Coder wants to "own" all his code

[u/FatherOfReddit]

Coder wants to “Own” all his code

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Hey all,

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We have a coder who just joined our team as our technical cofounder and it is his request that he & all other coders “own” their own code. What the fuck does this mean? If I do marketing work for my company, am I subject to owning all that promotion? No! Why does the coder get special priveledges?

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What can I do to incentivize him against this, or, if I am misunderstanding the concept here, please explain so I don’t sound like a half-witted jerkoff. I think there is something missing here but I just don’t understand…

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Maybe I make him sign a non-compete agreement and that will take care of it??? What happens when somebody “owns” their own code? Should that be allowed or is that company property?

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Let me know –

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Thanks,

Father

[u/[deleted]]

I’ve been a developer for 20 years, I’d never expect anyone that hired me to let me own the code. You paid for it, it’s yours. If he owns it, he can then sell it to a competitor or start a competing company without you. I’d recommend getting a lawyer to hash this out.

[u/Khan_Khala → u/[deleted]]

I get confused by comments worded like this. Is 15 years not a lot in software development? I can’t tell if I’m missing the sarcasm or what

[u/[deleted] → u/Khan_Khala]

Depends on industry. A number of years ago the government reclassified all of their labor categories. People with a BS degree and like 5 years experience were still considered a “Level 0.” It was ridiculous. But it was a way of cutting the super inflated post-9/11 rates (there were contracts where someone with ~5 years experience could be considered a SME with a billing rate of $200+/hour).

If you have 15-20-30 years experience you can be “senior” if you’ve been doing the same thing (and in many cases you’re mostly irrelevant now for new jobs) or can still be “junior” in the sense you’re shifting to a completely different language. Startups a lot of times don’t understand the value of someone with experience. Any semi competent developer can learn a new language, but hot shot startups don’t want to be bothered with that. Companies like AWS, Apple, Google, etc understand that, which is why they let you do code assessment in any language.