I told them I'd be happy to work with them--to walk through creation of any of the artefacts, or to write up segments of documents with them, but...should I really be keeping my work? This is at least the third time I've been asked, but this is the first time it's making me anxious.

I've rarely had samples of my tech work for the same reasons, and I offer the same thing you did, ita. Most places are fine with that.

Could you strip out all identifying information from something?

But I never keep anything. It's not mine and I don't work on my own computers so it would have to be actively purloining it...I don't share anything more complex than notes from my tablet between my devices and theirs.

Though maybe I Dropboxed something once?

I think that's a common disconnect between academia and industry hiring. We do a lot of open source at my work. Technically, the stuff the CSC people work on should be proprietary to CSC. Last time CSC tried to pull that hand, the person quit. And was rehired by AURA and CSC was told to go hang. But we run into this sometimes when we hire someone whose history is largely corporate (because of the varied skills gained in the astro field, there are a lot of people like me who terminated the field before the higher degrees, but followed into it on the tech side, but stayed In quasi-academic settings.)

Sat on by a Loki, waiting for a call to go transport volatile chem waste. Just a usual Friday night...

ita, I think your instincts are right. Work product is something I've been asked for but could never provide. Unless there was something intended to be public, offering to do something for them is about what you and they should respect that.

Yeah, I went through my tablet and Dropbox and can't find anything other than a multi-swimlane schedule. Time and time again, it never occurs to me to hang onto stuff, even if the work for hire contract wasn't in place.

They want to give me sample actions to flowchart or write up use cases, I'm perfectly happy. I'll outline an entire requirements document. But I don't feel bad I don't have work from previous jobs--I just feel worried.

I keep a portfolio and several files of all of my work samples. And samples of student work. And samples of work I have collaborated on with colleagues.

I know it's different, but I cannot imagine not keeping it.

I think that's a common disconnect between academia and industry hiring.

I guess when you're an environment where people strive to publish it's different from places afraid of corporate espionage.

We ran a whole League of Shadows (I couldn't believe they adopted my nerd terminology) Change Control process where every employee had to be signed in before they could even know what the topic was about. And every vendor had to be doublechecked that they'd signed the right privacy papers, etc. That's been my environment for most of my 25 years working.

I know it's different, but I cannot imagine not keeping it.

Did you sign anything saying you couldn't? I always have (well, maybe not the previous UCLA gig, I guess).

See, disconnect .