Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has since moved on to greener and perhaps more dangerous pastures, told an audience of Stanford students recently that “Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.” Evidently this hot take was not for wider consumption, as Stanford — which posted the video this week on YouTube — today made the video of the event private.
Part of the plan (a big part) is that any big ideas you come up with when you’re in the office and not working belong to Google.
Scenario 1: It’s 5pm so you go home, after dinner you hang out with a bunch of friends, many who work at other companies. While you’re hanging out, someone has an idea for the Next Big Thing in tech. Everybody talks about it, gets excited, and a year later everyone quits their jobs to start NBT.com.
Scenario 2: It’s 5pm so you go to the on-site gym, you stay on campus for dinner, and you hang out with a bunch of cow-orkers / friends, all of whom work at Google / Meta / Amazon. While you’re hanging out, someone has an idea for the Next Big Thing in tech. Everybody talks about it, gets excited, but since you all work for the same company you don’t quit. The company has ways for employees to work on projects like that while not having to quit. And, if you did quit, they might be able to sue you since you came up the idea on company time, and used company resources to develop it.
That’s not really how IP works. Just because you think of something while eating a sandwich that Google paid for, that doesn’t mean they own it. Your brain is not “company resources”. The sandwich was not necessary for the brainstorm.
It’s smarter to think up good ideas away from the office, but it’s completely legal to take knowledge and experience with you when you leave the company.
Ok, feel free to argue that against Google’s lawyers. The law may be on your side, but the lawyers aren’t.
In California it’s totally fine. That’s why there’s so many tech startups there. It’s not taxes.
That may be the law, but Google isn’t likely to just accept it without fighting it.
It happens all the time. Almost everyone who starts a new tech company has worked in a different one.
Yes, most people have previously held jobs.
And sometimes Google sues former employees.
Uh, that guy actually did steal literal IP. Uber was founded by an asshole who didn’t care about breaking the law.