Ethical?? 6

[CuriousElectron]

Hi,
I'd like to hear your honest opinion regarding an ethical dilemma I'm facing. I have saved a few d esign pro jects from my former employer that I sometimes use as a technical resource on my new job. My counscience is eating at me for not deleting the pdfs after leaving the employer, specially considering that i have not contributed much to those p rojects. I also dont have a good technical resource at my curremt place of employment, which I feel contributes to this dimemma, otherwise I would have deleted those d ocuments. I dont see any issues with keeping p rojects from the past for which i served as d esign engineer.

Thoughts?
Thanks,
EE

 

[JohnRBaker]

Legally the documents sound like their the intellectual property of the organization which expended the resources, be it monetary or labor, to create them, and as such is owned by said organization. And as such, they have the right to share them, either for a fee or gratis, it's their call, which is the key issue here, IT'S THEIR CALL, not yours.

So, are they aware that you have these documents? And if so, were you given a 'license', be it written or verbal, covering how you intended to use them?

If not, and if you consider them critical to you, then contact them and come to some sort of agreement. If not, you should really destroy them. At least that's my humble opinion.

And for the record, while I have no hard legal experience nor legal education, I have, over the years, been involved in some patent activity, both in terms of my own contributions and in helping to protect my employer(s) from legal threats from outside the company that involved research to validate, or in same cases to invalidate, patent claims due to my professional experience with certain technologies which were the subject of the patent claims. I also held a valid Professional Engineering license for nearly 40 years, and only let it lapse after I retired a couple of years ago.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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[HamburgerHelper]

It happens and it happens a lot. The most egregious I heard was someone bringing in their relay study documentation from their previous company to an interview to show what they had done. He was hired in spite of that. A group of us tried to convince him after he was hired that that was really bad and to never do that again.

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[BUGGAR]

When I arrived in a new city in SoCal and worked for several structural engineering firms, I soon learned they were all using "proprietary" details that had been brought in by drafter new hires from their previous firms, errors and all.

 

[Lomarandil]

Entirely unethical (though common, as noted).

My personal stance:
[ul]
[li]It's OK to bring along notes or calculations that remind you of what you have personally done on previous projects. (If you were an EOR on a project, or need to apply for licensure in the future, this might be especially necessary)[/li]
[li]This is not the same as bringing along electronic tools (e.g. spreadsheets, drawing details, etc). Presuming those were made on company time, those are the work product of your previous employer.[/li]
[li]If you want to use calculation tools or drawing details from previous jobs, you need to ask permission from that previous employer. OR, recreate the tool/detail (from scratch, break the digital lineage) using your experience, memory, and notes.[/li]
[/ul]

Nowadays, there are a number of great free resources that you can use to build your reference library ethically. Don't trouble your conscience out of laziness.


----
The name is a long story -- just call me Lo.

 

[oldestguy]

Whether or not it is ethical, the more important thing is will it come back and bite you. There are no secrets in the engineering field. Word gets around and it can leave a negative that my some day be something you will wish never happened. Better be honest, in spite of the possible loss of some ammunition.

 

[hokie66]

Get permission, it is often freely given. Then use only where appropriate, and after diligent editing. Not from the digital era, but I still have some details and calculations from previous employers, along with accumulated technical notes not from the employer, but accumulated during that time, and using the employer's copier and paper. I don't feel ethically conflicted. Learning doesn't cease when you graduate, and you can't remember everything. A key to being a good engineer is not recalling everything, but knowing where to look.

 

[Ron]

hokie66...exactly!

 

[beej67]

When I left my prior firm, they had a complicated legal agreement drawn up that said, basically, "don't steal our stuff." Since much of that stuff was stuff I developed for them, I made changes to the agreement to where it said, "don't steal our stuff, except for the stuff you designed and could easily replicate on your own anyway." They agreed to the changes. I kept using some of the stuff. Didn't use the stuff that I didn't develop.



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[JAE]

My history is similar to beej67's. A lot of the things that I use are "typical" details and spreadsheets
The details were generally developed by me under the payroll of my employers. So there is an argument that the material totally belongs to them.

However, a few counter points:
1. The firm already had older typical details which I refused to use - I developed my own - usually after hours.
2 The firm had no spreadsheets and many or most of these I wrote after hours. I did tweak and correct some of them during hours though.
3. The typical details and spreadsheets are not usually (ever?) highly protected secret double probation type materials. I can and do replicate them from memory many times. No one is out there selling these types of products as they are many times easy to recreate.
4. Since we are in a profession, these are looked at as tools of the trade - not unlike a plumbers cache of tools they take with them from company to company.
5. All of the material I keep with me is also left with the firm when I leave. So they have full access to it.
6. None of this material gives any firm a leg up on anyone else.
7. In all cases I was on salary - vs. an hourly employee. This makes a difference in the counter argument that the materials represent items that were created at company expense and therefore their property. Being on salary means I'm being compensated to provide engineering for an annual salary independent of hours. This means that I am not really ever "on the clock" in doing my job. I am a professional paid to satisfy the entire job description so if I take an hour to develop a detail for my use as a professional, I am not "stealing time" from the company as I am not paid based on time.


