Slashdot Asks: Should an Employee Be Fired For Working On Personal Side Projects During Office Hours? (quora.com)

An anonymous reader writes: I found this article that talks about whether an engineer should be fired if s/he is working on a side project. Several people who have commented in the thread say that the employer should first talk to the person and understand why they are working on personal projects during the office hours. One reason, as many suggested, could be that the employee might not have been fairly compensated despite being exceptionally good at the job. In which case, the problem resides somewhere in the management who has failed to live up to the expectations. What do you folks think? Let's not just focus on engineers, per se. It could be an IT guy (who might have a lot of free time in hand), or a programmer.

Comments

You were hired to work for THEM

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for yourself. You want to work on your projects, do it on your time. Why is this complicated? It's not.

Re: You were hired to work for THEM

[saloomy]

Employer here. If my employees tell me in advance (and a few of them have), that they need to respond to a personal project when coding for me if there is a critical issue when on the clock, then I have no problem with it, provided they "clock out" during that time, and it doesn't severely impact the work they provide me, and my requirements are not urgent (like a pressing bug). I think having open and honest conversation is the best way for me and personally I think it helps me retain ambitious and entrepreneurial talent, but I'm a small time employer, and I imagine large HR departments can be PITAs and unaccomodating.