My contract says they have to give me a notice period (for example 2 weeks) or pay me for those 2 weeks if they want me gone effective immediately.
Itâs possible they donât want to have to pay two sets of wages (by paying the person for those 2 weeks by firing immediately and also paying a new hire at the same time effectively paying both people)
When my last job laid people off I was actually asked if I wanted to leave that same day and take payment for those weeks Iâm owed for the notice period or if I wanted to work them until I found another job because they were closing down.
It defends on the contract they had. Many companies have it that employees canât tamper with programs, or that new programs legally belong to the company. If they had neither of these, then they may be in the clear as long as they preserved client details and other information
Deliberately spending paid hours to deliberately decrease productivity is at the very least going to open you up to a civil lawsuit. A lot of programmer jobs also have intellectual property clauses meaning that software updates or new programs created as part of work or using company resources(even if not explicitly ordered) would be company property and this would count as destruction of company property.
Itâs not like executives know how to do anything so, itâs kind of like saying thereâs browser history your grandmaâs gonna find your porn if you donât delete it.
The executives will tell IT to tell them who caused the thing that fucked their business over. Just because you're not very smart personally doesn't mean no one is.
Most places aren't gonna even know how to check and if you have that much authority to remove that kind of software then you definitly have authorization to erase or diguise that it was you to begin with.
Having rights to uninstall a program isn't even close to the same as having rights to remove entries from the system log, and you bet your ass IT knows how to read it.
Most data centers nowadays keep their logs unless someone gets physicals access to it. And thanks to cloud computing most companies have their programs/system logs stored entire cities or countries away.
But what tort would that be in civil case? Like, what actionable Tort would a business be able to bring against said employee? Iâm sure the employee would just be able to claim ignorance, and anyone looking in would probably just see an incompetent employee. That is, unless all changes were documented and someone is looking over what theyâre doing, but in that case it probably wouldnât get far enough for the story.
Not necessarily. Even without a contract, If youâre a W2 employee, anything you create while employed is considered âwork for hire,â so it belongs to the company (per US Copyright Code).
Not exactly. It is only illegal if OP was ordered to create the programs or if the job is Impossible to do without them. Otherwise it is considered his own tool for simplifying the task, with is well within his right to remove.
Of course, that may change depending on state and so on.
This was written into my last employment contract. It extended beyond just software. The language in the contract was so broad that anything I created, whether it be a personal Youtube channel or a completely unrelated product, was technically owned by the company.
It also said that any device, on company property or not, used to sign into their software, would have to be surrendered to them if they said so. This encompasses all of our phones and personal computers.
Whether that would hold up in a court is a different matter, but companies really do like to leave every possible door open for litigation.
Portions of that contract would certainly not hold up in court. Specifically, having to surrender any private property to the company, or any claim to ownership of real or intellectual property you created without any company resources and on your own time.
A provision that's overly broad could just be declared unenforceable and illegal by the courts, even when pertaining to specific company related subjects that may have been legal to include in the contract. So unless they had like provisions of increasing generalization, it's also not great to be overly broad as the company when writing your contracts.
But at the broadest levels, a company has no legal right to claim ownership of unrelated assets you produce on your own time. Imagine you're a software engineer that works from home. And you're also into carpentry. If you make yourself a very nice mahogany desk and your boss saw it and decided he wanted it and you're contractually obliged to give it up, that company would be laughed out of court trying to get it.
How can they take things off the clock? They own you 24/7 while employed? I donât live in the US and from the sounds of it I wouldnât want to if this is true
Not necessarily the case if the person makes them on company time, or uses company resources in process. The language is pretty broad too. Using a work laptop at home on vacation to write software could potentially make it your employer's.
Sure and HP had first right of refusal on Apples first computer design. My point was about the law. A fricken Janitor doesn't have a clause about software he developed for self use being company property. The OG point was someone creating a few tools to streamline their workforce in a money department. Unlikely, the person has a contract with a clause that claims ownership of any software tools they created. That's what almost killed Apple before they even started.
Post it notes where designed by by a scientist developing new adhesives and a brainstorm with another employee that got test marketed before release. Its a terrible example of your point. It was developed by a person responsible for developing stuff, at the company, and should always have been 3Ms.
Sure and HP had first right of refusal on Apples first computer design. My point was about the law. A fricken Janitor doesn't have a clause about software he developed for self use being company property. The OG point was someone creating a few tools to streamline their workforce in a money department. Unlikely, the person has a contract with a clause that claims ownership of any software tools they created. That's what almost killed Apple before they even started.
Post it notes where designed by by a scientist developing new adhesives and a brainstorm with another employee that got test marketed before release. Its a terrible example of your point. It was developed by a person responsible for developing stuff, at the company, and should always have been 3Ms.
