Re:What We Look for in a Resume
by __MatrixMan__ on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:43PM
(#34521480)
Worth noting, yes. But it's also not unreasonable to prefer candidates that avoid such environments.
Re:What We Look for in a Resume
by danielvaughn on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:46PM
(#34521530)
I actually did not know that was a thing, and I’ve been working in startups for over a decade now. I’ve never worked in big tech though, so maybe it’s common there. If a company told me I couldn’t work on side projects without approval, I’d tell them to fuck off.
>> I’d tell them to fuck off.
I just tell them "this is something I do" and if that's a problem "I'm not giving that up". Leave it to them to end the interview, no need to get an attitude.
I understand the anger from the ancestor post... that this is "standard practice" in the purported "land of the free" is just fucked.
but you do give a classier way to handle it which does leave the off chance that they'd make an 'exception' for some "special" candidate, still I wouldn't like to work in a place like that.
Re:What We Look for in a Resume
by danielvaughn on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:30PM
(#34527048)
lol I’m not being literal. I couldn’t imagine ever telling an employer literally to fuck off. But I’d decline any job offer that came with that string attached. No amount of money is worth the freedom to do what I want with my own time.
Sweeping assignment of all copyright—including for things done off-hours—to your employer are common features of employment contracts in the US, which means no open source work without requesting an exception. This is true even in many startups. Absence of that kind of provision is seen as risky by investors or acquiring companies, who fear current or past employees will try to claim parts of the company's IP as their own.
Most are chill about adding exceptions (they don't actually want to claim copyright to that children's book you're writing in your free time) though. Still, sucks and probably ought to be illegal.
Re:What We Look for in a Resume
by kube-system on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:49PM
(#34521590)
As the article says, they’re looking for reasons to say “yes”, not reasons to say “no”.
If you say you don’t have any open source contributions due to company policy, that’s not a bad thing, it’s a demonstration that you respect the policy.
In some of those corps there actually is a "dont ask dont tell" kind of policy around personal projects/blog posts/oss contributions/etc. as the company forbids them unless you have special approval. However on the flip side managers know that the people with those projects and experiences often have a stronger drive than those simply treating coding as a 9-5 job.
I also know of cases where the interviewers were very impressed by the candidate's Github repo/oss contributions but stated that the candidate would have to stop working on that stuff after being hired. I know people who upon graduation seperated their projects for this purpose, continuing some under a screen name and having other less important ones for resume purpose knowing that they may not be able to continue working on them under that name in the future.