Ask Slashdot: Handing Over Personal Work Without Compensation? 848
rsmith84 writes "I'm the Senior Systems administrator for a small trade college. When I was hired on, it was strictly for L3 related tasks such as advanced server administration, Exchange design and implementation, etc. They have no in-house programmers, no help desk software, and no budget to purchase one. I'm a moderate PHP and MySQL programmer on the side and am easily capable of writing something to meet their needs, but do not believe I should be A) asked to or B) required to, as my job description and employment terms are not based upon this skill set. I like a challenge, and since all of my goals outlined since my hire date have been met and exceeded, I have a lot of down time. So I wrote the application. It streamlines several critical processes, allows for a central repository of FAQ, and provides end users with access to multiple systems all in one place. I've kept a detailed time log of my work and feel I should be remunerated for the work before just handing over the code. The entire source was developed on personal equipment off company hours. My question is: what should I do? If they are willing to compensate me, I will gladly hand it over. However, it's been mentioned that, if I do the project, it is all but guaranteed that I will see no compensation. The application would streamline a lot of processes and take a lot of the burden off my team, freeing them up to handle what I deem to be more challenging items on their respective punch lists and a better utilization of their time and respective skills. I'm a firm believer in not getting 'something for nothing,' especially when the skills are above my pay grade."
exactly. something stinks to high heaven (Score:5, Interesting)
"since all of my goals outlined since my hire date have been met and exceeded, I have a lot of down time".
"The entire source was developed on personal equipment off company hours"
these two statements make absolutely zero sense when placed together.
if the guy wrote it and actually TESTED it on work time, then he owns exactly fucking 0 of his source code. he is considered a 'work for hire' employee.
of course, there is a chance that the administrators are too dumb to understand this. he could claim he 'registered copyright' (a phrase which has no actual meaning) and see if they will jump.
on the other hand, this is a 'trade school', which could in theory mean one of the diploma mills owned by hedge funds who are betting on the education bubble collapsing and betting against the student loans they pump and dump during day-time tv commercial hours. Im thinking ITT or DeVry here.
in that case, their corporate HQ will probably have some highly educated, experienced lawyers who will be able to run a truck right over any bluffing he tries to do.
lastly, im completely talking out of my ass. but it all sounded so good, right? right?
parts of it have some resemblance to reality, id wager.
What a job (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish I had a job where: "all of my goals outlined since my hire date have been met and exceeded, I have a lot of down time."
At every SA job I've ever done, the work never ends, there's always more to do - I've never ended up with true downtime to let me pursue other projects.
And what does this mean: "do not believe I should be A) asked to or B) required to, as my job description and employment terms are not based upon this skill set."?
Outside of union work, I've never seen a job where you can say "Hey, that's not in my JD, so I'm not going to do it, instead I'm going to sit on my butt and enjoy my well earned down time". If it's something I could do, I'd do it. Otherwise I'd ask for training (or books), then do it.
But then, I've always worked in the private sector, never in education or government.
Re:Career (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of variables here. If you have a good rapport with your boss you can bring up the subject and say that you noticed a lot of time was being spent doing routine tasks that you think can be automated. Give him a business case where you can figure out how much money that software can save him in his budget each year either by reducing downtime, staff, ect. Then say you would like a promotion and raise where you split those savings 50/50 (or whatever) over what you are making now. If that's not possible say you are willing to do the job on a contract basis where you do the work at home and bill them when the software is delivered.
I was once an engineer at a company where we sent work out when we were busy. I saw how much they were spending to get these parts drawings made and I offered to do it for 1/2 the price at home. My boss refused. So I went to the job shop that was doing the work and offered to do the work for 75% of what they charged. Since I was familiar with the job I could get it done very quickly. The job shop accepted because they were getting paid for doing nothing.
In real business it always comes down to peoples motivations. What are your bosses biggest headaches? To get ahead you have to figure them out and how much it's worth to them.
Re:No budget? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're not getting anything for it, release it under an opensource license - I've had this problem at work where they've desperately needed stuff that they didn't have time or manpower to do during hours, I've gone home and written it. We've come to the understanding that if they don't want to pay for it I will GPL it and they can have it free, with the usual constrains on GPL licensing.
Re:Don't work "for free" (Score:4, Interesting)
Most organizations are not deserving of free work on the part of an employee, regardless of hourly or salaried compensation. The only two times I can think of that might warrant some kind of uncompensated work would be where either a a company is in trouble and employees pulling extra effort might save their jobs, or where the extra work is likely to result in a better position in the company.
I don't see either being the case in the way you describe it. If you can't do it on the clock or at the office, don't do it.
My current position requires me to do some repetitive tasks. Rather than spend several minutes a day doing the same thing again and again I wrote some small VB scripts that can do the work while I grab coffee. I was not compensated for this.
I wrote the code for a few reasons:
a) saves me a lot of time
b) I'm the only one permitted to use it since it's not officially "approved" (yet)
c) I have it expire after a month. Doing this means no one can use it after the date unless they change the system time but no one in our department is given admin rights (shocker, I know)
d) if i'm ever fired or quit they'll just wipe my PC and the program will be lost anyway.
e) the program startup intro screen has my name and personal email address if they ever need to contact me to discuss purchasing
If you can write something that saves you time I say go for it, but make it expire, or at least nag, and remember to include methods of contacting you.
Easier to get money for finished product (Score:4, Interesting)
If they didn't have the money to do it, and you were told that you wouldn't be paid for it, why would you expect to be paid for it?
