Author & Lead Researcher:
Francisco Javier Jiménez Gómez
Independent Intellectual Property Owner

Presented under the institutional umbrella of:
BRISECOM S.L.
A specialized research and thinking laboratory dedicated to algorithmic ethics, AI governance, and human-centric technology intelligence.

October 2026

The idea of Clean Software begins with a simple question:

How much unnecessary dependency does a piece of software introduce into its environment?

The same question can be applied to work.

How much unnecessary dependency does a working relationship introduce into a person’s professional life?

This is the starting point of Clean Worker.

Clean Worker is not a rejection of employment. It is not an argument that employees are less valuable than freelancers, consultants, entrepreneurs, or independent professionals.

It is a principle of professional autonomy.

A Clean Worker understands what they give, what they receive, what they retain, and what they depend on.

From Clean Software to Clean Work

Software can become dependent on:

• a vendor;
• a cloud platform;
• an account;
• a proprietary API;
• a specific ecosystem;
• a commercial service;
• a technology that cannot easily be replaced.

These dependencies are not necessarily bad.

The problem begins when they are unnecessary, invisible, excessive, or difficult to escape.

The same applies to professional life.

A worker can become dependent on:

• a single employer;
• a particular organizational structure;
• proprietary internal knowledge;
• company-specific tools;
• internal processes;
• a professional identity controlled by the organization;
• income that depends entirely on one relationship;
• knowledge that cannot be reused independently;
• intellectual creations whose exploitation is controlled by somebody else.

Again, dependency is not automatically bad.

Unnecessary dependency is the problem.

Employment Is a Trade-Off

Employment provides important things.

A worker can receive:

• a predictable salary;
• social protection;
• paid holidays;
• sick leave;
• unemployment protection;
• organizational support;
• access to infrastructure;
• colleagues and professional networks;
• training and resources.

These are valuable.

But employment also creates a particular organizational relationship.

The company generally decides what work needs to be done, establishes priorities, organizes the work and exercises managerial authority within the limits established by law.

This is not a defect in the employment contract.

It is one of its defining characteristics.

The worker exchanges part of their professional autonomy for the security and protections of employment.

The important question is therefore not:

Is employment good or bad?

The better question is:

What exactly am I exchanging for that security?

The Golden Goose Problem

There is another dimension that is easy to overlook.

A person does not only sell hours.

A professional may possess:

• knowledge;
• experience;
• creativity;
• relationships;
• methodologies;
• research;
• inventions;
• software;
• documentation;
• processes;
• reputation;
• accumulated expertise.

These things can be extraordinarily valuable.

Imagine an engineer who has spent ten years developing expertise in a very specialized technology.

The company does not merely acquire eight hours of work per day.

It gains access to ten years of accumulated human knowledge.

The person becomes, metaphorically, a golden goose.

The danger begins when the organization is designed to extract as much value as possible from that goose while giving the person progressively less control over their own professional life.

The problem is not that the company benefits from the worker’s expertise.

That is the purpose of cooperation.

The problem is asymmetry.

Who controls the knowledge?

Who controls the resulting work?

Who controls the professional identity?

Who can reuse the experience?

Who can continue independently?

Who can leave?

Who can say no?

Clean Worker Is About Agency

A Clean Worker does not necessarily work alone.

They may work:

• for a company;
• with a company;
• through their own company;
• as a consultant;
• as an independent researcher;
• as a freelancer;
• as a member of a cooperative;
• as an entrepreneur;
• or in several of these roles during their career.

The defining characteristic is not the legal form.

It is agency.

A Clean Worker should understand:

I am not merely a resource inside somebody else’s system. I am a professional person with my own capabilities, knowledge, identity and future.

This changes the way professional relationships are evaluated.

Own Your Professional Activity

One possible model is to operate through your own professional structure.

Instead of:

Person → Employee → Company

another model is:

Person
   ↓
Own professional structure
   ↓
Client

The professional structure might be a company, cooperative, partnership or another legally appropriate form.

The important distinction is that the professional maintains an independent organizational layer between themselves and the client.

The company becomes infrastructure for the professional, rather than the professional becoming infrastructure for somebody else’s company.

This does not eliminate responsibility.

An independent professional must deal with contracts, taxation, social security, accounting, commercial risk and client relationships.

Independence is not free.

But it can provide something valuable:

control over one’s professional activity.

Your Work Is Not Necessarily Your Employer’s Property

Intellectual work makes this question particularly interesting.

Suppose two people write the same technical article.

One is an independent collaborator.

The other is an employee writing it as part of their employment.

The legal treatment of exploitation rights can be different.

In Spain, for example, copyright belongs initially to the natural person who creates the work. However, Spanish copyright law contains specific rules for works created within an employment relationship. In the absence of a written agreement, Article 51 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law establishes a presumption of exclusive transfer of exploitation rights to the employer within the scope necessary for its normal business activity.

This illustrates an important Clean Worker principle:

Know what happens to what you create.

The question is not simply:

Who pays me?

It is also:

Who can exploit what I create?

A professional should understand this before creating valuable intellectual assets.

