Your professional life goes beyond your full time job

by Diego Mijelshon

DevResults is a great place to work. We have good pay; vacation and leave policies; the opportunity to work with smart, caring people; flexible hours and remote work; a product that we believe in; and the list goes on. But what if this is not enough?

A high percentage of software engineers love contributing to open source software. Many enjoy having side projects where they can use different technologies, participate in different domain areas, or maybe make some extra money to treat themselves.

The industry is well aware of this, but nonetheless many companies restrict what people can do with their time while employed for a variety of reasons, legitimate or not.

In some cases, there are rules that are not actively enforced... but they exist.

We explicitly decided we were not going to be like that.

Some years ago we sat down and and made a simple set of rules that would give our employees and collaborators the freedom they needed. We published them to our internal wiki.

Today we are making them public, not just to brag, but hopefully to influence other companies and point them in the direction of better relationships with their people, which is a key to retention, productivity, and overall happiness.

Without further ado and straight from our wiki:

DevResults Non-compete guidelines

We want our employees to feel happy and free. We acknowledge that everyone has not only a personal life, but also a professional life outside of DevResults.

Our non-compete policy, regarding what kind of work you can do on the side, can be summarized in one phrase: use common sense.

You are free to pursue any other paid or non paid engagements, as long as:

  • They don't affect negatively your work at DevResults
  • It is not something that DevResults does which we would be paid for (in other words, directly competing with DevResults)
  • You do not disclose proprietary information or IP of DevResults

We will also never claim ownership to any IP or asset you generate that is not part of DevResults.

Since our company culture is based on mutual trust, we just ask you to be ethical and transparent. Which you probably are, or you wouldn't be working with us.

Header image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hackny/5685366097