Episode 239: Hustle and patents and toxicity

Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Questions

1. Really love the podcast. Keep it up! I’m in a senior role at a software company and have been here over 5 years. I have come up with a SaaS product idea after finding a problem in my company’s engineering process and started working on it. It solves a niche problem in general software development so it isn’t related to my company product. I would like to use this product at my current company both to help me manage the technical issues at my current company and to help validate and grow the idea.

   Should I have any concerns with what I’m doing? Can my company claim my idea as it’s own? What should I be doing now to protect myself? Any other things I should consider? Does it make sense to validate a new side hustle idea at a company while working full time at said company?

2. Please help soft skills wizards:

   Junior eng at a huge conglomerate, quit mid-patent process (OK I HAD A PRODUCTIVE TUESDAY A MONTH AGO and I’m pretty good with mermaid.js).

   If they come back with a job offer post-departure, since I am the sole inventor on this patent, how do I properly handle this one?

   My manager was…. extremely toxic and every attempt that was made to move was botched either by CoViD-19 or my chain of command. I don’t think I could feasibly have a positive interaction with my former manager and working under him has had a significant impact on my mental health.

   But…. I loved my work. I loved some of the people I worked with. Sometimes it being a huge conglomerate had its upsides as well: I was able to bend the rules as long as the bureaucracy had prevented someone from implementing the visibility that would have demonstrated the rules were bent.

   If they give me an offer to return as a junior architect I would be very tempted to do so, but would be afraid of being anywhere near my former manager, director or VP.