Should you list projects you have done at work in your home business portfolio?
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008If you are a freelance developer or designer of pretty much any flavour you have probably encountered this issue. You are working on a project at your day job and you come up with some wonderful design that you are really proud of. After patting yourself on the back, you start to wish that you had come up with this design outside of work so you could add it to your portfolio and use it to advertise your amazing skills. This thought usually leads to a pondering of the ethics of listing a design on your site that despite being created by you, technically belongs to the company you work for.
There are several ways you could approach this but my suggestion on this one is simple, talk to your boss. Explain how you feel and indicate that you only wish to show on your site that you were indeed responsible for the design, but in no way wish to imply ownership. I would consider offering up some form of link from the work to the company and be clear that you will make no attempts to hide the fact that this work was produced by your employer.
This is just my opinion on this rather touchy subject, and I would love to hear how you feel about this issue.
