Yes, I've seen that too. Then I said "well, you're hiring me in part because of my opensource work. It looks like this contract wouldn't allow me to continue doing any opensource work once I start working here. That would be a huge problem for me." I think the managers involved hadn't read the employment contract itself - or didn't understand the implications of a clause like that for opensource devs. They didn't want to stop me writing opensource code when I felt like it. So we figured it out.

Contracts aren't written in blood. They're just an agreement between two parties. You don't have to agree to whatever crappy, one sided terms are waved in front of your face.

And remember, its common for companies to spend 40+ hours of work in sourcing, interviewing candidates, hiring panel discussions and so on before they finally give you an offer. Especially in the era of AI generated resume spam. It would be extremely silly to throw all that work away over a grabby IP assignment clause added on a whim by one of their lawyers. Now, yes - some companies are absolutely that silly. But most people have a lot more negotiating power than they think. Especially when it comes to ridiculous clauses like this. At a minimum, its always worth raising.

This is an extremely important point. A lot of managers don’t read the employment contracts. Often times the legal departments (or just lawyer depending on company size) has just drafted something that protects the company as much as is legally possible. That’s often the safest thing for the attorney to do.

It’s never a bad thing to redline a contract and have discussions over sections that you’re uncomfortable with. A good company will work on them with you.