>Thus, any similar work you do on your own time cannot be done without your brain using some of what is in your head, which you learned/figured out on company time.
Should I be writing all my past employers checks because I am using things I learned "on their time"? I had a job where we used CakePHP, and I learned much about the framework during this job; now, should all my future CakePHP work (of which there is hopefully very little) belong to the employer that first facilitated my learning of CakePHP? Should I write a past employer a check when the bad management practices I observed there are avoided due to my past experience? Do they own my wisdom on that subject now?
I think you can see where we're going with this. I think that anything that is not performed in the course of your ordinary job duties, not directly related to the company or its primary businesses, and performed outside of company time and facilities blatantly belongs to its original author.
>Think about it: you hire someone to solve a problem. You pay them to figure it out and implement. Then they turn around and implement the same solution, which you paid them to think about, for someone else?
Uh, yeah, this happens all the time. That's what most consulting firms do. You think when you hire a web firm to build your e-commerce site they always start from scratch on the shopping cart program? The cart was written the first time they had an e-commerce job, and now they reuse it. This is good practice and totally kosher, and should be expected, unless you explicitly request a custom shopping cart program with copyright assignment.
Should I be writing all my past employers checks because I am using things I learned "on their time"? I had a job where we used CakePHP, and I learned much about the framework during this job; now, should all my future CakePHP work (of which there is hopefully very little) belong to the employer that first facilitated my learning of CakePHP? Should I write a past employer a check when the bad management practices I observed there are avoided due to my past experience? Do they own my wisdom on that subject now?
I think you can see where we're going with this. I think that anything that is not performed in the course of your ordinary job duties, not directly related to the company or its primary businesses, and performed outside of company time and facilities blatantly belongs to its original author.
>Think about it: you hire someone to solve a problem. You pay them to figure it out and implement. Then they turn around and implement the same solution, which you paid them to think about, for someone else?
Uh, yeah, this happens all the time. That's what most consulting firms do. You think when you hire a web firm to build your e-commerce site they always start from scratch on the shopping cart program? The cart was written the first time they had an e-commerce job, and now they reuse it. This is good practice and totally kosher, and should be expected, unless you explicitly request a custom shopping cart program with copyright assignment.