> It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time"
No, it's standard industry practice to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up to that relates to the company's business. It's certainly not standard practice to claim ownership of, like, a young-adult fiction novel you write on weekends.
The unusual thing here is that Google's business and potential business is approximately everything to do with computers.
> Also unique to Google is there is a process by which you can get permission for you to out-and-out own the work done on your own time, as opposed to Google owning it and releasing it under an open source license. If you take that option then it really has to be done on your own time, and must not use any company resources, meaning not on a company laptop, or on a company network, etc. This is rare, and I'm not aware of many other companies that give employees that option.
I think this is perfectly normal. I've never worked somewhere where it isn't true. (Also, isn't this basically required for the common Silicon Valley practice of "working on your side hustle while employed at your FAANG, and then getting investors later" to not be fraught with IP dangers?)
Thank you. "We own everything you do" is absolutely not standard practice, even in the US, and we shouldn't do Google's work for them by pretending it is. The linked Twitter thread says Google "tries to appropriate" everything you do, which is a very different claim.
I've seen "we own everything" asserted exactly once, in a laughably bad "Whartonite seeks code monkey" contract. Meanwhile, "you own unrelated work done on your own time, without company resources" is not at all unique to Google; it's been in every other IP ownership clause I've ever read. Many of them don't even require "a process by which you can get permission". They might require disclosure, or encourage you to talk to Legal if there's an appearance of overlap, but if you write thermostat software at work you can go make Flappy Bird at home without asking anyone for permission.
What's actually common, and what Google does, is claiming ownership of anything touching not only resources but the company's business. In the narrowest cases this is completely understandable: Mongo/10gen doesn't want employees to notice a Mongo pain point at work, then instead of mentioning it go home and build a product they know will have eager customers. And a bit more broadly, companies don't want their staff punching the clock, then going home and building a competitor with the experience they gained at work. But of course, companies have no real incentive to stop at what's reasonable: they'd like to own what you make, or capture all of your creative energy, so they commonly say "you can't make anything in our same industry". Amazon is infamous for attempting to claim "a connection with a cofounder" as a company resource and so claim anything made by ex-Amazon teams. (Which is only infamous because "we own everything" isn't common - if it were then Amazon's policy would look lenient.)
As you say, Google is doing the same thing, it's just that they do everything and they're just limiting ownership to the employee's scope of business. Maybe you work on Gmail, but Google owns Nest, so they can claim your smart home project. It's not a standard level of restriction, it's aggressive and probably unenforceable.
No, it's standard industry practice to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up to that relates to the company's business. It's certainly not standard practice to claim ownership of, like, a young-adult fiction novel you write on weekends.
The unusual thing here is that Google's business and potential business is approximately everything to do with computers.
> Also unique to Google is there is a process by which you can get permission for you to out-and-out own the work done on your own time, as opposed to Google owning it and releasing it under an open source license. If you take that option then it really has to be done on your own time, and must not use any company resources, meaning not on a company laptop, or on a company network, etc. This is rare, and I'm not aware of many other companies that give employees that option.
I think this is perfectly normal. I've never worked somewhere where it isn't true. (Also, isn't this basically required for the common Silicon Valley practice of "working on your side hustle while employed at your FAANG, and then getting investors later" to not be fraught with IP dangers?)