Author and Publisher Are Different Roles

A particularly clean model is to separate authorship from publication.

Consider a company blog.

Someone writes an article.

That person is the author.

The company may be the publisher.

AUTHOR
   │
   │ creates
   ▼
WORK
   │
   │ publication permission
   ▼
PUBLISHER
   │
   ▼
BLOG

Publishing something does not inherently make the publisher the author.

Nor does being the publisher necessarily mean owning every possible exploitation right.

A company can provide the infrastructure, editing, distribution and commercial organization while the author retains their intellectual identity and rights, subject to whatever specific authorization or licence has been agreed.

This separation is useful far beyond blogging.

It can apply to:

• research;
• books;
• technical documentation;
• software;
• educational material;
• articles;
• photography;
• design;
• scientific publications;
• consulting reports.

Create first. Decide what to transfer second.

Clean Knowledge

A Clean Worker should also be able to leave with their knowledge.

This does not mean taking confidential company information, trade secrets, customer databases or proprietary material.

It means something much more fundamental:

Your experience should remain part of you.

If you spend five years solving difficult technical problems, those five years should not disappear when your employment ends.

Your general skills, professional judgement and accumulated experience are part of your human capital.

A healthy professional ecosystem allows people to move.

A polluted ecosystem makes people afraid to leave.

Clean Exit

This leads to another important concept:

Exitability

A clean system should be possible to leave.

Clean Software should allow migration.

Clean Work should allow professional transition.

A worker should ideally be able to say:

“This relationship is no longer appropriate for me.”

without losing their entire professional identity.

That does not mean every contract should be cancellable immediately or without consequences.

It means that professional life should not become a prison.

A healthy ecosystem permits movement.

People change companies.

Companies change direction.

Projects end.

Technologies disappear.

Careers evolve.

Exit is part of autonomy.

The Clean Worker Test

A useful way to evaluate a professional relationship is to ask:

1. What am I giving?

My time?

My expertise?

My intellectual property?

My availability?

My professional reputation?

2. What am I receiving?

Money?

Security?

Training?

Infrastructure?

Professional opportunities?

Social protection?

3. What do I retain?

My knowledge?

My portfolio?

My professional identity?

My intellectual property?

My ability to work elsewhere?

4. What happens when I leave?

Can I continue my career?

Can I show my previous work?

Can I use my general experience?

Can I work with other clients?

Can I maintain my professional identity?

5. What does the other party control?

My schedule?

My priorities?

My methods?

My creations?

My professional reputation?

My future opportunities?

The answers reveal the actual architecture of the relationship.

Clean Worker Does Not Mean Freelance Worker

This distinction is important.

Being self-employed does not automatically make someone a Clean Worker.

A freelancer who depends entirely on one client, has no negotiating power, works under permanent instructions and cannot meaningfully leave may have very little practical autonomy.

Likewise, an employee may have:

• excellent working conditions;
• strong professional autonomy;
• meaningful participation;
• good compensation;
• clear intellectual-property agreements;
• opportunities to develop;
• and a healthy relationship with the organization.

The goal is therefore not to replace one legal category with another.

The goal is to reduce unnecessary dependency.

From Worker to Professional

Perhaps the most important conceptual change is linguistic.

Instead of thinking only in terms of:

employee

we can think in terms of:

professional person

Employment is one possible relationship between a professional and an organization.

It should not define the whole identity of the person.

A software engineer is still a software engineer when they change companies.

A researcher is still a researcher when a project ends.

A writer is still a writer when a publisher changes.

A consultant is still a professional when a client disappears.

The organization is part of the professional ecosystem.

It should not become the entire ecosystem.

Clean Worker Principles

A possible Clean Worker manifesto could therefore be reduced to a few principles:

1. Know your dependencies

Understand which relationships your professional life depends on.

2. Keep your professional identity

Your career should not belong entirely to an organization.

3. Understand what you create

Know who can use, modify, publish or exploit your work.

4. Transfer explicitly

Do not transfer more rights than necessary.

5. Keep your knowledge

Your accumulated professional experience is part of your human capital.

6. Maintain exitability

A professional relationship should not become a trap.

7. Separate roles

Author, worker, consultant, publisher, employer and client are different roles.

8. Prefer transparent dependencies

A dependency is easier to manage when it is explicit.

9. Preserve agency

Security should not require unnecessary surrender of autonomy.

10. Build sustainable professional ecosystems

The objective is not maximum independence.

It is healthy interdependence.

Clean Worker

Clean Worker is not an ideology against companies.

Companies are valuable organizational structures.

Employment can be valuable.

Collaboration can be valuable.

Independent work can be valuable.

The real question is how these relationships are designed.

A healthy professional ecosystem allows organizations and individuals to benefit from each other without unnecessarily consuming the autonomy of either side.

A company should be able to grow.

A professional should be able to grow.

Knowledge should be created.

Value should be exchanged.

And when the relationship ends, both sides should remain capable of continuing.

That is the idea behind Clean Worker:

Work together without unnecessarily giving up your professional autonomy.

Or, in a shorter form:

Clean Worker: own your professional agency.