Sad that having even minimal employee rights is some how seen as exceptional.
Sometimes I get the feeling that even my own country (Portugal), with all its issues regarding work conditions, still appears to be in better shape.
I am no lawyer, but I don't expect that under EU work law anything done outside work can be forbidden in the work contract, in any member country.
The only issue I see from law point of view, is if whatever is being done, in terms of private projects, is related to knowledge acquired during the work activities, sometimes under NDA. Here yes, there can be issues.
Now if the projects are done in technology stacks or business domains completely different from what happens at work, then it isn't enforceable.
However I am no lawyer.
That's the real reason things are pretty messed up all around protecting IP.
As we've survived without funding so far, we're thinking of relaxing this as well. Kudos to GitHub's investors for staying away from this nonsense.
But turning down such people in favor of those who respect your IP is always the better investment down the line.
The reality is that the US is a very generous place if you have money, so if you are a software engineer you can have a luxurous life in comparison to what one would get in EU. The situation is opposite for lower paying jobs.
You could have a much bigger houses as well. If you move to munich or berlin(even though the latter is one of the cheapest cities in europe) a house is really expensive in comparison to what you can get in a city like Austin, Denver, even Seattle if you commute a bit.
Also in the UK taxation of employee shares is a lot saner plus GCT is a lot lower and you get a 16k Pa allowance for CGT
Biased metric. The US makes it hard for people to leave.
I have been working on mplyees.com, a site where employees can share what needs to change publicly and anonymously. Hopefully we can bridge this divide since employee happiness is key to a successful business.