Navigating your company's "no compete" language

If you're starting your IH gig as a side project while working full-time for someone else, you may run into this issue like I did. Here's a few thoughts on how to navigate this problem.

Most companies want to protect their IP and market share which is understandable. Many will have employees sign non-compete contracts as part of the job offer, which usually have some "Inventions and Creations" clauses. These are usually written so that anything you produce that's in the same market/sales space of the company you're working for is going to be their property .

If you're worried that this might impact your ability to build your project, or might cause you legal trouble with your "day job" down the road, I have a few pieces of advice:

• Engage the legal department early at your day job; most of the time they can quickly rope in the people that are needed to give you a yay or nay on whether this constitutes a conflict of interest
• Have a well-defined boundary box of what your project will do, who the customer targets will be, etc.; this will help your company decide quickly if there's any competitive issues there
• Be cordial with the lawyers, friendliness goes a long way; hopefully one day your side gig will be big enough to need corporate lawyers!
• Be diligent in separating your day job work and your side gig; no resource sharing (don't even check your email for your side gig on the work machine)

In my case, I was able to chat early with legal, got the paperwork in place to make it all copacetic and everything is all good.