Both cases seem to be mostly a US thing. Here in France, whatever I do outside my job is my own business: I write code on my own time, it's mine. I publish articles on my web site, they do not represent my company.

I've heard a story about someone from Europe travelling to the US to work for IBM. He was in the process of choosing a house, and was told that it was too modest. That is, "not the kind of house expected of an IBM engineer". Clearly in the US the line between your job and personal life is so blurry it's often hard to even see.

From my perspective this looks like a problem in and of itself, but it gets magnified tenfold when coupled with "at will" employment and work-tied health insurance: it means your employer owns you, 24/7. Isn't slavery supposed to be abolished?

Then there are the obvious Free Speech implications. The US has supposedly freer speech than Europe, but how free is your speech really is if your employer can fire you and terminate your health insurance the instant your boss stumbles upon something you said he didn't like?