Should I take the same money to go back to the same job?
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I don't think I've ever had a contract that prohibits moonlighting.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I don't think I've ever had a contract that prohibits moonlighting.
I certainly have. Nearly any salary job in the US does so sort of by default because salary implies "full time" meaning your time is not your own. You get time "not working" but not "working for someone else." The implication is that all of your paid-for brain power belongs to the company paying the salary and if you are doing work for someone else while on salary that you are stealing from the company that is willing to pay the premium salary for you to either be working for them or "relaxing."
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An hourly job effectively cannot stop you from moonlighting in the US because the moment you are not being paid they have no say over what you do. The moment that they have say, they owe you income. So there are different approaches with different thoughts behind them.
Of course, much of anything comes down to the local judge and how they choose to view the social or even written contract. But nearly any salaried job I've seen is explicit in that you cannot do anything paid outside of work unless approved. Even volunteer stuff is sometimes a grey area (but never seen a company complain about that.)
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Wow, interesting take, and one I've never seen or heard of before.
I'll grant you that in my current position, moving from a one man MSP to a full time employee, my new job granted me the privilege to continue supporting my old clients as long as it didn't interfere with my duties at the new employer. This was further explained, if my employer and an old client were both having an outage situation at the same time, my new employer took precedence. For 8 years this has worked pretty well.
I have an associate who does something similar. He works full time for another big company (Conagra). He's salary there full time, M-F 8-5. He works a near half time at night for a clinic in town, working M-F 6-10.
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@Dashrender lots of good companies work that way. But many do not. And many leave it to individual managers to "look the other way." Nearly anywhere I've worked that is salary includes a contract stipulation that anything you create during your term of employment belongs to them - which would include intellectual property that you do while at another job creating an obvious conflict of interest.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender lots of good companies work that way. But many do not. And many leave it to individual managers to "look the other way." Nearly anywhere I've worked that is salary includes a contract stipulation that anything you create during your term of employment belongs to them - which would include intellectual property that you do while at another job creating an obvious conflict of interest.
I'm guessing that stipulations like that would mostly come into play when you're earning 80K+, but that of course wouldn't be exclusively so. And frankly even at 80K I could consider this an unfair requirement. Now 150K or 200+, different story...
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@Dashrender said:
I'm guessing that stipulations like that would mostly come into play when you're earning 80K+, but that of course wouldn't be exclusively so. And frankly even at 80K I could consider this an unfair requirement. Now 150K or 200+, different story...
Only so unfair. People making $80K are just as likely to go invent something cool and new using the brain power that the customer is paying for.
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Customer being the employer, in this case. Odd term to use there on my part.
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Yeah, this is where some universities are screwing their students over by claiming the rights of invention while students are enrolled there.
I suppose an employee of a company owes anything created that's easily understood to be in the realm that that company is doing as belonging to the employer, but if it's outside of that, it should be the employees, not the employers.
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@Dashrender said:
Yeah, this is where some universities are screwing their students over by claiming the rights of invention while students are enrolled there.
I wonder how well that holds up in court as the students would be then employed without being paid. It would violate a huge number of employment laws - you can't legally charge people to go to work, not providing healthcare coverage, not insuring the students, not paying minimum wage, etc.
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@Dashrender said:
I suppose an employee of a company owes anything created that's easily understood to be in the realm that that company is doing as belonging to the employer, but if it's outside of that, it should be the employees, not the employers.
That becomes difficult to define. And is a bit unfair. If you work for a company like GE, what do they not do? An employee there would legally have zero IP rights, whereas an employee of a company that does something really specific might get loads of rights.
I've had employers claim that they are in the "business of business" and therefore every company is their competitor and any product is something in which they were interested.
And legitimately, that's not as evil as it sounds (it's evil how they use that, but not in the theory of it.) Businesses really are generally opportunistic and go into whatever business opportunity that presents itself.
So think of it this way.... if you offer the idea to your employer and they decline to pursue it, you'd have a strong case. But if you feel any need to not tell them about it and intend to pursue it after you leave, I think you already know that you are likely violating the spirit of that situation.
