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A comment on Ask HN: Can I work on my side project while working for your company?.

Re:Ask HN: Can I work on my side project while working for y... by kelukelugames on Thursday July 02, 2015 @09:33PM (#9822898)
I'm not a lawyer but here is what I know.

These clauses are for the company to cover their ass. Let's say you make Flappy Bird at Google and they try to claim it. The bad publicity will not be worth it.

Working on a side project that competes with their core business is different. But if it's a pet project with 100 users then Google will be seen as the bad guy again. How about 1 million users? Then you've created a competitor and less people will sympathize with it being shut down.

I hope that made sense.

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Re:Ask HN: Can I work on my side project while working for y... by joinforloop on Thursday July 02, 2015 @09:48PM (#9822935)
It does make some sense.

How about creating Flappy Birds while being glue coder #1,341 for EA's next big budget NFL next gen console game? Would the same idea apply? Would the idea be different for EA vs Amazon or Microsoft?

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Re:Ask HN: Can I work on my side project while working for y... by clintolibre on Thursday July 02, 2015 @10:06PM (#9822993)
A lot of this will come down to splitting hairs. If you do it on your own computer at home with your own resources, its almost certain you will be fine. If you do it during company time using software they paid for and getting your coworkers to help on company time, they will probably be entitled to some part of the proceeds.
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Re:Ask HN: Can I work on my side project while working for y... by quesera on Thursday July 02, 2015 @10:16PM (#9823017)
That is a good description of the Californian situation, but does not necessarily apply everywhere.
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Re:Ask HN: Can I work on my side project while working for y... by quesera on Thursday July 02, 2015 @10:14PM (#9823009)
Superficially the same, except that EA has a history of caring less about bad publicity than many other employers.
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