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

Posted by msmash on from the let's-get-this-going dept.

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.

9 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. Well, sadly, probably.... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    If you are a W2 employee and working on company time on your own projects, you might have more to worry about than being fired.

    If you are creating new content, inventing a new gadget, etc....and you do it on company time, you may find that you DO NOT OWN what you have created.

    Many if not most employment contracts/agreements have verbiage that states that anything you come up with on company time, belongs to the company.

    They may not fire you, but they will now own it and you won't make any $$ on the side for it....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:Well, sadly, probably.... by Moof123 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Most employment agreements are such that the company owns it even if it is outside of normal hours. So inventions you come up with on your own time are not yours.

      I guess my gripe is that most companies expect a blurring of your work/personal time when it is in their favor. It is far to common for a boss to call someone at home, or expect work to occur remotely after hours or on weekends. So morally, the opposite should be true.

      Salaried positions do NOT require 8 hours of work, they can't legally. It is the flipside of the no-overtime equation. You have to be paid for days you work, but you are paid to do a job, not work a set number of hours. It gets really fuzzy (usually not in a workers favor), but essentially salaried workers are supposed to have a certain amount of autonomy in how they carry out their work.

      In days of yore companies like HP, and Google (somewhat laughably) encouraged outside projects with a notion of 10% of your time being an acceptable amount to spend on non-sanctioned fun projects. Many side and home projects turned into major revenue for the company, or a new business. It was viewed as a good thing. It has become much more restricted and legalistic these days.

    2. Re:Well, sadly, probably.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It depends on where you live, but in many states the clause may be in there, but it is illegal and unenforceable unless the product is created at work during normal business hours using company assets. Beyond that, those clauses are just abusive and should be illegal everywhere, just like the non-compete clauses. I know why corporations put them in there, but slavery was outlawed over 100 years ago, and just because they give you a paycheck, the company does not have unlimited rights to you.

  2. If he gets paid extra for overtime... by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Different people have different arrangements, I'm sure a lot of people here are strictly 8-5. But in my world I'm expected to be available and on call around the clock based on the specific function I perform (it's a lot of hurry up and wait). So I may be working at 11PM, but at 2PM I may be free. I do not get paid any extra for overtime. So who is to say that I'm on company time?

    While the simple answer might be that I should always be on task during work hours, I strongly doubt my bosses would like me to just abdicate when a job finishes at 11PM and needs my attention but doesn't get it until the next morning, nor do they want to pay for another person to do it (even if that were remotely possible, which it isn't). So if I'm dicking around in the middle of the day, and I'm at the office just to maintain office hours, it should be assumed that I'm simply not on company time right now.

  3. Depends on the industry and work environment by RandySmith6424 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I for instance work for the government in IT and during holidays when the non 12 monthers are out, I am basically a paper weight at my desk all day. So I take online classes, work on a few outside client minor jobs, Test and run random network crap remotely from my house or just read a bunch of sports websites. I mean what is the difference between working on a side job or doing nothing at all while I have nothing to do?

    1. Re:Depends on the industry and work environment by monkeyxpress · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I once worked at a company where the embedded software team was based around one guy who was the ultimate control freak. They needed to speed up software development, so upper management kept giving him more people for his team. He refused to let them write any software, so his team just kept growing because upper management thought the problem was still capacity. One guy I knew well did a masters degree while sitting two desks from his boss. I talked to him about this (when he wasn't busy working on his thesis), and he said he asked his boss every day if he had any work for him to do, and his boss always said he would get back to him. He was on a good salary too, and I think the company helped pay for his course, and gave him study days to attend lectures.

  4. 2-3 hours a day! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you're stealing 2-3 hours of time from your employer every day, sure, you should be fired. But if you're an exceptional employee otherwise, such that you provide the equivalent of 8 hours a day in 5 hours, then a deal might be worked out.
    But to just be doing it without asking is stupid, thus the complaints from other employees. Some corrective action is necessary.

  5. Confession by pr0t0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've worked on personal projects on company time. There are times when it's feast or famine in the workplace. During down times (meaning any or most other busy work has been done), I have used some of that time to work on personal projects. As an example, one of those personal projects was to make a web app to create and hold my gaming group's D&D characters. During that time, I taught myself AngularJS, Firebase, Bootstrap, and jsPDF. Since that time, I've built 2-3 other web apps for my company using what I learned then, and was able to offer those solutions because of how I used that down time. I learn better by having a project than by reading a book.

    Whether what I did was an appropriate use of my time or defensible, is probably separately debatable. But you never know what you are going to learn, or how it might apply to what you do for a living when working on little projects that you are passionate about. As long as you never, ever, let it get in the way of your work or output. The job always comes first.

    That said, I've never worked on anything that I thought would make me a millionaire or give me reason to leave my job. I love what I do, who I work with, and who I work for. I'm very loyal. Part of that loyalty was earned by allowing me to pursue little things over the years that interested me. It could be argued that perhaps there was no concerted effort to afford me that freedom, but no one looks over my shoulder, runs through my browser logs, or demands an accounting of my time; because like I said, my work is always done.

    --
    I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
  6. Re:It's not called office hours for nothing by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm paid largely to put out fires. When there are no fires, I work on process and documentation to ensure that there are less fires in the future. But there are definite times when I'm juggling several issues, and I'm waiting for more information or a decision from leadership on those issues. At that point, I don't have much to do. There's really not time to pick up the process and documentation work, as that's time-consuming, and it's 100% guaranteed to be interrupted by the evolution of the ongoing issues.
     
    So during those lulls, I dick around on the internet, work on my own projects, go for a walk, or wander off early to grab a beer somewhere.
     
    I don't get paid for what I produce. I get paid for fire prevention services. If there is no emergency I need to respond to, that means I'm being successful at my job. If there are less emergencies as time goes on, I'm doing an awesome job. And if all of the current issues are at a point where someone else needs to do something, it's thumb-twiddling time.
     
    As a salaried employee who's job it is to do something other than produce, I don't feel the need to be doing something every minute I'm at work. If I pick up anything, it needs to be droppable at a minute's notice, when I have to go back to putting out fires. That's not conducive to most of the stuff that needs to get done around here, and it's far worse for people who need that done if there's no way for me to guarantee when I can get to it. If it's on my plate, it's not on somebody else's plate, and they're much more likely to get to it in a timely fashion than I am.
     
    My value is in being responsive. Idle time is part and parcel of being able to be responsive.

    --
    Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor