> I would not sign something like that contract today.

I've been seeing wording to that effect in nearly every contract I've been presented with for years now. Every time, I speak up and suggest replacing it with wording that is much more restrictive (they can own anything I make using their resources or intellectual property, otherwise I own it).

I have yet to have a company not agree to this change.

An acquaintance of mine who was given an offer by Google, and arrived on the appointed day, brought the agreement, a red line, and a clean copy. They refused to make any change in their wording even though they said their intent was not to enforce the wording as written. They said that they couldn't sign it unless Google's intent was actually in the writing as well. That afternoon, Google asked for all the gear they had been issued back and rescinded their offer of employment.

Google's statement was that Google would not make any changes in the employment agreement and signing the agreement was a condition of employment, thus by refusing to sign the agreement, this person had 'voluntarily' chosen not to work at Google.

Can't really argue with their reasoning.

Hobson's HR department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice

Google will flat out refuse. In their view they own the entirety of your intellectual output for the duration, whether or not it's done on your own time and resources, and whether or not it's in any way related to your day job.

I mean I get it (sort of), early on there wasn't really any "moat" to protect the business, so they had to put shit like this in their contracts lest someone goes off and upends their entire business model. But that's no longer the case. Their moat is _insanely_ wide. They don't have to worry about employees' side projects anymore, and they haven't had to worry about that for about a decade and a half now.

Likewise, their trading windows for RSUs are bullshit. There aren't (or at least weren't when I was there) any trading windows for employees below director level at MS, and I knew more about what's going on there than I ever did at Google. There's this illusion of internal transparency (created mostly by weekly TGIF where people get to pat themselves on the back for projects that will soon be canceled, but in the meanwhile can be used to get a promo), but nobody really knows anything material for real. The only exception I can recall is the TPU which was announced internally about 1.5 years before anybody outside Google knew anything about it. And it didn't move the stock one bit as far as I can tell. In fact, TechCrunch had the "internal" announcements before TGIF 90% of the time.

> Google will flat out refuse.

Fair enough, they can decide their terms. Honestly, I wouldn't be interested in working for Google in the first place, but if I were, that would put an immediate end to my interest.

Google can be fun if you make it a point to work on stuff that actually matters and not just rest and vest. But I do wish they'd reconsider their abusive IP clauses. Which they won't until they begin to struggle with hiring good people.

> Google will flat out refuse.

Not necessarily but somewhat practically. I've applied internally at 2 of the big 5 companies for outside activity projects and 1 was denied and the other was approved. It definitely blacklists a ton of ideas which sucks but it is possible (my side project which got approved has a main competitor which sold for over a billion USD).

I doubt that non related work would actually be enforceable

Are you a lawyer?

Some states have laws that prohibit employers from claiming ownership over what the employee does with their own time as long as it is unrelated to the work of the business... but not much is unrelated to Google.

Doesn't California law protect people from employers stealing code you write on your own time?

I recently turned down an offer in CA despite thinking I read something along those lines taking it as a sign of toxic culture. Another place had such a policy but gladly agreed to drop it.

This is the relevant California law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

It says that if you do the work on your own time, with your own equipment, and without using any of your employer's trade secrets, the employer can't claim ownership of it unless it relates to the their business or R&D.

I think the issue is that large companies like Google do so many things that almost anything involving software or the internet would relate to their business and not be covered by the law.

The clause in CA 2870(a)(1), "relate ... to the employer’s business," gives an exception to the protection when it's related to the Company's business. The problem is Google is doing so many things that some area will overlap with your idea ever if you were not directly working on it in Google, and Google can go after that.

I had a conversation with a CEO once on this very topic and he said, "Remember, it doesn't matter whether the suit has merit or not as long as the company is willing to sue you. The company has the money and resource to drag it out in the court to force you to sign over the IP."

I agreed to that contract and open sourced many thousands of lines of code owned by Google, but still available to me and the rest of the world via github. I don't see the problem. If you could demonstrate your project didn't overlap google business then you could do your own project.

That's not really correct.

I wrote a project at Google that had nothing to do with Google's business, in fact, they explicitly had chosen to not get involved with that whole area at all (Bitcoin). I applied for ability to open source it under the Google name and was denied, I asked for a copyright release back to me and was also denied. The open source programmes office had decided they wanted my project dead and preventing me from doing anything with it was their tool.

Eventually I was able to get these decisions overridden by escalating up (way up) the management chain, but it was a huge pain and the OSPO decided that the exemption applied only to me, not other Googlers, so of course the moment the company hired someone else who happened to be involved with writing the "Bitcoin Core" software already, they tried to force him to exit the project and the same fight had to happen all over again (with more escalations to top management).

The whole nonsense with someone in middle management (who shall remain nameless) deciding to kill spare time projects because they personally didn't like the idea really turned me off to these clauses. Google doesn't need them, they aren't threatened by side projects of employees and the whole thing causes far, far more drama than it can possibly ever avoid.

Note that the OSPO policies have largely changed since you've left Google. What you describe was definitely the situation as of 3-4 years ago, but don't describe how open sourcing code or contributing to FOSS projects works these days.

People seem to not quite get this, so I'll try to be as clear as I can.

Google should not have the ability to claim ownership on unrelated work that does not use company time or resources unless _I_ _voluntarily_ relinquish such ownership. Google should have no business whatsoever interfering with what I do on my own personal time. Nor should I have to make anything open source. Nor should I need to ask anyone's _permission_ to utilize my own time as I see fit. You can get these terms with other companies, if you ask for them.

The only exception I think is reasonable is if my project discloses Google proprietary information in any way, or directly competes with Google, in which case Google should be able to terminate my employment.

This would be fair. What Google is doing now is slimy AF.

The key point is "if you can demonstrate that your project doesn't compete with Google's business" IARC is really easy. I was approved for a couple projects, including one that absolutely could be considered to be competing with Google's business if they wanted, in like a week.

You aren't actually legally required to go through IARC. The contract isn't enforcible in CA if you really don't compete, but I have prewritten verification of that now, and it was painless.

IME, Google's earned the benefit of the doubt in this context.

If it's not enforceable, why is it in the contract? They obviously intend to try to enforce it in cases where they can, which makes claims about "don't worry about it, its not enforceable" even more shady.

I take issue with the very idea that anything I do in my personal, uncompensated time is required to be vetted or approved by anybody. Google's "earned" a swift kick in the rear in this context.

You might "think" but that's how Anglo Saxon employment law (UK USA Some Commonwealth countries) works.

There is literally hundreds of years of case law on this - you may not know that modern employment law descends from acts like the "masters and servants act" - guess which one we are.

There were hundreds of years of "case law" on not letting black people drink from the same water fountains as white people. And yet, here we are.

What is "company time" for a salaried employee that doesn't have required working hours?

Come on, then it's a straight down slope to the company owns all intelectual output. Write a sonnet for a lover ? Bam, it owns it.

If it wasn't planned through the usual company command-and-control chain of command, it obviously should be outside company time when you're at home.

That would not be related :_) - though the court case would be awesome.

It's the time spent working for the company.

Imagine if Google Reader or Wave had been your personal side project and one day it just happened to catch the eye of the wrong businessperson

> This means the person wrote this code on their own time

What is “your own time” as a salaried employee payed for work product not hours on the job site?

That would be the time when I am not doing company work.

But that is absolutely useless rule to use when the whole point of determining if work is done on your own time is to determine if the work done is legally your work or company work, since it becomes a circular argument.

You don't understand. Google claims ownership even on the stuff that you do on _your own_ time, like nights and weekends, without using _any_ Google resources. Even if this stuff is in no way related to what you do at work.

Disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice. I've dealt with this part of the code as both an employee and an employer.

