The Workplace Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm a developer building a portfolio for new job applications, and am tempted to publish (putting up on github publicly) some libraries that have been byproducts of projects done in my current job.
The projects are general purpose, and do not contain any company secrets. I have been the sole contributor to the code.
My question is, do I need permission from the company even if my work contract does not specify anything about the company owning anything i create on their time?
If you did the work for your company, or in company time, or using company equipment, then it is extremely likely that the company owns that code, not you. In some cases the company will own it just because you were employed by them at the time you wrote it. If you publish them without permission then you are violating company confidentiality and publishing company secrets. People can be and have been fired and/or prosecuted for doing that.
You should absolutely get the company's permission before doing this (and in writing). Anything else leads to some potentially very serious downsides for you.
If they deny you permission and go ahead anyway then you are laying yourself open to severe disciplinary action, possibly including termination (and with a reference that says you stole company IP), and in extreme cases legal action.
Don't do it. The usefulness of such "portfolio" to your ability to obtain future employment is essentially zero. And your tendency to give away your employer's property to the public, for poorly though-out reasons to boot, will be a big red flag to your future employers.
You have your CV/Resume, you have your references. Since you were not fired from your last job after 3 months, every reasonable hiring manager will safely assume that you indeed have the skills and the experience that you listed on your Resume.
If they need a further evaluation, they will find a way to test your skills in a way that benefits their unique situation. Analyzing somebody's old code is usually not it.
If your interviewer has specific questions regarding technical aspects of your previous job - impress them with your good memory, good technical knowledge and excellent communication skills - by quickly and intelligibly summarizing your achievements on a white board.
Nobody will have time to look at the source code that "fell out of the back of a truck" of your former employer.
Edit: includes an answer to Tonsteri question below.
Tonsteri,
The application forms you are filling are generic forms to serve for all types of candidates. If someone was working on Open Source projects, or is an independent consultant and shares his solutions with the public as means of self-promotion, or worked for a company that encourages "tinkering on the side", then they have a "portfolio". However if you spend 10h a day doing proprietary UML designs and writing proprietary code for Big Pharma, then obviously there is no public "portfolio".
A competent hiring manager knows all this (and trust my 20 years as a Solutions Architect and Software Engineer: you don't want to work as a junior-to-mid-level personnel for people who don't know what they are doing). The worst thing you can do is having a "forced" portfolio made of your employer's code, where no reasonable manager would expect you to have one. It shows a lack of common sense and poor judgement. If you want to have a real portfolio - get involved in some Open Source project, or just create some libraries that provide useful functionality that people ask for online.
