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Comment by thisjustinm | Hacker News Reader

I know there are places where that truly is a requirement to employment but I've twice successfully negotiated (once at a startup, once at an ad agency) those clauses out of my contract and I highly suggest others at least try to.

It resulted in a few awkward conversations with HR / legal but I stood my ground and insisted that them owning my entire life was unfair and said I was happy to have them own my output during work hours but nothing more. If they don't come around I'd consider it a red flag.

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>I know there are places where that truly is a requirement to employment but I've twice successfully negotiated (once at a startup, once at an ad agency) those clauses out of my contract and I highly suggest others at least try to.

I don't do this any more. I realized after a couple of these jobs that this level of explicit disrespect written into a contract pretty much tells you all you need to know about working there before you've even joined.

Now I just pass politely and move on.

The pay at places that would try and ram that in there was never that great anyway.

> I don't do this any more. I realized after a couple of these jobs that this level of explicit disrespect written into a contract pretty much tells you all you need to know about working there before you've even joined.

Tbh, we had this come up when we purchased and I negotiated it out of my "new" hiring contract successfully.

So far everyone I have on LinkedIn at #ParentCompany has quit but my little isolated bubble trundles on largely immune to such problems as long as we hit our sales/profit numbers.

So I suspect you are correct in some cases but you can still sit in protected bubbles that have that in the contract AND are still worth working for.

I've had contrasting experiences. The employment contract was boilerplate and after a single awkward conversation it was removed.

I was happily employed At each company for years with an amicable "break up".

One company was <5 FT and another was >50 FT. Both in the US.

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