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Microsoft Rewarding Employees Who Phone It In
theodp writes "For developers who are all about the Benjamins, Microsoft has come up with an intriguing alternative to Google's vaunted 20% time. To boost the number of Windows Phone 7 apps, Microsoft has relaxed a strict rule and will let employees moonlight and keep the resulting intellectual property and 70% of the revenue, as long as that second job is writing apps for WP7-based devices. The rule change offers an option for employees who don't want to leave for the insecurity of a start-up, but still want a shot at recognition and rewards for their own ideas."
Microsoft has relaxed a strict rule and will let employees moonlight and keep the resulting intellectual property
A company letting their employees do what the want in their own free time. They deserve the Nobel peace price!
Seriously, is it common (in the states) to "own" your employees even when they are not at work?
You rephrase it the other way: "Go ahead and start a business in your free time, as long as you're getting all your work done here including meeting time and face time. Oh, but that business has to be for Windows Phone 7 apps, and we'll take 30 percent."
Employees get to work on stuff that inspires them and learn stuff in the process, and the WP7 app portfolio broadens in the process.
Then again, it's not unheard of that companies let their employees moonlight on stuff that doesn't conflict with the company's interests. But I have to confess I don't know the US job market that well.
.: Max Romantschuk
So, say I work for Microsoft, and have a WP7 phone. Each nigh, while the misses is watching 'the biggest looser' on TV, I mess around with the SDK, and come up with a game..... which becomes a bigger hit than angry bird.....
And, then Microsoft, my employer, come and take 30% of the revenue?
BASTARDS!
This just shows the world what every MSFT employee already knows; MSFT is not the great place to work. People are leaving for smaller, better companies and they are starting to have a issue keeping its best people because not even the prime card and health benefits is worth it anymore.
I'd never work for any company that puts restrictions on my out-of-hours work. My time, my IP, my money, period. It is offensive that they think 30% of the money their employees make in their own time should go to Microsoft.
Just goes to show how big and evil most companies in the US have become - almost seems like yanks have accepted their fate as indentured slaves. Just sitting like a good little boy waiting and hoping that the big powerful executives will one day select them for some power.
Ban on out of hours work? IP theft? No holiday time? Insanely expensive medical? Crazy 8-6, 8-8 working hours? Weekends? What the hell is wrong with Americans. How long as they going to let this go on?
This is a passive aggressive move by Microsoft and I think they are going to lose even more people to Facebook for doing this. They are essentially forcing their people who want to earn extra money to do it in a way that beneifts Microsoft, by creating the appearance of false demand on WP7. Clearly not enough people are doing apps for that, because it's probably shitty or there are issues with how Microsoft is handling it. But this isn't a good move for MSFT and it reaffirms that it's one of the companies to be in continual decline until it runs out of money or loses its titanic grip on the OS market. People in the world want democracy and this is an undemocratic company.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
But if they wrote their own iPhone or Android apps they would implicitly own all rights and earn more revenue.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
That seems to be the last word twist of microsoft of anything related with security, right to the mind of their workers. Work by yourself or for anyone else is insecure, so keep working for us, uh, and, you must give us a share of whar you make in your own time for "protection".
Compare MS desperation to RIM, which is only interested in serious developers delivering serious apps. They are not focused on numbers, but, even more so than Apple, want useful Apps.
If MS wants apps, do what apple does. Offer one button on the web site that will download a complete, unencumbered, and free as in beer development kit. Do not play games such as 'students get it for free' or 'you have to develop for us because we are the best' Just give us the tools.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'd never work for any company that puts restrictions on my out-of-hours work.
Good luck supporting a family on the wages of a job without such restriction.
Crazy 8-6, 8-8 working hours? Weekends?
Such working conditions are common in other parts of the world. In order to compete with firms based in India, firms based in the United States are going to have to cut costs somewhere.
How long as they going to let this go on?
It will last for several years, at least until the rising tide has lifted all boats and the currencies of countries currently classified as developing countries are no longer terribly undervalued.
Gah! This kind of thing drives me nuts!
Here is the truth. Microsoft has one of the most liberal employee moonlighting policies of any high tech company. This includes yours. Microsoft has long allowed moonlighting. There are many employees that moonlight. Of course, a lot of moonlighting is writing software. This is often to extend Microsoft products. But there are others as well, some people write books, some write and perform music, some build furniture and some teach.
I have first hand knowledge of several examples, one of which I can talk bout. I hired the guy that develops Paint.Net/a>.. He worked for me a while and we are currently on the same team. Getting permission for him to continue Paint.NET development was easy and a no-brainer.