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[EngrPaper]

This issue is why I usually try to separate tool creation and project calculations. If I need to do a calculation, I'll go ahead and do it right off the bat. But then after work I'll make a tool (Python is my method of choice) to automate the calculation. Could be something as simple as a gearbox overhung load function or as complex as a bolt design calculator. But either way - I made it on my own time using my own knowledge. Now I can bring my own resource back into work the next day and do the calculations faster but also keep the resource without a conflict of interest.

 

[IRstuff]

That can still be quagmire-ish, given that you would not necessarily have worked on a solution to that specific problem without the demand from the existing job.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[MikeHalloran]

Two plus decades ago, I used my new pocket hard drive to carry out a copy of the entire directory tree I had been working on. Then the job disappeared, as they do.

Not long after, I got to feeling guilty, and erased the copy.

A couple of years back, I got a call from that company, asking if I had saved anything, more specifically drawings of the wear parts for tooling I had designed and assembled for them. Sorry, no. So they paid me to go to their shop, measure the worn parts, and make conjectural drawings of what they might have looked like when new.

Before doing that, I asked about backups; 'that was three servers ago'.
I asked about the hard drive on the computer from my desk. The answer suggested that they discard or erase former employees' hard drives. Neither tactic makes sense to me, but it's their money.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[CWB1]

From a legal and ethical standpoint, if you are a salaried employee then everything you do on and off the clock during your employment is company property unless they've waived their right to it. Tools created after hours at home are no more yours than the office furniture. That said, most companies unofficially have a certain level of tolerance otherwise. So long as you're not giving away copies of standards, tools, or other things which can be traced to either them or you then I believe they simply accept that minor mementos get past the standard "supervised desk cleaning" without proper documentation, are kept for personal reference or nostalgia by the individual, and are not worth trying to chase through the legal dept. Personally, I would never consider taking anything that constitutes IP/trade secrets from an employer. I also would never consider using the same tool or spreadsheet at multiple employers regardless of where/when created. My work commonly involves new patents and technology which tend to be rather jealously guarded and regardless of the legal consequences, as oldesguy said above, the small world of engineering will notice duplication and you'll earn a reputation accordingly.

 

[truckandbus]

I'd re-write the content, assuming you wouldn't be copying any proprietary information. I've written many design guidelines and standards that did not contain trade secrets but rather brought together common knowledge into a logical format.

 

[glass99]

I don't know about these hard line responses that under no circumstances can you ever refer to projects from your old company. The attitude of secrecy hurts us all at some level. How is that ethical?

 

[CWB1]

The attitude of secrecy hurts us all at some level.

I disagree completely. The worst thing we could ever do is stifle innovation. Competition is what spurs innovation, and competition is based on adding value (quality/cost) for the customer, which is based largely on secrecy. Since you can only compete on cost alone so much, eventually you innovate to find ways to make products better, which costs more. If you had to share IP with competitors then you'd be struggling or out of business quickly, they don't have the overhead investment of your innovation so can sell the same product cheaper. This is exactly what has happened to many North American and European firms competing with legalized IP theft in Asia and elsewhere in recent decades. Not that a SE likely ever would, but if you spent some time in a product definition role overseas you'd also notice the opposite truth - in areas where IP theft is legal and common there is a serious lack of innovation, which ultimately hurts us far more than anything.

 

[IRstuff]

"in areas where IP theft is legal and common there is a serious lack of innovation, which ultimately hurts us far more than anything."

That is not true over time; Japan, China, India, etc., all started out with IP theft and copycatting early on, but most have used the revenue they gained to boost themselves into serious competition. Japan was once known as the place where cheap transistor radios were made, but they upped the ante by following Deming and produced cars that were cheaper and lasted forever; it took the US by surprise and nearly 30 years to get back into contention. China is still copycatting, but the revenue they garnered has paid for serious innovations that are, in many cases, better than US developments.

Humans, by nature, are inquisitive and prone to invention. Even when copycatting, someone is bound to see something and think, "I can do that better, or cheaper."

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[BridgeSmith]

"That is not true over time; Japan, China, India, etc., all started out with IP theft and copycatting early on, but most have used the revenue they gained to boost themselves into serious competition."

I think that demonstrates exactly what CWB1 was referring to - they were mostly stealing and copycatting innovations from the United States and Western Europe. As a result, manufacturing in the US and Western Europe has taken a big hit.

 

[CWB1]

That is not true over time; Japan, China, India, etc., all started out with IP theft and copycatting early on, but most have used the revenue they gained to boost themselves into serious competition....

No doubt things change over time, my simple observation is that there seems to be an inverse correlation between IP protection and innovation. I concur on Japan, they've really stepped things up over the last 40 years. China, India, and many others are still modernizing so no doubt things will be fluid over time, but IME innovation is the exception in those areas.