[ILUG] looking for linux software people

[John P. Looney]

On Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 06:47:56PM +0000, Gavin Henrick mentioned:
> It is quite normal for multinationals or otherwise to seek to limit the
> re-use of knowledge acquired during development of an inhouse system,
> and there are legal limits to how far it can be limited, and rightly so.

 Indeed. Which is why I'd never work in such a company. Many of the jobs
I've taken were explicitly for that purpose - so I could gain knowledge
and experience, and then use it elsewhere. If in a job interview, I was
told that was forbidden, I'd laugh heartily. 

 Come to think of it, that's exactly what I did in my first job, when I
was told that I would have to agree not to work for one of their
compeditors for 12 months. And I got the job anyway.

> That said, I would not employ someone who didnt accept the nda (which
> includes the complete transfer of intellectual property and some limits
> on what can be redone and regarding work done on similar company
> projects), because our clients require us to do that as well. He who
> pays the piper and all that.

 Indeed. That said, thankfully most pipers aren't given NDAs. Well, they
were in Eyes Wide Shut, I suppose.

 While code you write in a company can certainly be copyrighted, to try
and limit the spread of knowledge generated is both illegal and morally
reprehensible. And you won't get people that enthused.

 Sigh. Memories of doing contract work in companies that only used
obsolete and obscure systems so their employees didn't have skills that
could be transferred to other jobs that paid well.

 Getting good open source developers is dead easy:

    Have a fun office (ones where people whisper, and have 'politics'
        won't keep developers. Tablesoccer helps.
    Have a decent sized team, so people don't get technically lonely
        (guys need to be able talk about recent slashdot stories over
        lunch). It also encourages skill transfer.
    Don't pigeonhole people. If someone is out, let someone else work one
        that part of the project, so they can come to know it. It also
        makes sure that real code reviews happen (there is no code review
        like a "fix a bug" one).
    Allow people to try their own solutions. Giving someone a square peg
        for a round hole, then walking away is not good. A place that
        decrees "No C++" out of bigotry, or "No FreeBSD, because we like
        linux" is self-limiting. No one really likes limits.
    Time in lieu. It's a wonderful way of promising that you won't
        overwork someone. No one minds working late on a project, if it
        has to be done. But some way of compensating people for losing
        parts of their lives has to be done; and it's nasty if you lose
        part of your life because the team is under funded or someone
        messed up the spec. I think most open source guys got burned out,
        or nearly so, during the .com boom.

 Add these to the other ones people mention.

John