Most tech contracts in the US stipulate that the company owns any IP you produce under some conditions. You can use this to give your employer a weird IP portfolio. Personally, I'm looking forward to Google owning an extensive collection of "Welcome Back, Kotter" fan fiction.

"Oops, I used my work computer for this by 'accident', better put '© Google' on 'The Sweathogs meet Dracula'."

@pganssle that sounds like you are given a fair degree of flexibility, providing your output conceptually fits the banner of some product. The contract might get weird but above all you can act autonomously which is great

@binsrc I don't think my boss would appreciate it if I were to spend work time on Welcome Back, Kotter fan fiction, but the default contract in NY state has employers owning any IP related to what your company does, plus anything done with company resources, so if I do it on my own time but use the work computer or something, my company has a strong claim to own it.

@pganssle I usually have a BYOD arrangement, I wonder with yours, how much the contract would change? It’s in their interest to have staff living out of work devices. I’ve seen salary staff leave their laptops at work for work life balance. I’ve always found my investment in the job overrides this mentality and I do all kinds of shit on work computers at home as well as a little extra work as a result. So when I start somewhere they have to invent or apply a BYOD policy.

@binsrc I refuse to use my work devices for everything. If I worked somewhere with a BYOD policy I would just buy a dedicated work laptop.

It is a bit inconvenient but definitely in your interests you have separate devices. Even assuming you aren't worried about a "messy break-up" situation, consider that in the highly likely event of your company being in a lawsuit, suddenly your entire laptop may be subject to discovery.

@binsrc As to the original policy I alluded to, IANAL but my understanding is that one of the clauses (and the company owns your output usually if *any* condition is met) is that the company owns your output if you use company resources, meaning anything you need to work at the company to have access to. BYOD muddies the situation but I think it would probably not be sufficient unless you used software the company paid for, did it on company time, etc.