A farewell I didnt want to come

[kodex]

Some of you may of noticed my absence from the forums over the last few months, most of you most likely didn't though. Thats ok =).

I am very regretful to say that I will have to put my shareware programming on hold for the time being. I will be starting a job with Apple next week and as some of you may know they do not allow outside work on the macintosh platform.

I want to express my heart-filled thanks to everyone on these forums who has helped me with my projects, and your ongoing support of a great platform. I wish all of you the best of luck in the future and I hope to return to you all again some day soon. I will make sure to check in from time to time as well.

Good luck to everyone.

[OneSadCookie]

congratulations on the job :)

[Nick]

What are you going to be doing for Apple?

[igame3d]

I have tears in my eyes, because you didn't take all of us with you.


Congrats on the job, hope whatever you are doing is fun.

And I think thats the most I've ever said to you. :-)

[AnotherJake]

Well, out of the military and into Apple. I'd say congrats, but I'm too damned jealous right now. :p

Good luck man!

[FreakSoftware]

No outside work, eh? Hmmm.... that's pretty major. Even Woz was allowed to sell the Apple I :p

[Fenris]

Whoa, sad to see you go, happy to know you're in a better place now. :)

Take the best of care!

[ERaZer]

Congratulations and good luck on your new job :)

[akb825]

Congrats on the job. Kind of sucks that you can't work on outside stuff. Makes me kind of glad I wasn't thinking of working for Apple in the first place. BTW, what department are you working in?

[socksy]

Good luck, and congratulations on your job. :)

[Joseph Duchesne]

Do they explain why they have this policy? It seems a tad arbitrary. Do other similar companies do the same thing in the states?

Congrats all the same :wow:

[funkboy]

Do other similar companies do the same thing in the states?

Most definitely. That was a big part of my decision on where to work. It will be primarily the bigger companies that have these policies, like Apple. Smaller companies, ones who are not as wide in their scope, are usually fine with you having outside projects if they do not directly compete with the company's business.

Is that *not* normal over in Europe? Even for big companies?

[Zwilnik]

It's pretty normal for games developers. Some are more restrictive than others (ie *anything* you create is owned by them, whether it's at home or at work). Adam and I were lucky in that the company we were at that was bought by another company (which was then bought by another company) had a more relaxed policy that let us write Mac games in our spare time and that contract got carried over to the bigger company.

[geezusfreeek]

I guess the policy is because at Apple you may learn a lot about the internals of the OS to exploit in your apps, which... may be bad for some reason?

Congrats on the job!

[Dan Potter]

Congrats on the job!

It's become very common in the US at least to make new employees sign contracts stating that every idea they come up with, on company time or not, is automatically owned by the company; a restrictive NDA; a non-compete agreement, to not do what the company does for at least 3+ years after you quit; etc. It's ridiculous and insulting. I've turned down jobs before because of it, and I've gotten at least one potential employer to modify the language so that it only included stuff done during the course of employment work.

[codemattic]

Congrats on the job - the holy grail of jobs - working for the mothership! They get tons of resumes, its very competative - way to go! Are you allowed to tell us what you are doing - programming, sales, management, mailroom... what?

>>
It's become very common in the US at least to make new employees sign contracts stating that every idea they come up with, on company time or not, is automatically owned by the company
<<
yeah Dan - this is just an outrage - you are an employee, not an owned slave - that they claim to own all your *thoughts* all the time even the time you are not being paid for. Craziness. I dont know how much this has been tested in court though - is it solid?