Karman, Culture, and Policy Pt3 — IP and Side Projects
Alright, one of the big ones. The Intellectual Property (IP) Policy is the policy that dictates so much about what you do outside of the workplace. So many companies shy away from this aspect and make you sign a sweeping “Company X owns everything, no matter what”, clause in your employment contract. Speaking with other studios we’ve heard three main concerns:
- Company X doesn’t want people burning out at night on their personal projects.
- What if they steal company IP and Company X can’t prove it?
- What if their project hits it big and they leave Company X?
While these are commonly cited as concerns we have a hard time seeing them as risks.
Burning Out At Night
If a team member’s performance consistently declines without a valid reason, whether for a personal project or otherwise, they shouldn’t expect to keep their job. A team depends on them and they need to do everything in their power to come to work ready for each and every day.
Of course, declining performance isn’t cause for immediate termination but it should illicit quick feedback. A healthy team has open channels for feedback and regular opportunity for review and course correction. With a healthy culture, burning out at night really shouldn’t be an issue.
IP Theft
Simply put, restricting personal projects won’t stop IP theft. At the small studio scale most non public facing IP (Libraries, workflow scripts, etc..) are easily taken. Certain people are always going to find a way to circumvent the barriers you put in place so you’re better off rethinking your angle. A better approach is to offer fair terms for IP use. Most people don’t want to outright steal, particularly if it risks their employment or the legality of their project. Cut a reasonable deal and everybody will be happy.
Missing Out On a Hit
The fear of a game hitting it big is a funny one. First off, what are the odds? Seriously, think about that for a moment. Massively popular games developed by small teams in off hours is the outlier for the industry, not the norm.
What’s far more likely is that your employee will learn new skills in their off hours and bring those into work.
Second, if their performance isn’t affected, isn’t it awesome that someone on your team created something great? It’s like a professional hockey team being angry that one of their players won gold at the Olympics. If you’ve created a great work environment that facilitated this person’s success then it’s not far fetched that they’d stick around. That said, if your new superstar worker decides to leave after their success then it’s a great opportunity to step back and evaluate why they left and what you could do to improve the workplace for everyone. Worst case, you get to be the studio that fostered the environment for someone to create the new greatest thing. When you go to attract top talent you can claim that Famous Developer X or Legendary Game Designer Y created their breakout game while working for you. I can’t think of a better attractor for ambitious people.
</rant>
Why this Works
Finally, there was something really special that Jon and I noticed when we first started Karman. Within a couple months of starting up we were spinning out some of the best and most creative ideas of our careers. We took time to reflect and realized that, previous to Karman, whenever we started thinking of a cool idea we’d immediately stop. Even before verbalizing the idea we wouldn’t let it develop in our heads. The restrictive IP policies that we were under discouraged exercising our creativity. The result was that we were training our minds to stop having random ideas and preventing those ideas from being refined. Now that we’re under a more open IP policy our minds get practice refining these ideas. Better still, we’re constantly pitching each other ideas in the office, getting great feedback, team building, and practice expressing original thoughts.
If you can’t tell yet, this policy along with the Research Policy (Pt6) are big parts of why I’m so excited about what we’re doing at Karman. Everyone here is exceptionally proud to be building a place where people can come to create the best work of their life. This policy is a long one, but well worth the read. Poke holes in the policy and let us know if anything in it rubs you the wrong way or exposes us to exploitation. This is one of the big selling points of Karman so if it doesn’t impress you we’re eager to know why.
