Slashdot Mirror
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."
Is that the show about people who go around with a wrench and screwdriver and work on loosening nuts and screws, or what? Reality TV at it's finest. Loser.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
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.
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.