That is cool. I was working where we were just ticket techs that worked on servers instead of desktops for the most part. But then with 10K+ servers things need poking on a regular basis for one reason or another. We were supposed to figure out trends and such but most of them tended to be yeah it is a false positive but reconfiguring the alarm means we will end up ignoring the disk actually being full as opposed to getting a ticket every time sql backups run and the temp files bump over the limit for an hour or so and get cleaned up by the time we see the ticket, and if we would give them more disk space they just end up using it and the process starts all over again. Annoying stuff that no matter how we looked at it checking the false positives and dealing with the exceptions was the only way to approach it.
Oh man, that stuff is a PITA. I got to keep out of most of the database work at first, but our uber-DBA sat right behind me so I had to be pretty careful about my queries, especially since I was the one creating the big member-month analytic universe and that set of queries was pretty harsh.
Eventually he taught me some tricks (rolling window/analytic functions to the rescue!) and it was pretty amazing how much of a difference it made, but we had a stretch where our servers were pretty under spec and the poor guy was always juggling processes and space. We had one task that we had to run for a while, offload completely, and then re-import the next day so it didnāt use up all the space that the regular load processes needed.
Wow, that brings me back!
And I think thatās common practice across the industry?
Very. They are paying for you to build an end product for them. Very much falls under the works for hire. Also having say the patents and what not that may arise from developing a new technology or structure would be a major headache for he company if it went to each individual engineer (or really group) that developed the specific part so I can kinda see their side of the issue in that case.
The only times I have seen where āworks were stolenā it turns out that the employee was doing more than incidental use of company time and/or equipment after a proper investigation is done. But a general rule is if you got something good you figured out on your own time best to quit first or lawyer up with lots of documentation first.
Didnāt the Bratz guy have a big fight with Mattel over this?
And yes, all the engineering work Iāve ever done had been owned by the company, not me. Its been written into every contract.
Iāve had jobs where they had you sign a paper saying they owned the work you produced off the clock too. I *ahem* forgot to sign it and they didnāt notice. I donāt know how enforceable it was but it wasnāt even a job coding.
Lucky for everyone involved, I didnāt program anything off-the-clock that was worth any money so none of us got to find out the hard way.
Boeing is like that but in reality if you design some thing that isnāt going to compete with them then they donāt care. I think the companies are more worried about you using inside knowledge to make a competing thingy as opposed to something that you did in your own time.
It was hard not to compete with that company. They had no idea what they wanted to do when they grew up so they had fingers in a billion different pies.
And they were also pretty bad at sharing any knowledge, let alone inside knowledge. 
Nothing to disagree with in your post. Some comments, thoughā¦
The structure of the system was that gatekeepers were (until the top 0.01%) more valuable than the talent, which is what enabled them to keep most of the money and worse still, many of the rightsā¦ Iām much happier with a system where the opportunity exists to interact directly with customers, and more importantly, the artists clearly own their work.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, the customers seem to mostly want vetted product so they donāt to spend thousands of hours sampling themselves but they only want to pay the price of un-vetted product, so thereās a bit of a clash there - but thatās a different rant.
Itās not entitled at all. But then they arenāt earning a salary. My claim was that artists deserve their royalties because they donāt earn a paycheck - itās not laziness, itās their right!
However, if I create something that earns money for time, then itās the company that deserves the money, not me. I got paid a salary.
My right to reward ends with my salary. On the other hand, if a company wants to retain me, and Iām making them millions, then theyād probably be smart to offer some sort of reward. Itās never entitled to seek better terms elsewhere.
Also, if one has such amazing skills that one can negotiate some sort of rights to your work and still get a salary, Iām all for it. I strongly believe in government mandated hiring practices, but I donāt believe a right to your own work produced for hire is among them. (I strongly believe that ācompany own everything you produce while hiredā clauses should be illegal if not related to your position/employee. Iāve struck them out of every employment contract Iāve ever had.)
Yes, if you make bank on an idea, why wouldnāt they come find you?