California labor law section 2870

(a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except ...[1]

It then goes on to carve out some exceptions. The one that Google leans on is this one:

(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer;

Google argues that they anticipate researching and developing anything you might be interested in working on so its theirs. In my case I pushed legal to say, in writing, that even if I wrote an iOS kitchen timer application on my own time with my own equipment, then Google would own that app. My attorney suggested that if I sued them they would likely lose, but if I sued them they would stop employing me anyway, so if I really wanted to go into the Kitchen Timer app business I should just quit rather than risk Google making a claim to my IP that I would have to pay expensive legal fees to get invalidated.

This section of the code has been litigated many times and the general consensus is time that you are both not at work, and you aren't required to be at work, can be considered "your own time" by this statute.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

There is an argument (and 'dragonwriter, if I have the measure of him, is illustrating it rather than advocating it) that a salaried employee has no "own time" except insofar as their time is not required by the employer.

They can quit if they want time that the employer does not deign to grant them.

In my more cynical moments I think this is the prevailing view in American tech.

Well, I'm somewhere in between illustrating and advocating (EDIT: “advocating” here as “advocating as legally true” rather than “advocating as desirable”); I'm generally dubious that there is a meaningful legally cognizable boundary of “own time vs. work time” as opposed to “own activity vs. work activity” for salaried employees paid for work product, as opposed to employees paid for hours of work. If you are working on something within the scope of what you are contracted to do for your employer, it would seem to be, ipso facto, work time.

EDIT: Moreover, I think that essentially what Google is doing here is having you sign away things which they otherwise could, and would were the assignment provision not permitted to them, simply prohibit outright via a during-employment non-compete, which even California (with it's unusually firm stance against post-employment non-compete) is generally fine with.

Sure, and employers actively (and probably to our, as workers, detriment) cause that conflation to make it harder to understand what that worker is allowed to do with their lives.

Criticizing the notion of "own time" when the people who effectively have the power, and the greater share of organization (both extant and allowed), perpetuate that notion seems like a less-than-useful use of time.

Your description of how intellectual property works is untrue.

In the state of California, there very much is strong protections for workers intellectual property.

And the courts do not share your opinion on what is someone's "own time" or not. The courts instead protect workers.

It is possible that Google has made its employees sign some illegal contracts, that aren't enforceable in court. But if this stuff theoretical went to court, the law sides with workers.

> You don't understand.

Yes I do.

> Google claims ownership even on the stuff that you do on _your own_ time, like nights and weekend

On what basis, as a salaried employee paid for work output and not time-at-a-place, are evenings and weekends described as “your own time” any more than any other time?

On the basis of the employer designating those days as non-work days?

>> On what basis

On the basis that the contract says "40 hours a week". I don't owe the employer jack beyond that.

> On the basis that the contract says "40 hours a week".

It's extremely rare for salaried worker contracts to say that.

Most in the UK do, albeit normally with a caveat about exceptional situations.

Not for salaried they don't its no fixed hours of work - some employee handbooks will have core hours and a suggested average per week.

It's the norm almost everywhere in the world.

> "happens to be owned by Google" disclaimers on open source projects

Not sure I've seen this before, do you have examples?

Don't have one on hand but I have seen quite a few. I have heard that they are mostly 20% time projects though I'm not sure if they try to take code written on your own time but it looks like they do (and anything else you have written before working there) from this:

https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/

> As part of your employment agreement, Google most likely owns intellectual property (IP) you create while at the company. Because Google’s business interests are so wide and varied, this likely applies to any personal project you have. That includes new development on personal projects you created prior to employment at Google.

Just to be clear, it says "new" development while you're employed by Google, they don't claim to retroactively own your prior works pre-employment. I'm sure they ask you to declare it though so it's clear what you built before joining.

Perkeep is written/founded by Brad Fitzpatrick (google/golang engineer) and you have to sign a google CLA to contribute to it: https://perkeep.org/code#contributing