Dangers of two Jobs? Violating Company Policy?

Posted by Stephen Furlani on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Stephen Furlani
Published on 2010-11-22T15:56:09Z Indexed on 2011/03/07 0:17 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 348

Filed under:

legal

|

corporate-culture

|

self-employment

Hey,

I'm working for a company full-time and myself part-time. I started learning the Mac OS/Cocoa/Objective-C at work, and then I got the "Brilliant Idea" that I'd like to program for the iPhone.

The iPhone stuff is going well, but I'm earning money there because I'm applying skills I learned on the job. What is commonly considered violating company policy on things like this? Is there any danger of the company claiming 'ownership' of my side-job?

If I leave the company, could they ask me to stop working at my side business? The company and my iphone stuff are in completely different "areas" but I'm still concerned. What can I do to make sure?

What else should I be wary of? Has anyone run into bad stuff like this before?

Thanks,

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about legal

SCALE 8x: Free software legal issues

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>LWN.net:</b> "But in reality the FLOSS ecosystem relies on a complex legal framework in order to run smoothly and to stand up to proprietary software competition: the various software licenses, contribution agreements, copyright and other "intellectual property" law." >>> More
Copyright infringement - inside the legal minefield

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>New Zealand Herald:</b> "Several weeks ago the Australian high court ruled in favour of Aussie ISP iiNet in a landmark legal battle where AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) argued that iiNet was as guilty as some of its subscribers of online copyright infringement… >>> More
Signing redistributed files

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
In order to submit a desktop application for the Windows 8 app store, you need to digitally sign any driver or .exe associated with the application. However, the application I was trying to submit contains several files that are redistributions of other companies' software, and some of these are not… >>> More
Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project in a slightly different way, and use it in a closed source project?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
There is some code which is GPL or LGPL that I am considering using for an iPhone project. If I took that code (JavaScript) and rewrote it in a different language for use on the iPhone would that be a legal issue? In theory the process that has happened is that I have gone through each line of the… >>> More
Is it really free to deploy SharpDevelop apps?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm trying SharpDevelop to develop c# applications. Regardless of the language and the IDE, is it free to deploy applications that use WinForms? I've been developing with MonoDevelop just because it has a designer for Gtk# (client doesn't want to pay more for licences as to use VS...), but it's too… >>> More

Related posts about corporate-culture

How can I transition from being a "9-5er" to being self-employed?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Hey, I posted this question last fall about moonlighting, and I feel like I've got a strong case to make to start transitioning from being a Full-Time Employee to being self-employed. So much so, that I find it hard to concentrate at work on the things I'm supposed to be doing. However, self-employment… >>> More
Advices and strategies for browser compatibility on web applications into a corporate environment

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
With the new CSS 3 and HTML 5 tecnology, the web applications gained a lot of new tools for a better UI(user interface) interaction, beautifull templates and even responsive layout to fit into tablets and smartphones. Within a corporate environment, those new tecnologies are required so the company… >>> More
Strategies for browser compatibility on web applications in a corporate environment

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
With the new CSS 3 and HTML 5 technology, web applications have gained a lot of new tools for a better UI (user interface) interaction, beautiful templates and even responsive layout to fit into tablets and smartphones. Within a corporate environment, those new technologies are required so the company… >>> More
How can I thoroughly evaluate a prospective employer?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
We hear much about code smells, test smells, and even project smells, but I have heard no discussion about employer "smells" outside of the Joel Test. After much frustration working for employers with a bouquet of unpleasant corporate-culture odors, I believe it's time for me to actively seek a more… >>> More
How to elevate engineering culture at large corporations?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
One thing I have realized working at a large corporation is that it doesn't matter how smart you are because if everyone else doesn't see the value in what you are doing then you are not going to get very far. It's much harder to convince 1000 people that a certain part of the software stack should… >>> More