Thatās pretty much the conceit of the best Heinlein story ever, The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail which can be found inside the otherwise underwhelming novel Time Enough for Love.
Iām not sure Iām following. They tried to make me sign a piece of paper that said programming work I did on my own time with my own equipment was theirs ā¦ and I wasnāt even hired to program.
Even if I had signed and had produced something marketable on my own time, I donāt think it would be enforceable since they werenāt paying me even enough to adequately compensate for the job they had hired me for let alone for my hobby work.
You should be a lawyer in contract law!
Iām sure thatās exactly how they work.
āI should have been a great many things, Mr. Mayor.ā
ā Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
In the U.S. in general, a contract has to have āconsiderationā on each side in order to be enforceable. Iām not a lawyer but I have to assume that applies to employment also.
Okay, but that is what Iām saying. The employee has NO reason to be honest with the employer, because the power balance between the two is ludicrously unfair. This employee made something that generated at least his salaries worth in value, and given the first chance the employer would take 100% of that for themselves. Thatās fucked up, even if, nay especially if it is normal.
Yes, a paycheck.
Fair points, particularly #1. Anyone that capably lazy is the kind of person that you hear about programming their own coffee makers and crap like that. They canāt help it.
I think of it like someone you pay to redo your kitchen. When heās done ā in the end ā you pay him and you have the kitchen. Imagine, after you paid in the final amount due, if he said āthanks - this kitchen is mine nowā. Same for whatever you build as an employee. Youāre building it on their time, with their equipment, with their software licenses, and youāre getting paid to do it. Seems fair to me that they what you build is theirs not yours My $0.02.
Yeah I wouldnāt sign that! Thatās a bit over the top, to put it mildly. Companies just hope people are just happy enough to have a job and theyāll sign anything put in front of them. This clause is BS to say the least.
Okay, first allow me to explicitly define a couple terms for my comment as I use them so that it can be concise and coherent.
- Product - Something of value
- Capital - Something that can increase revenue/product
- Surplus - Revenue/product generated above and beyond what was contracted for
- Contract - The agreement between employer and employee about what product / what quantity will be provided and what compensation will be provided
On its surface that example presents no conflict. It would be ludicrous if a contractor told the client they owned part of their kitchen. The contract was they would provide the client a kitchen and would receive some amount of money. Theyāre reneging on their contract if they claim ownership of the product the client contracted explicit ownership of.
However, I do not think that example touches on the issue I am discussing. Letās tweak it.
A contractor is remodeling a clients home on a flat rate contract, based on their estimate of hours of labor. One day while taking measurements, they stumble onto a technique that vastly increases their efficiency and they complete the project in half the time/labor. Their technique, however, did get developed on the clock. The client is annoyed, but when you break it down this is what happened:
- The contractor generated capital that increased the amount of product they could produce.
- There was a surplus (or potential for it rather). If the contract continued working, they could have done a lot more in the same amount of time they estimated.
- This surplus was distributed completely to the contractor. Unless the time saved had value to the client, they received nothing extra out of the deal like the contractor did.
So in response should the client receive all the extra revenue that technique generates for the contractor in the future, even if they never contract with them again? After all, the technique was developed on their time, even though the contractor still delivered on their contracted product within the provided limits.
Should the contractor perhaps provide a little extra free work for that client as a token of gratitude?
The product was delivered for the price that was agreed to. What weāre quibbling about here is actually the distribution of the capital and the surplus. I think that since the client provided the patronage and the contractor provided the domain knowledge / invention, that they should share in the surplus. The contractor should provide some extra work for the client, but should not owe them some percentage of all their future earnings.
Thatās not how our society works right now though, particularly in the programming field. Right now, the employer gets 100% of the capital and the surplus generated by the employees by default. I think thatās fucked up, and leads to a modern form of feudalism where a minority owns all the capital and has all the power. Thatās the point Iām trying to make. In my ideal world, Lazy Programmer would be able to cut his hours back and work actively for a couple days a week, and both he and the employer would be richer for his invention.
