I’ve worked at 12 companies in Silicon Valley and they all had variations of such language, whether huge Fortune 50 corporations or 4-person startups with the ink still wet on their incorporation filing. Yes, the better ones have a clause that restricts the claim to competitive work, but not all do. Smaller companies will be more flexible with you, particularly if you’re a key hire. At larger companies, it’s typically take it or leave it. HR has forms that must be signed and they sure aren’t going to involve the legal department for you. And to be clear, nobody is going to come after you for a completely orthogonal work product. There’s no point because they can’t monetize whatever orthogonal thing you created and it would cost them lawyers fees for no return. But I have seen companies try to enforce those contracts before. I have not ever seen one go to court. They typically settle before they get that far, but rumors were that IP was given to the company. The employee left in any case and redid the work outside.

> Yes, the better ones have a clause that restricts the claim to competitive work, but not all do.

Yeah, this is my whole point. The rest of your comment, I agree with. In practice you're unlikely to have an issue for something orthogonal and especially something financially worthless.

But you might. There are a lot of people out there that have predatory attitudes towards IP, especially among C-level or would-be-C-level.

And companies that restrict to competing IP do exist.

> HR has forms that must be signed and they sure aren’t going to involve the legal department for you.

Three times in my career I've returned hiring agreements with redlines and never once had them questioned or countered.