. I frequently point out that most of what people think is neat over at the new job is actually because I’m lazy and don’t like having to do all this work, and get a lot of ‘that’s not lazy!’
But the root cause is definitely lazy! I’m fully aware of what’s going on in my head when I automate the heck out of something.
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Well both Boeing and CSC were very up front about it. Anything you code/make/design while on the company clock belongs to them and you signed it.
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Even for a lot of stuff where I thought of automating but never did cause it was never in big enough numbers in one go and all the data you enter into the canned wizards from microsoft was all the same data I would have to enter into whatever format data file to feed the script. I usually had the process down to where I could be 1,2,3 done thanks and get back to whatever website I was looking at.
I would constantly get told how good and speedy I was at tickets to which I would reply well I am lazy, the faster this gets done the more time I have to goof off.
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That’s how it is - build some piece of software as an employee and it is NOT YOURS. You’ll have a hard time getting any court to agree with you unless things were EXPLICITLY signed otherwise – and you probably did explicitly sign these rights away when you took the job.
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Or at least do something INTERESTING, right? It’s amazing how much ‘reporting for reporting’s sake with no actionable business intelligence’ I end up doing. That crap gets automated or (hopefully) killed.
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I had a professor who suggested that leisure (not necessity) is the mother of invention.
(Sometimes, or often, it backfires – “wow, you’re finished?! Then let’s add this to your workload” – but I’d agree with him.)
Edited for clarity (maybe)
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there was always that one out of 100 tickets that was oh wait… this is interesting and took some thinking and time to fix as well as documentation to the tribal knowledge bank. sadly most of the time it never would come up again or by the time it did we were on a new OS so documentation was only good for a starting point to trouble shooting.
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I used to get a lot of gems at the last job (Data analytic work with the various Medicaid, Medicare, and other programs). It was amazing what useful things that I was able to tease out once I got a bunch of redundant work off my plate. Got a bad med off the market, saved a bunch of foster kids from an abusive family, managed to recover enough match to save the State about 10M from our Childless Adults program, that sort of thing.
They were really exciting because there were real people we were helping!
Even over here on the insurance side (commercial liability, that sort of thing) there are definitely some great moments now that I’m drilling enough to show that what people thought and what is actually going on aren’t necessarily the same thing.
That’s the sort of stuff that gets the juices flowing and keeps me interested. Just re-running scripts and such makes the day take forever.
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