It's difficult to convince managers to invest in software that might one day exist. They might invest your time but if they're not confident about your skills, they might fear that the project might take longer than expected and/or never get finished. Saying "We'll pay you if/when it's done" is also problematic (then there needs to time invested to crafting specifications about when it'll be done, there might be conflicts about that, budgeting money for investment that might or might not occur is a bitch, etc.). If you can show them a product and say "Here's a product that does X, if you're willing to pay Y, we'll start using this tomorrow" you remove the risk completely and it's much easier costs/benefits analysis.
That said... I think that the OP is in a situation where he has no chance but to give his boss the product. If he says "Okay, I knew you don't have money to pay me but I still made this piece of software... Just to tell you that I'm not going to give it to you!" it won't exactly improve his status within the organization. So either he'll tell nobody about it or he'll end up giving the software to his employer for whatever price he might or might not be able to negotiate for it. If the employer really can't pay him with money, I think this would be a good chance to negotiate some non-monetary benefits. Think it would benefit both you and the company if you could allocate one day a week to any work-related project of your choice (Google-style)? It's a good time to make the case when you hand over that piece of software. Want an extra week or two vacation next year? I bet that's doable if the product really is as good as the OP claims. Want the office with the nicest view? It could finally be yours...
Compensation is more than a one time payment. (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people think that "code" is worth something. With very few exceptions, the code itself is almost worthless. Code is only worth something when there's people around to support it and make it alive. Without those people, it dies.
Your college is unlikely to buy your code base from you. It's certainly possible they will, but you lack all the support structure a normal software vendor has since it's just you. If you decide to walk away all of a sudden, what the hell do they do since they don't have any kind of software development in house? What seems more likely is that the college might be interested in your code base if you gave them the code (GPL it if you think it's useful to anyone else). Then parlay this into a new job with higher pay where you continue to support and develop the infrastructure. If they're unwilling to do even this, then forget about it, and chalk it up to a learning experience.
Re:it is part of your job (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind that even though he developed it on his own time and with his own equipment, he still used a company resource.......knowledge of their processes.
It's very likely that his tool will save the company lots of time and money. It's also likely that it is of much less use to any other company due to specifics of the company he works for. Give it to them and turn it into some sort of career advancement -- a raise / promotion and possibly a job change to one that matches his skill set better. Initiative is rewarded in most companies (at least at that level.....eventually, it doesn't help).
Re:Have you talked to anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Please note: You made a blanket statement, and that elicited my initial response without regard to the greater context. I responded exactly to the statement that I quoted, and nothing more.)
It's always true when the one off app was written by a kid who's working as a digital janitor.
It's usually true. It depends on actual man hours saved / actual man hours cost. It's extremely difficult not to overestimate savings.
He is talking about 'help desk' software. Nothing new, just reinventing the wheel. Another data point on the kids competence (which isn't looking good from here).
That's not entirely clear from the summary. That might be true.
Also mySQL? What happens when an index blows on 'incident'? Never for important data.
That's criticism without a recommendation. What would you suggest? PostreSQL? SQLite? No SQL (pick any)? OOo Base? What is it that you would trust with "important data"? What is the threshold for "important"? What is your criteria for acceptance?
I've been unimpressed with MySQL, but this criticism seems quite shallow.
Re:Career (Score:5, Interesting)
Working on your "career" is a very sad and lonely life, only fools chase that rabbit.
I disagree completely with the conclusion you come to. Some people are doing their jobs to do something good. They fulfill themselves, by doing those jobs.
There are idiots that climb the career ladder in a job they don't like, but saying that only fools chase career path is a closed minded conclusion.
Re:Have you talked to anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Career (Score:5, Interesting)
Since we are talking ethics I'll use the real dollar amounts. I was right out of college in 1996. I interned for this company for 2 years and I when I was hired full time was getting paid $13.50/hr. I was newly married and I didn't want to spend 16 hour days in the office. We were a small office where we had a few permanent people and as jobs came in we hired temps or sent work out. This was standard practice. I saw this and went to my boss and offered to do the work for a fixed price at home where it was quiet. I took one job that was being sent out and I bid 200 hours on it at my regular pay of $13.50/hr and I'd have it done in 6 weeks. So fixed price. $2700 done in 6 weeks all to our company standards. He said no.
They send it for bid the winning bid was 8 weeks and I don't know the price. One of the drafters was moonlighting as well with this company and he gave them my name. They called and asked if I would bid the job. I gave them the same numbers I gave my boss. These guys were very nice old Italian guys. He laughed at me when I gave him the bid. He said he couldn't in good conciseness pay me so little. So he gave it to me for a fixed price of $5000 and 8 weeks. So in reality I have no clue how much they charged I was just guessing.
I have no ethical problems with this because I gave my company a chance to let me do it and save money. I also never signed a contract stating I wouldn't moonlight. I also never slacked at work in order for more work to go out.
Re:Hey dumb ass (Score:4, Interesting)
IF you did it in your own time, release it as Open Source, at least then you have a good CV when it comes to getting a job elsewhere.
Re:Hey dumb ass (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, that's remarkable. Your entire discourse is unfounded.
1. It's reasonable to take on some extra responsibilities. Writing a major application is pretty far beyond IT tasks, though.
2. The reason people take employers is for money.
3. He has an interest in improving his company's efficiency. Otherwise he wouldn't have written the application.
4. The implication is that he gets to go home early because he completes tasks faster than expected. And he states: "The entire source was developed on personal equipment off company hours." This is self-managing one's time pretty damn well.
5. This wasn't mentioned anywhere. You have no reason to hold any belief about the amount of time this person spends training others.
6. He demonstrated his skill set to himself. He's just considering terms on which to demonstrate it to his company.
7. While there's no indication he did due diligence in investigating existing solutions, there's nothing saying he hadn't.
In short, this person seems to be an employee in good standing, and he happened to create something as a hobby that would generally cost probably 30-100% more than he's making. It's reasonable to want more than a pat on the head for doing something like that.