My company wants me to give up my own code / utilities is that legal?

Question

I work as a cloud engineer. With so many years of being in this business. I have developer many custom utilities do to a lot of stuff much faster with cloud providers. a lot of it are custom scripts python /bash / that helps me do a lot of my work more efficiently. These are tools that have grown over time that do help me a lot and mainly i use them myself just to make my job more efficient. During a presentation i had my boss saw my utility folder on my terminal and asked me about it. I showed it and then said I should put that into a git repo and make it accessible for everyone. I told him that I am not interested in doing that because this is NOT company code as it existed before and also the repo only makes sense to me and that I don't think i want to make this into a company asset to then maintain it for the company.These are utilities that have grown through time a provide a lot of value for me but i don't feel comfortable sharing this. Is my employer allowed to ask me to submit this code and give it to them so that other engineers can use it and probably i have to then support it. ?

mikro2nd · Accepted Answer

You ask "Is this legal?"I ask, "Where?"Because jurisdiction matters. A lot. Another big question would be whether you developed these utilities on your own time (again: jurisdiction matters!) or on the company's time.As it stands your question is basically unanswerable.

mytailorisrich · Answer

If you develop software on company time for the purpose of doing your job you will have a hard time claiming that this is not company property (maybe not your current employer if you started in previous jobs).

jfmatth · Answer

Did you develop them on company time?Do you use or contribute to OSS? If so, then i'm confused why you think sharing it within you company would be a problem?

My company wants me to give up my own code / utilities is that legal?

You ask "Is this legal?"
I ask, "Where?"
Because jurisdiction matters. A lot. Another big question would be whether you developed these utilities on your own time (again: jurisdiction matters!) or on the company's time.
As it stands your question is basically unanswerable.

If you develop software on company time for the purpose of doing your job you will have a hard time claiming that this is not company property (maybe not your current employer if you started in previous jobs).

Did you develop them on company time?
Do you use or contribute to OSS? If so, then i'm confused why you think sharing it within you company would be a problem?