At the very least you should inform the company about the upcoming conflict of interests on the horizon. Let them know you won't be able to start work on that project until you've both figured out your legal ground.
As common advice goes, seek a lawyer's advice. Alternatively talk to the company lawyer whose job may also involve sorting out things like this so you can save on fees.
Something I also wanted to say. Consider changing your scenery. It might give a boost to your morale and supply you with new and better ideas. Perhaps find a job on another continent for a change.
I was there some years ago. I realized that the root cause of the problem was focusing on the wrong things (at least they were wrong for me).
Tools are just that - they are tools. Granted, there are many of them, new and shining, coming in all packages, but that gets tiresome after you've spent a substantial period of time with them. They are all essentially the same and sooner or later you lose interest in them.
What never gets boring is using tools to create things that affect people's lives. And I gather from your message that you've missed that joy.
My advice is simple. Think of some thing that would be helpful to (non-technical) end users. Come up with some kind of service that would solve even a small problem for them. Then see your eyes light up as people are adopting your offering and giving you their thanks.
In short, your work must have a meaning. You should know that somehow what you do improves the world we live in, even if in a small and seemingly insignificant way. For as long as you're just finishing tasks prepared by somebody else for somebody else's meaningless projects, you're not going to be happy. As with all creative professions, in programming too you have to take matter in your own hands.
You've just realized (subconsciously) that your work has been meaningless. You basically need to find your path. What you could do:
- Forget about the tools, just pick up something you're comfortable with and create something useful for people
- Change jobs until you find a project you can personally identify with and where you'll see you work affecting the outside world in a tangible way
- Change profession or role to the one where your need for meaning will be satisfied
That's hard I know. I wish it weren't but it's just the way things are in life.
I'm sorry you're going through that kind of feelings, they're pretty heavy to live with on a daily basis. A month under that stress counts almost as a year.
I've always liked France and its culture, and I speak French on some level, I guess that's why I take personally all bad things that I hear from France, as if they concerned mon pays natal.
If you'd like we could exchange privately, I could attempt to cheer you up (from the position of a person living in a place that has fallen much lower than yours), though I realize there's not much I can say to remedy the gloom you're seeing around you.
From what I heard French are obliged to surrender encryption keys at the request of authorities or go to jail for a few years for denying their request. The only thing that may be left is to pack your things and go.
(Russian here). I so much understand you brother (or sister). We've got an even harder wave of prohibitive laws and the local IT industry has been brought to its knees. Companies have been leaving, people have been leaving. I haven't seen any appealing job openings for close to two years. I myself am thinking of emigrating, even thought about France, but now I'm not sure it was such a good idea.
>> So much potential is wasted...
That's the most tragic thing indeed. You can import food, clothes, cars and so on but you can't import talent. When it goes, it's final.
Never left them in the first place. Great products actually.
Also lots of hardware available, everything is upgradeable. Not like MBP with soldered RAM, soldered SSD, weak ventilation system, no LAN and just 2 USB ports. Can buy a laptop or assemble your own desktop workstation.
Linux I don't know. It still looks ugly and no great apps available for it. Visual Studio for Linux? Adobe tools for Linux? Of course not. Just amateur toys and fonts with ragged edges. Thanks but no thanks.
No, the disk is fine. I just wish that VM cost $20, perhaps $25, but not $57 which it costs now (I've corrected my original post, it was not $67 but $57 as I remembered wrongly).
I wish to publish a relatively simple app for a reasonable price and I'm sadly skipping Azure from my consideration. I'm seeing VMs similar to A1 cost about $12-15 with many hosting companies. And for $20-25 I can get your level A2 which costs $115.
I realize you may not be in a position to influence pricing. I just would like to point out that the pricing of Azure VMs is not simply uncompetitive, but plainly prohibitive. I hope Microsoft does something about it.
Saying it as a veteran Microsoft developer since the 90s.
VCs are overrated. They can take your company and throw you out if they don't like you. I have actually witnessed that happen. Stay clear of them if you don't want to lose your business.
Talent of SV is also overrated. Smart people are available everywhere, many of them not interested in going to the US. Pay them reasonable salary and they will build you anything.
Drop the prices for Azure VMs to the reasonable level similar to that of the other hosting companies. Right now the first tolerable configuration A1 costs $57 and this can be had for $15 elsewhere.
Please also make your payment processor accept virtual credit cards so I can actually pay you money with the means I have (not in a possession of a real credit card). PayPal will also do nicely.
I'd be more curious to see a salary range analysis. It would quickly turn up that of hundreds of Germany startups perhaps a ten or so pay some reasonable money while the rest stick with the 40-50K range and set for cheap workforce only.
It's not about the numbers. It's about people. Right now not a single individual can be trusted not to misuse somebody's personal details, through malice or negligence, and not create a severe risk for the owner. Being one in a narrow selection of computer professionals doesn't help much. One can be a genius and a person of low ethical standards at the same time. No solution until the civilization progresses much further than what we have now. Until then, lock down the Whois database. Even better, discontinue it altogether. Let individual registrars hold the personal details of their customers. At least it will remove the risk of compromising everyone's privacy with one action by not putting all eggs in one basket.
He said nothing of the kind. He said he was "an aspiring programmer". That type can find a good place in Europe as well.
It's not the place that makes you successful, it's your efforts. Getting into the US alone won't change your life. You have to bring something with you. If you've got nothing, then, well, you've got nothing.
You may want to consider Europe too. Many countries will give you their citizenship in just 5 years. No dependence on the employer, change them at your will.
You also get free education for your children, relatively free medical help as well as the cultural diversity.
Agreed. The mere idea of having to globally expose your personal details is idiotic. Or at least it belongs to a more civilized society we're not seeing a glimpse of yet.
So if one wanted to knock over a competitor's business, it would only take to arrange for the owner to be unavailable for a couple of weeks, send this email, wait for the deadline, grab the domain. Profit.
What happens if you become sick or get in an accident and must go to a hospital? Game over?
The way most companies conduct interviews is one sure way to never hire the best talent anyway, even if they actually wanted it. So they end up with mediocre people, those who have memorized all the right answers to standard questions.
At the same time, these hiring practices push away the real talent who has better things to do with their time than to play the game. This talent is now sitting somewhere and building a startup of their own. Perhaps even a competitor of yours.
Actually, hiring new colleagues is part of the job. Developers MUST participate in it somehow, otherwise you get a team composed from totally random people who have nothing in common. You don't want to work in such a place.
As common advice goes, seek a lawyer's advice. Alternatively talk to the company lawyer whose job may also involve sorting out things like this so you can save on fees.