I have. I got an extra $130k out of it.
It's a work of art. Even this comment is a violation of the agreement, since I don't own the copyright to anything I do apparently, either in or out of the scope of my employment, so therefore I can't give Y Combinator a license to display this comment.
I even talked to the company's legal team about the absurdity of the agreement & they were unwilling to budge.
The relevant portion of the agreement, for your reading amusement: https://pastebin.com/ZF9MEkfG
Whether these are enforceable or not doesn't matter because a lone developer is not going to go up against an army of corporate lawyers to find out.
I would argue those are exceptional cases. Outside of these prestige brands, you get a lot more leeway.
Completely false. Most people sign job contracts without thinking too hard. And side projects just aren’t important for the majority of programmers, so why would they care?