← Back to context

Comment by biztos

4 years ago

I get that this is a joke, but — would that be legal in the US?

In Germany it definitely would not, at least not without it being specifically allowed by your contract.

But maybe in the US, as long as you didn’t have a conflict of interest?

Would the amount of total time worked matter? Would doing it in multiple states simultaneously matter?

10 comments

biztos

Reply
paxys  4 years ago

While it is not explicitly illegal, you are most definitely violating your employment agreement so your employer will fire you if they find out and might sue you as well.

The problem is really that multiple parties may be able to claim the rights to all of your output while you were on their payroll, which is obviously messy from a legal standpoint.

bagels  4 years ago

There aren't any laws about how many jobs you can have. Your employer is free to fire you if they find out though. Usually you have agreed not to have multiple jobs when joining, especially so at places like Facebook.

fishywang  4 years ago

A typical silicone valley company's contract usually have some clause saying that all your creative work while contracted with the company, even on off hours, belongs to the company. So signing two such contracts with two different companies usually means they both own the code you wrote for both companies, or maybe even trickier legal implications.

Of course you can try to get that clause removed during contract negotiation, but I doubt many people would be successful on that negotiation (you might have better luck to exclude some of your open source contributions).

  • labcomputer  4 years ago

    Every SV company I've ever worked for has explicitly disclaimed rights to my work done off hours with my own equipment... as they are required to do under CA law.

    • chris11  4 years ago

      I'm not sure how you can claim all work was done during off hours with ten full-time jobs. If OP got caught he could have some very expensive legal problems.

      1 reply →