While working for my last employer, a big software company, I had lots of free time ... milestones lasted a month, and the work we did in a milestone could have been made in 3 days of hard work by talented engineers with no endless meetings, and no internal systems to integrate to. And we used the worst tools ever.
Having free time was great, but in my contract was specified that everything I worked on in my free time belonged to the company.
Now I'm working at a small consultancy company that's run by an old friend of mine. It's not bad, but we offer consultancy services and that means ...
- at least 3 projects I have to work on simultaneously
- the projects have to be finished as soon as possible, such that we can collect the money :) This means we can't give too much love to those projects (although I'm learning a lot about meeting customer expectations and cutting features that aren't essential ... which is great)
When I joined I thought it would be great since I will have enough time to work on my own projects, and no contract to stop me from doing it. That's not the case :(
At home, when I feel like working on something, I end up working on tasks that are late at work.
Actually, that's the law: if you're employed as a programmer, any programming you do in your free time is copyrighted by your employer. At least in the Netherlands. (More info at http://www.iusmentis.com/copyright/crashcourse/ownership/ .) And yeah, that's pretty sick from an employee perspective, but great if you want to protect yourself as a company. When I was employed, I actually read my contract, so I had a side-note added with exceptions. If you're involved in any open source project, that's probably a smart thing to do. (Again, at least in the Netherlands, but I'm pretty sure that's not unique, since copyright laws tend to be very old.)
Having free time was great, but in my contract was specified that everything I worked on in my free time belonged to the company.
Now I'm working at a small consultancy company that's run by an old friend of mine. It's not bad, but we offer consultancy services and that means ... - at least 3 projects I have to work on simultaneously - the projects have to be finished as soon as possible, such that we can collect the money :) This means we can't give too much love to those projects (although I'm learning a lot about meeting customer expectations and cutting features that aren't essential ... which is great)
When I joined I thought it would be great since I will have enough time to work on my own projects, and no contract to stop me from doing it. That's not the case :(
At home, when I feel like working on something, I end up working on tasks that are late at work.