How to find a job with a good contract

Hello, Khabrovites!

I’ve recently had the opportunity to go through a fair number of interviews and even received offers from some well-known and not so European companies, but today I’m not going to tell you about how to prepare to solve tricky programming problems or how best to demonstrate soft skills. Today we will talk about open source and employment contracts, how they correspond to each other and what pitfalls there may be. There is nothing sadder than being forced to leave the race after 3 stages of interviews and a week of homework, when the understanding comes that you will not sign this employment contract even at gunpoint. I've seen a lot of employment contracts and learned to tell the difference between the very bad and the bad, the bad from the passable, and the passable from the good. More details about everything under the cut.

Disclaimer: In this article, I will describe not only my experience, but also the experience of my friends. For obvious reasons, I will not name companies by name in this article.

So, imagine the situation: you spend a week doing a test task, go through 3 stages of an interview, they send you an offer with relocation to Western Europe for relatively good money, you are ready to give up everything and are already packing your bags, but something worries you, you ask for a little more time think about it and ask them to send you a draft employment contract. You carefully study the contract, delve into all the nuances and understand that this is an example of a very bad contact, under the terms of which you:

• You have no right to disclose anything at all, literally at all. Otherwise - a large fine.
• You can forget about your projects. Otherwise - a large fine.
• If there is at least some connection between what you will do/invent long after employment and what you worked on or even learned/gained experience from this employer, then you must transfer all rights to him accordingly. Even if this requires going to another country and filing patents and assignments of rights. Otherwise - a large fine.
• You get overtime without additional compensation.
• The employer can change the terms of the contract unilaterally.

And that's not all. In general, the matter is clear - past the cash register.

Even before this incident, I was thinking hard about Intellectual property clause or Paragraph on intellectual property rights in labor contracts of IT industry workers and programmers in particular. Writing high-quality code is often the only skill that we have and which we hone for many years with the hope of selling it at a higher price, but at some stage we realize that the skill can not only be sold, but also invested in open source, which is increasingly called the dark matter of the software industry, where its own “gravity” and other “laws of physics” operate. You can contribute to open projects for self-development and networking with other developers, but often also to get noticed by potential employers. A profile on GitHub can often say much more about a developer than a profile on LinkedIn, and writing open code, participating in collective code reviews, filing bugs and writing documentation for open source projects becomes part of the life of the most active and motivated developers.

While attending various IT conferences in Europe, I became familiar with the term IP-friendly in relation to employment contracts. This term refers to contracts that do not restrict employees in any way in terms of the direction of their intellectual efforts in their free time or introduce reasonable restrictions to protect the employer from competition. For example, contract terms that state that “everything done on the employer’s equipment and under the employer’s direct instructions belongs to the employer” is more IP-friendly than “everything done during the term of the employment contract belongs unconditionally to the employer.” As they say, feel the difference!

Google was the first to understand the importance of developers supporting open source projects, allowing its employees to devote up to 20% of their working time to open source projects; other leading companies followed the trend and are not lagging behind. The benefit for companies is obvious; this is a win-win strategy, because the company gains a reputation as a hub for the most talented developers, which in turn attracts even more strong professionals. The entry threshold to such companies is very high and they select the best of the best.

Most smaller companies know about new trends only by hearsay and try to fit as many restrictions as possible into the employment contract. I have come across such, without exaggeration, formulations as “The employer is the owner of everything and everything created by the employee.” It’s a sad fact, but many developers agree to such conditions due to a lack of knowledge in the field of intellectual property rights or due to a difficult life situation (there is no time to sort through offers). How can the situation be improved? In my opinion, there are several ways:

• Improve awareness among IT industry workers about intellectual property rights.
• Promote the idea of ​​IP friendly contracts among employers.
• Not only to participate in open source projects, but to be open source evangelists.
• Support developers in their disputes with corporations, strive to ensure that public opinion is on the side of the developer if the corporation is trying to “squeeze” the project.

In the end, I found a job with much better contract conditions. The main thing is not to rush to the first offer and keep looking. And contribute to open source, because the cultural heritage of a developer is his code, and if the developer writes all the code for corporations, then his legacy, his visible and tangible imprint on the digital landscape is null.

PS If you liked this article, become my subscriber on Habré - I still have a lot of unrealized ideas that I want to write about, so you will be the first to know about them.

P.P.S The article is planned to be continued...

Only registered users can participate in the survey. Sign in, you are welcome.

Is your employment contract IP-friendly?

• 65.1%Yes28

• 34.8%No15

43 users voted. 20 users abstained.

Source: habr.com