[telebell]

I’m a lawyer and a few years ago negotiated a “we own everything you make” clause in an agreement for a batch of engineers who were being hired at the same time. We couldn’t get the clause changed - as others have said, BigLaw drafted it, the employer didn’t want to change it - but we did get an email after back and forth that said they had no intention of enforcing that clause for stuff you make outside of work. So I sent that email to the engineers and they can hold onto it in case there’s an issue in the future.

Reasonable companies don’t want to get a reputation for litigating employment clauses like this. Sure, there are outliers, but nobody wants to be on the front page of HN for suing an engineer over a side hustle. Especially not in this labor market!

Side note: it was delightful to me that the engineers carefully read the agreement and one of them consulted their own lawyer. Most people don’t do that.