I wouldn't expect that working on your own time is automatically considered to be your employer's property anywhere. But some (Fortune 500) companies absolutely do require everyone to sign an agreement that everything you create 24 hrs a day until you leave the job, belongs to them.

I would be willing to sign that for $250,000 or more a year outside the California markets.

I had an offer from a game company that went through my list of disclosures and said I would have to report my potential book royalties to them (why? Dunno) and that I could not continue to work for the local university. I was dumbfounded. I explained upfront in the interview I worked 5-10 hours for the school and the recruiter said that was great and that my new manager loves giving back. Unfortunately legal did not. I ended up backing out of the offer. I still kinda regret it because it was a stellar team working on neat problems.

All that to say I can see companies asking you to sign something that wouldn’t hold up if you had the means to challenge it. I suspect most people done have the privilege of paying $300-1000 to have their contracts reviewed / red lined.

"I suspect most people done have the privilege of paying $300-1000 to have their contracts reviewed / red lined"

I mean, I've never had a six-figure job, but I could pay that much to have a contract reviewed, if there was a point. But I don't think there is a point, because unless I literally had a bidding war going on for my services, I'd have zero leverage.

A few years back, I thought I'd figured out how to negotiate, because I tried a method when buying a car that worked very well. But it completely failed when negotiating a salary, because tying someone in knots and exposing their BS, no matter how politely, has no value whatsoever when you don't have an immediate alternative. If you're trying to buy a new car and there are several dealers in town with the same one, that's completely different from having a single job offer outstanding.

I've learned in my personal life too, it doesn't matter how inescapable your logic is, if you don't have any leverage and the other person is willing to jettison logic, it's irrelevant.

Can you afford an attorney to defend yourself in court if a company decided to push the issue?

As I will keep saying it does not matter if companies follow up on their threat or not. It still has a chilling effect on people doing side projects which is the intended behavior. And a lot of people can't afford a legal battle even if they had a high chance of winning.

Have you considered doing it anonymously or not informing anyone of the projects you're working on?

Just like you can't necessarily afford to engage in the legal system, the legal system can't be engaged if they don't have a signal that there's anything there to engage with.

And in interviews you can still use the experience and talk about your contributions without releasing the product/ identity to your current employer, and your current company is incredibly unlikely to come chasing after you years later on things with no obvious connection to your real name.

> not informing anyone of the projects you're working on?

This is the exact opposite of what you should do. As soon as you start working on a side project that doesn't overlap with your day job, you need to tell your company to get it added to your contract's list of excluded projects (meaning they've verified it has nothing to do with them, and you're free to do whatever you want with it).

Issues happen when you leave your job and launch a side project not long after, creating a bit of a surprise. But if you had disclosed it previously, your previous employer is shit-out-of-luck.