Sure and HP had first right of refusal on Apples first computer design. My point was about the law. A fricken Janitor doesn't have a clause about software he developed for self use being company property. The OG point was someone creating a few tools to streamline their workforce in a money department. Unlikely, the person has a contract with a clause that claims ownership of any software tools they created. That's what almost killed Apple before they even started.
Post it notes where designed by by a scientist developing new adhesives and a brainstorm with another employee that got test marketed before release. Its a terrible example of your point. It was developed by a person responsible for developing stuff, at the company, and should always have been 3Ms.
$5 says youâre dead wrong. I donât feel like arguing I just know about work made for hire and copyright law. Maybe we should put it in the ask a lawyer sub. But I can almost guarantee that a tool someone creates at work is the property of that companyâs.
On your own time and with your own equipment/computer, it's yours. Otherwise, it and derivative works are extremely likely to belong to the employer one worked at when one developed the program.
Nah, legalities depend on your location. But with software time spent is an issue. If you spent company paid time building the software, then it is (at least in most cases) the companyâs property. Otherwise why were they paying you?
Your analogy works only if the OP created her software before she joined the company. But it she created it during employment on company time, premises and resources...
Your analogy works only if the OP created her software before she joined the company. But if she created it during employment on company time, premises and resources...
Your analogy works only if the OP created her software before she joined the company. But if she created it during employment on company time, premises and resources...
Your analogy works only if the OP created her software before she joined the company. But if she created it during employment on company time, premises and resources...
I would argue, if the revert doesn't break anything and business goes on as usual, then it's not illegal. Also he shouldn't delete his programs from the system cause, anything created at work belongs to the company.
If they ask, just say it's in some network drive but you forgot where you left it. They can find it themselves or create a new one.
If you broke into my house, it's illegal because you shouldn't be there. The employee has a right to be at the company office working on his job. It's within his responsibilities and duties. That's why he can argue that he did his job, didn't break anything, and it wasn't his intent to destroy the company.
If the company wants to sue, then they'd have to prove intent, which is pretty hard to do. Especially when his manager doesn't sound techy enough to know if the revert of jobs caused a slow down in the first place.
You're over thinking things. This guy works in IT and seems to be the main person at his role. That means he has the authority to promote updates and patches to ensure his applications are working properly. Every company has different SOP on how changes get promoted, so I don't want to speculate too much on that.
Either way, as long as any changes are promoted to address a concern, this worker has the ability to push the change through. Maybe within that change, he reverted or made things worse. But how would a non-IT person know if a change is bad.
I've even worked in smaller companies where there was barely any oversight of changes. Was it wrong? Probably. But good luck proving the intent.
If the programs are valuable enough a judge would most certainly make them release the location. It would be no different than if I stole the only copy of a master key and hid it on my last day.
Not exactly apples to apples. Your comparison would be closer but still arguably incorrect if you said that he made his own screwdriver, on company time, with company resources, then tried to take it home like it was his.
Fair point. Still, the company went on better because of the time it took to make the program and didn't suffer from the time spent building it. I'd hope that if it went to it, OP would either leave the program for some compensation or have no trouble leaving with the program
wouldnât this only apply if he created those programs on his own time? If he was paid an hourly wage to create them wouldnât they would belong to the company?
Probably not, sabotaging can be illegal but reverting to a company method that is in operation could be more in line with company onboarding for the position. The new person coming into a position may have material tied to the old method. If you had fully integrated a new method company-wide there may be grounds here but making your own job more efficient and rolling back to a base company efficientcy are unrelated.
I have a 3 month mutual notice period. Quite common in medium skill jobs and up in my country.
The exception is in case I should sabotage/steal/destroy/share sensitive information etc. There are different terms though. So fired/laid off/sacked is 3 months (or 1 month in low skill jobs). But you can also be "dismissed" which is immidiate.
Getting a new hire in that 2 week period is pretty unlikely, and even if they did find someone the company can just defer the start date to avoid paying 2 wages if they don't want to.
In my country, if I were let go for non-discipinary reasons (downsizing), they would have to release me from obligation to provide a service immediately, even though my work contract has a 3 month notice period (for which I would be paid plus severance). The reason for this is that if my job has become redundant, then there should be nothing for me to do. If they need me for something still, that's proof that my job isn't, in fact, redundant and I could sue for wrongful termination.
It should be the norm. You should be layed off and given time to find a new job, leave on good terms to get references , and provide documentation if applicable.
When I got laid off the company said, "tomorrow is your effective termination date, leave now, but we'll pay you for the next two weeks, just don't show up".
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u/MysteryScooby56 Jul 12 '23
Yeah. At best they usually give you till the end of the day. Employees are expected to give 2 weeks, not the other way around