The only things Microsoft has ever ask of any moonlighter is/p>
Again, moonlighging is very common at Microsoft. Our policies are quite liberal and have been for a very long time. I understand Bill put them inplace himself.
Here, Microsoft is simply making a very liberal policy even more liberal.
-a href="http://foredecker.wordpress.com/about/">Foredecker
Jibe!
Since reading the article is a unforgivable sin on slashdot, I committed this blasphemy on your behalf :P
In other words, before this policy change, MS employees couldn't even write a WP7 app in the first place, they wouldn't be allowed to sell it on the marketplace AFAIK, but now, they can, just like any non-MS employed developer, following the same rules.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
This "new" moonlighting rule is new in the sense it's been in place at least since I started working at Microsoft 3 years ago. Also, moonlighting is in no way restricted to Windows Phone 7. I was actually quite shocked how amazingly fair and modern Microsoft's intellectual property agreement is. As long as what I'm doing doesn't use company resources or secrets and isn't in competition with the product I'm specifically working on, my free time spent and the results thereof is mine to keep.
If Apple announced this, world+dog would deride them for the app restriction, claiming long and loud how 'Lord Jobs' is keeping tight rein over the 'peasants' in his 'domain'.
If RIM Announced this, world+dog would collectively yawn, save for some folks who would stand back in astonishment that the Blackberry actually had apps*
If Google announced this, world+dog would think it was normal, and point to that 20% thing they have.
--
Personally, I see it as Microsoft casting about to bolster its struggling product in any way that it can. They're having a pretty rough go of it, judging by the numbers so far. To give you an idea, I'm willing to wager that WP7 still has more phones in the channel than in customer hands... and there's very little prospect so far that WP 7 will do much more than eke out a presence this year, if they're lucky.
* (they do have apps BTW - I have/use a BB Bold).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
For 20% of your company work time you can work on something still company related but of your choosing rather than dictated by your manager.
versus.
You can work on stuff related to the company's product on your own personal time at your own cost and you bear all the risk, but the company will have 30% of the revenue. Oh, and we'll give you a slice of pizza once a week.
"employees moonlight and keep the resulting intellectual property and 70% of the revenue"
Is the remaining 30% for Apple?
Make that 70% of our base.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
Matt Bishop found the standard Microsoft employment agreement offered as evidence in some litigation http://www.scribd.com/doc/49542881/Microsoft-Employment-Agreement
As you can see the words of the agreement very much discourages moonlighting. The words also say that Microsoft owns your intellectual output. There is an exception process via agreement with management. The words also say you won't use MIcrosoft facilities such as laptops, phones and Internet access for non-Microsoft purposes.
Of course, the gap between words and actions can vary. That's something only those inside Microsoft would know, and it could very well vary by office or manager.
So in the most simplest case their will be a pro-forma IPR notification available from the WP7 team and a policy that managers accept that pro-forma. Two signatures and the paperwork is done. The worst case is an updated Agreement. Again, two signatures and the paperwork is done.
The difference between this and the usual case is that Microsoft *want* this to happen. So getting the legal paperwork sorted is simple rather than obstructive.
This time Balmer got something right. Can we get some chairs thrown around for good luck?
Someone from Google can correct me if I'm really wrong here, but I've asked a number of Google developers if they really get to use their 20% time. The general answers have been either "Yeah right. Hardly anyone does." to "Sure! I can use 20% of the 60-70 hours a week I regularly am at the campus on whatever I want."
Not sure if that's really what people think about when they hear about the 20% time philosophy. Seems like it's more of a marketing / recruiting thing.
I did a startup while working for my first employer, a large corporation. My employment contract with them was pretty damning and a good enough lawyer could have probably pushed me against the wall if he got paid enough to do so. Still, I decided I wanted to go for it and that apologizing would be easier than asking for permission. As it turned out, the startup "made it" and later the same year I quit my day job. Everyone at work knew about my moonlighting and why I was leaving - but I didn't talk to them about it in detail because of the possibility of conflict of interest. I had good relations with my colleagues, so fortunately nobody wanted to antagonize my initiative. As for the top-level management - I'm not sure if they came to know but in any case I wasn't big enough then for them to care. Then, I let my youthful enthusiasm make my decisions for me - but now when I look back they were the logical decisions I would advise anyone in that situation to make: 1) Go for it no matter what, but leave when you get big enough to care about. If you do that, in the worst case your effort will fail and you'll still have your job. In a moderately positive case you'll make a ton but then get sued by your former employer and have to give up 20% or something - big deal. 2) Do your best to be good friends with your coworkers and be an example to follow at work while your are doing the two things at once.
