IBM To Kernel Maintainer: "You Are An IBM Employee 100% Of The Time"

[coder]

This is why we need maximum work week laws like they have in Europe, which creates a clearer delineation between work time and personal time and ensures there is significant personal time. It would also put limits on how long employers can ask employees to work and improve the dismal work life balance in the US.

I'm of two minds about this. I like some flexibility in my work hours, which my jobs have tended to afford me. When I get "in the zone", I like to be unconstrained and just go with it, until I start to tire or reach a good stopping point. Knowledge work isn't like manual labor, in that you can expect a highly consistent level of productivity per hour.

On the other hand, employers definitely have too much power. The tech workforce hasn't generally had a very rough time, since the job market has been fairly strong. As good tech jobs become more scarce, I think that balance of power will definitely shift further.

[nist]

Linux needs a full reboot. We already have the kernel, xorg and a bash init script is easy to implement. First stage: a modern, free (as in freedom) gui toolkit.

[SofS]

One thing of note that is not being taken in account here is the wording "on VNIC". He was not forbidden to use his own e-mail for other parts of the kernel or anywhere else by that directive.

This looks like to me that IBM thinks he is in some way using company engineering resources of some kind, even if internal documentation, to do this work so IBM should be credited for the work. There may also be some sort of IP agreement between IBM and a third party we are not aware about that gave rights only to IBM.

As long as he can continue working elsewhere independently I see no issue.

[coder]

Linux needs a full reboot. We already have the kernel, xorg and a bash init script is easy to implement. First stage: a modern, free (as in freedom) gui toolkit.

Uhhh... wrong thread?

[coder]

One thing of note that is not being taken in account here is the wording "on VNIC". He was not forbidden to use his own e-mail for other parts of the kernel or anywhere else by that directive.

...

As long as he can continue working elsewhere independently I see no issue.

What part of "You Are An IBM Employee 100% Of The Time" is so hard to understand? You're over-interpreting the specifics, here.

I do think this incident was borne out of something regarding that particular commit, but the manager isn't wrong about the power dynamics they're asserting.

[Keats]

I'm of two minds about this. I like some flexibility in my work hours, which my jobs have tended to afford me. When I get "in the zone", I like to be unconstrained and just go with it, until I start to tire or reach a good stopping point. Knowledge work isn't like manual labor, in that you can expect a highly consistent level of productivity per hour.

On the other hand, employers definitely have too much power. The tech workforce hasn't generally had a very rough time, since the job market has been fairly strong. As good tech jobs become more scarce, I think that balance of power will definitely shift further.

There's flexibility in that you can work 12 hours one day, and then take the next afternoon off(or work 10 hours a day for a few days in exchange of taking an extra day off sometime later). Or at least, the law and regulations allow for such practices, what individual workplaces do is another matter. What is not allowed is for you to have a contract for 8 hours per day, and then your employer actually requiring that you work 10 hours per day with no extra pay or time off to compensate.

[numacross]

The gentle conservative american citizen is considering this as "socialist country" ...but in fact its just human.

US politics is so polarized it's not even funny reading comments like this. Don't Democrats have total power now? Did they ever try to implement work-related laws like those in my country? I highly doubt that and I think they never will.

I'm of two minds about this. I like some flexibility in my work hours, which my jobs have tended to afford me. When I get "in the zone", I like to be unconstrained and just go with it, until I start to tire or reach a good stopping point. Knowledge work isn't like manual labor, in that you can expect a highly consistent level of productivity per hour.

On the other hand, employers definitely have too much power. The tech workforce hasn't generally had a very rough time, since the job market has been fairly strong. As good tech jobs become more scarce, I think that balance of power will definitely shift further.

What I described in my post is just the base law. You can modify it with mutual consent. You can work 12 or even 24h, but there are limits on total amount of hours (non-overtime) per week and month.

[coder]

I can't imagine posting the "instruction" verbatim in the commit message is going to go over well with that manager, if it is verbatim and not paraphrased anyway.

I just want to point out something that's probably not obvious to some of you. Take it as a point of professional advice, if you will.

Regardless of what happened behind the scenes, and even if people on the particular mailing list for that part of the kernel are aware of the underlying conflict, quoting the manager's email is something the employee cannot take back and is likely to be viewed as a passive-aggressive move. That creates a perception of unprofessionalism that could affect their employability, even beyond IBM.

I'm not saying I've never sent a regrettable email, in the heat of the moment, but what they employee should have said is that they've been requested by their employer to remove themselves from the maintainers list and not to use their personal email in commits. Just stick to the essential facts, phrased in a neutral way. Some might still take issue with that, but it's justifiable in that it explains why the maintainer is withdrawing and alerts others to watch for their commits (I'm assuming they commit elsewhere) only under their work account.

[Dr. Righteous]

I had an employer that insisted they owned every line of code I wrote, even on my own time. Some companies are not worth working for.

There are laws against that kind of thing. You are an employee not a slave. They don't own you no matter what kind of non-compete or confidentially doc you sign. They cannot own you but they think they can bully you. I've been though my share of that.

[skeevy420]

Neraxa good luck with that. People opposing this idea will just belittle it as "socialism", effectively preventing any serious debate on the topic.

As an American I can attest to that. Americans don't understand what socialism is nor do they grasp that we already are socialists. They don't grasp the difference between Populist Fascist and Socialist. All because the Nazi's had "Socialism" as part of their name. Seriously. That's why America can't have better socialism. It's like getting rid of democracy because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea gives a bad name to it.

If you're a European with a grasp of US Law and Practices you'll see what I mean about Americans in one picture:


For those who don't: Don't steal from socialized medicine to support socialized medicine
That's what that sign really says if you know the details.

I love telling all those anti-socialists military lovers that the American Military is literally the biggest socialist organization and project in the world. They don't grasp that spending tax dollars on **insert something here** for the betterment of the public is socialism. Medicare, Military, Roads, Police, Fire Fighters, Search and Rescue, Census Taking, Polling Stations, Long term record-keeping, Libraries-- all of that is Democratic Socialism. Things and services that we as a society thought were important enough to tax everyone to ensure are always there and available. When you spend the majority of that money on the Military, that makes the military the biggest socialist organization in the country.

But Nazis are socialists.

And we're back to square one.

That's enough philosophy for the day. It's 420 so I'm gonna get blazed get back to watching the MCU in release order. I haven't watched a single MCU movie since Iron Man 2. That's movie 3 out of 23. Yeah, I'm the embodiment of "The Cake is a Lie".