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Why you should make your discoveries public

SDET

Banned
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Joined
May 1, 2015
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Location
Texas
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Libertarian - Right
I have noticed a pattern to the non-compete and other agreements put in front of me. Your discoveries become company property unless they are publicly available knowledge. For example, if I develop a programming approach where new tasks can get done by simply entering records in a database and that becomes my default programming style, a company can claim it and prohibit me from using it elsewhere. Imagine being prohibited from doing anything the way you naturally do it. It would be like forcing a right handed person to be left handed. Given the publicly available knowledge exclusion, it would seem to be a sensible thing to do to publish and present a new framework you invent to the public BEFORE implementing it for your employer. Thoughts?
 
I have noticed a pattern to the non-compete and other agreements put in front of me. Your discoveries become company property unless they are publicly available knowledge. For example, if I develop a programming approach where new tasks can get done by simply entering records in a database and that becomes my default programming style, a company can claim it and prohibit me from using it elsewhere. Imagine being prohibited from doing anything the way you naturally do it. It would be like forcing a right handed person to be left handed. Given the publicly available knowledge exclusion, it would seem to be a sensible thing to do to publish and present a new framework you invent to the public BEFORE implementing it for your employer. Thoughts?

I personally would not sign a onerous contract like that, unless they were paying seriously silly amounts of money. And I mean silly serious amounts of money like as in high 6 digit yearly to start with a golden parachute attachment to boot. In a standard employment contract I would negotiate to be able to use my discoveries for myself or I get compensation, and the no compete clause IF there was one would be for no more than a couple of months at most, and I would try for a parachute. I am a firm believer in they what they pay for and a bit more and that's it. If I give them extra its at MY discretion, not theirs.

As for your idea. I would talk to an attorney before I did anything like that and let them examine the particulars of the contract and advise you from there. It would be worth your time and money. Who knows, a lot of employment contracts have a lot of unlawful clauses in them and he might find a couple.
 
I personally would not sign a onerous contract like that, unless they were paying seriously silly amounts of money. And I mean silly serious amounts of money like as in high 6 digit yearly to start with a golden parachute attachment to boot. In a standard employment contract I would negotiate to be able to use my discoveries for myself or I get compensation, and the no compete clause IF there was one would be for no more than a couple of months at most, and I would try for a parachute. I am a firm believer in they what they pay for and a bit more and that's it. If I give them extra its at MY discretion, not theirs.

As for your idea. I would talk to an attorney before I did anything like that and let them examine the particulars of the contract and advise you from there. It would be worth your time and money. Who knows, a lot of employment contracts have a lot of unlawful clauses in them and he might find a couple.

Given how the employer has the upper hand, it's often next to impossible to avoid signing such things. A friend of mine had another approach: Don't implement such a framework with an employer with that kind of an agreement. Just leave current processes in place even if they are inferior to what you would implement. That means just do what everybody else on the team is doing. Companies shoot themselves in the foot by putting employees in a position of producing less than their best work.
 
Given how the employer has the upper hand, it's often next to impossible to avoid signing such things. A friend of mine had another approach: Don't implement such a framework with an employer with that kind of an agreement. Just leave current processes in place even if they are inferior to what you would implement. That means just do what everybody else on the team is doing. Companies shoot themselves in the foot by putting employees in a position of producing less than their best work.

The situation you describe does not lead me to accept that the employer has the upper hand at all.


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Given how the employer has the upper hand, it's often next to impossible to avoid signing such things. A friend of mine had another approach: Don't implement such a framework with an employer with that kind of an agreement. Just leave current processes in place even if they are inferior to what you would implement. That means just do what everybody else on the team is doing. Companies shoot themselves in the foot by putting employees in a position of producing less than their best work.

Question when you say the employer has the upper hand, how so? Is your market flooded with people of your level of talent and skill set and experience?
 
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