Only microsoft and the like could think of getting 30% off of what you do in your spare time. I mean .... normally rational people would think that what someone does in their SPARE time, belongs to them alone. But it turns out, microsoft has 30% stake in that too ...
Read radical news here
..you cheerleaders love it..
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/31/216201/Google-Hiring-Android-Devs-To-Close-the-Apps-Gap
Its OK, you having a defective brain is probably not your fault.
If Microsoft isn't Microsoft anymore then we're all winners. I'm glad they're finally getting the idea. Too bad they were forced into this position and they're acting out of desperation. It's a start though, if they see that it's successful maybe they'll start really catching on. Like for reals.
Twinstiq, game news
Approving WM7 apps that compete with his/her moonlighting apps.
N/T
The qualified indian workers demand the same as western workers, or they move to the west and get the same wage there.
For one thing, movement of labor across national boundaries is limited by immigration policies. For another, there is a substantially higher cost of living in the United States than in India on an exchange rate basis, and only the gradual appreciation of the rupee can clear this up.
... is it common (in the states) to "own" your employees even when they are not at work?
It is common that your salary is compensation for both your onsite labor and any good ideas that you may have. It is also common to give your employer a list of exceptions, say personal projects you worked on before employment began. Furthermore it is also common to get your employer to wave any claims on an idea they are not interested in. For example some of the key design ideas that led to the first Apple computer were made while employed by HP, HP waved their claims.
This is bad for all of us because it slows down the invention of new things to the angular flow rate of cold molasses.
Not necessarily. Sometimes an individual does not have the resources to bring the idea to market. Other times the company simply signs a waiver saying they relinquish any claim on this idea, IIRC as HP did for some of Steve Wozniak's idea. You could say Apple Computer was born from HP waivers to some degree.
... If they don't order it and you create it on your own time and it's different enough than what you're doing then it should be your property ...
Different from your work or the company's business? Your work could be on operating systems. Your company could be in the business of providing software for personal computer users. You could have an idea for a word processor. Its not related to your work but it is related to your company's business. Your salary may be compensation for both your directed labor and any ideas on how the company may further its business.
Personally the companies I've worked for have been quite reasonable about this. Employment contracts with a section for work/projects immune from company claims. Waivers that were easy to get if the company had no interest in a new idea.
So if you work at Apple or Google and sell Apps in their respective marketplaces you get 100%?
It is what it is.
Didn't the Apple I technically belong to HP because of Woz's employment.... but they rejected it?
The actual quote from the (paywalled) article is
The company is offering what Mr. Watson said was a standard split on app sales: 70 percent to the developers, 30 percent to Microsoft.
The 30% is indeed the normal amount that Microsoft takes on all WP7 apps, so it looks like that is what the summary is referring to, although the wording was very misleading.
The summary is very misleading. That 30% is the standard cut that MS gets for WP7 Apps and has nothing to do with their employee moonlighting policies.
There are obviously shops out there that try to say that they own everything the employee does. In most places this is not legal and even if it is, you're an idiot to sign them.
I run a shop that does youth sports management web applications. The only time I care about what my employees doing in their spare time is when it's directly relevant to their job. If you work for me and then you turn around and write your own youth sports application in your spare time, I'm going to sue your pants off because you have access to our code, our libraries, our ideas, and our clients' business needs and you can't pretend that you aren't using any of those things in your new and competing product.
But if you write a game or a web app that clearly has got nothing to do with your job, such that the only tenuous connection I can establish between your work for us and your free time project is that you became a more competent programmer while working for us, that's awesome for you and good for us because it means you're improving yourself and making an extra buck. If you make so many extra bucks on the side that you quit your job, well that sucks for me, but you earned it.
There are definitely some gray areas here. Like what if you start working in your spare time on an app that competes with us and then quit your job a month later? Then you get the 'hair salon migration rule' - if you took our stuff (even our abstract stuff) or solicit any of our clients to leave with you, then we go to court. But let's say you quit your job because you think the company sucks or that I'm a jerk and then a year later you start working on a competing product. Forget the law for a moment -- what does your gut tell you is the right answer here? For me, if you've been gone for a year, the only connection between what you're doing now with what you did for us a year ago is that you clearly learned a lot about the business from us, but unless you actually swiped any of our code, 'knowing how the business works' is not a crime. I don't want to police what you do after you stop working for us unless there's a very real concern that you've stolen our mojo.
