If you are working, be it in an MNC or any other company, can you ethically and legally do freelancing.
If you are working, be it in an MNC or any other company, can you ethically and legally do freelancing.
The exact answer will depend on the documents you signed with your employer. Moreover, the legal implications of those documents can be best explained by a legal consultant. I am not a legal consultant nor I am sharing legal advice. I am sharing what numerous individuals are doing.
Code of Conduct for Freelancing
In MNCs, there is a code of conduct that every employee has to agree that includes single employment. Besides, there are other codes of conduct including the fair use of office Internet, dress code, etc.
So now when you have signed to agree on no personal use of the Internet. However, I am sure you have checked personal email for sure.
Similarly, single employment is normally used for situations when you resign from your current job and join the next employer only after release from your current employer and not before the release date from your current employment.
So if you have such a contract then you are not eligible for freelancing either.
However, freelancers assume if they don’t leave a legal trail they are safe. So what they do is make the payment in someone else’s name.
The client pays in the name of your Wife / Husband / Mother but gets the job done by the technical guy. Normally clients don’t have issues with such a scenario as they are more interested in getting the job done.
Ethically if you are not entitled to work, the workaround may not be a legitimate way. However, it is quite a normal practice by various developers working in MNC companies and willing to freelance to have some extra income on weekends.
Rules Enforcement by an MNC
Some MNC’s have such rules which they never enforce very strictly as long as you are not working on technology that is strictly for the company.
As an example, all companies have rules of no personal email in office. Still, a few minutes of email check in the morning or at lunchtime isn’t taken a violation by any manager. It’s just that you cannot waste all your time in the office checking personal email or social media.
When I was in a job, social media was not so much popular and so cannot say what it would be the case but, then I don’t think it will be too different from emails.
So if you are freelancing on weekends and employer work isn’t hampering I don’t see much of an issue. Again don’t take this as the final words and consult the legal advisor.
However, the work that you do should be very different from the work you are doing in the job.
Remember you should never use the time in office to dedicate it towards freelancing. You reach office and instead of doing your employer’s work, you start working on your client job, this is unacceptable.
Understand the Copyright
It is illegal if you use the code of your employer for your freelancing clients. Moreover, you are not only violating the code of conduct but is an infringement of copyright.
You may have written a piece of code for your employer, but then you are paid for it. So it is now the intellectual property of the employer. So you don’t have the right to resell it to your personal clients.
To be on the safe side, if you work in a totally different technology, there won’t be too many issues on the copyright front.
As an example, if you are working in C++ for your job, if you are freelancing in PHP, there should be no conflict of interest.
Final Thoughts
The best is to be able to seek legal advice instead of trying to cut corners of working in an MNC as well as trying to freelance. It is not too difficult to try freelancing for a year or so. All you need is a basic minimal expense for 8 to 10 months to try freelancing.