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@NetworkNerd said:
I did not see anyone throw out the option of just doing some consulting work on a part-time basis for the old company. Is that possible as a temporary option? Tell them you will work X hours at your desired rate (remotely, of course), and give them a specific time period for which you will consult. So to some degree it would help both parties as long as you feel you will not jeopardize meeting your responsibilities at your current job. The old place may want someone full time, but you would at least be making an effort to help.
I did consulting work for the Business partner of my old company before and they can call me anytime if they need me.
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I see what you're saying there Scott, but if that's the case, then very few if any ideas would ever be privately owned anymore and no new businesses would spring up, because what sane business wouldn't take your idea say thank you very much, and oh, by the way you can't pursue this on your own anymore, and then just toss it in a drawer?
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@Dashrender said:
I see what you're saying there Scott, but if that's the case, then very few if any ideas would ever be privately owned anymore...
No, there is a big gap between what could be legally leveraged and what is leveraged. Just because the law might support it doesn't mean that companies would enforce it. I have seen companies pull this and the obvious effect happened - everyone skilled or able to get another job did so, immediately. They lost their staff nearly overnight. Having the right to protect yourself does not imply that you will use it maliciously.
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@Dashrender said:
.... and oh, by the way you can't pursue this on your own anymore, and then just toss it in a drawer?
Once they toss it in a drawer they'd struggle to protect their interest in court. They would need to pursue it to have a clear legal argument. They'd have zero means to show that you pursuing it affected their interests if they were purposely not pursuing the idea.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I wonder how well that holds up in court as the students would be then employed without being paid. It would violate a huge number of employment laws - you can't legally charge people to go to work, not providing healthcare coverage, not insuring the students, not paying minimum wage, etc.
It has nothing to do with employment. The students are generally using the university resources to do the work. Most universities have clear policies in place stating that they retain some rights to a patent because of this.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I wonder how well that holds up in court as the students would be then employed without being paid. It would violate a huge number of employment laws - you can't legally charge people to go to work, not providing healthcare coverage, not insuring the students, not paying minimum wage, etc.
It has nothing to do with employment. The students are generally using the university resources to do the work. Most universities have clear policies in place stating that they retain some rights to a patent because of this.
That would make sense, if the university did not charge the students for access to the equipment or if that was always the case in situations where this would come up. If students are making software or writing a book or something, it must be very hard to claim. If students are doing research that leverages tons of university sponsored equipment, okay, I can see that.
So physicists, for example, should be heavily affected but software engineers basically not at all. But given that students have paid for the access, that seems to be a conflict of interests. Imagine if other businesses worked that way - Microsoft would own everything written in Word, Oracle would own anything storage in a database, etc. because they own the IP behind the software you've paid to lease.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I don't think I've ever had a contract that prohibits moonlighting.
I certainly have. Nearly any salary job in the US does so sort of by default because salary implies "full time" meaning your time is not your own.
I don't pretend to understand the crazy US legal system. In the UK, I don't think "implies" would be a legal defense in an employment tribunal. It's either in the contract or it isn't. Whilst I don't know about the US legal system, I have some knowledge of US blues, and the number of people singing words to the effect of "I've been working two jobs just to pay the rent" suggests it's fairly common to have more than one employer there. Are those blues singers writing about hourly workers rather than salaried?
I reckon around a quarter of the people I work for have second jobs of some description. I believe my contract states I have to inform my employer of a second job and I obviously wouldn't be able to open myself to any conflict of interest, such as working for a competitor.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you work for both a bank full-time and NTG part-time?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I don't pretend to understand the crazy US legal system. In the UK, I don't think "implies" would be a legal defense in an employment tribunal. It's either in the contract or it isn't.
The general claim is that it is in the contract through implication of the salary since that is for full time. If you can work somewhere else too, it isn't all of your time.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Are those blues singers writing about hourly workers rather than salaried?
Well yes, of course. Blue collar work is hourly. You never hear doctors or lawyers singing the blues about working two jobs.