The analogy to what MS is doing also seems to be a little bit of a gray area. Our company makes niche software so there's not a huge sphere of relevant work out there. but if your job for MS is WM7 development, that's a bit different. It's tough for you to say that your free time WM7 development has got nothing to do with your professional WM7 development, and MS is basically saying that we'll compromise with you -- rather than having to figure out (probably in court) whether or not your work is yours, theirs, or a conflict of interest, they're just saying 'go do what you want, and if what you want happens to be similar to your day job, we'll sign off on it and let you keep most of the revenue.'
From a business perspective, that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Seriously, is it common (in the states) to "own" your employees even when they are not at work?
Um. Yes. It's fairly common in europe as well.
Have you actually checked your employment contract?
Working on Open Source at home?
Somewhat related to your job?
Your company probably owns (or can legally claim to own) what you've written.
Deleted
...that I work in the open source world.
Sure, my company can take whatever I create! But it's going to be L/GPL'd, which is fine by me.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What is the "strict rule?" My agreement at MS said that as long as MS had "first call" on me, I could write anything I wanted on my own time. They could claim work that used company resources or related to what I was doing for them, which seems reasonable; on the other hand they gave us a free MSDN membership which is only useful if one plans to create something. A lot of the people I worked with had personal projects or even did contract work like I did. There was no discussion of permission or notification, and my boss and I discussed our side projects upon occasion.
Was this rule about employees not writing their own WP7 phone apps? I could sort of see how that might be "related" to their work for MS, if they were in the WP group, but it would be a really stupid policy since it would block the people most qualified from creating the very thing WP7 needs to survive.
Many apps these days are cross platform. Things like messengers, social apps (dating/friend finding), or games, or anything of that nature.
Will this agreement allow them to port those apps so long as they're made for the Windows phone first?
For me, and mine as much as they'll take my guidance, I choose "no". I've had enough of folk who think because they pay me to do some things they own all of what I can be even in my off-hours, or after I don't do stuff for them any more. I've worked for folk who think they can buy and sell people before, and I'm not interested in doing so again. By this practice Microsoft prevents professionals from engaging in their normal professions, in Seattle at least. In California and some other states this isn't enforceable as they protect a workman's right to practice his trade.
As I've said before, my local septic company is always hiring. They won't claim ownership of my off-hours thoughts, nor claim ownership of them after I've left. Honest work is too easy to get to submit to this. People are not property. Not in my America. I get to choose, and I choose "no".
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Professional athlete unions don't limit the pay of athletes, do they?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything.
Also, TIL that in the USA, you can hog what your employees do in their free time. Amazing.
... can employees get excited about being told that not only can you work on your own time (as long as you only work on Approved Projects), but your Benevolent Corporate Master will *only* take 30% of the profits!
Seems like a great incentive for MS programmers to ditch trying out new computer skills in lieu of more woodshop or home improvement classes - at least then you make 100% of what you earn...
And it doesn't really sound that unreasonable to me. Companies don't want to compete against their own employees - the incentives to steal company ideas, client contact lists, etc, would be pretty high.
The degree to which this is enforced does vary quite a bit - in my outfit you need to get approval to moonlight, but as long as you're not directly competing with the company and the extra hours spent don't drag down your work performance; I've never heard of it getting disapproved.
... is that they feel like they will be getting enough work out of their actual job without taking on yet another job at home - so signing away their rights doesn't cost them anything. I was a naval reservist for a number of years, and ended up having to do a lot of reserve admin in my copious spare time. I can't even describe what a drag it was to work all day, come home, help get dinner together, etc... and then be looking at another hour or two of work before I could actually relax.
Seriously, not wanting to take on another job doesn't mean they're lazy, uncreative slobs. Not everyone wants to spend every waking hour on work.
A hobby is one thing - these agreements don't keep you from having IT as a hobby. They keep you from doing IT as a business, which is not at all the same thing.
... the NFL players union seems to be structured like this. All their contracts seem to include performance bonuses, more talented players make more money, players can move from team to team rather than being locked into where they're drafted (that one is thanks TO the NFLPA), players can get cut based on poor performance. So it's not like it's impossible to do this. And under this scenario, you negotiate for the same things as usual: salary (in the form of pay bands or whatever), working conditions, benefits, and protection from arbitrary firing.
Yes, unions are human institutions and as such, are somewhat screwed up. So is management.For some reason, it's seen as perfectly reasonable to conclude that because unions are somewhat screwed up, we should get rid of them - but applying that logic to management is seen as nuts.