Most of the places I've worked at, this is standard practice if stuff you're developing is on their time and they're paying you. I have gotten around this by h

Most of the places I've worked at, this is standard practice if stuff you're developing is on their time and they're paying you. I have gotten around this by having a list of side-projects I'm working on that give a brief description of what they are and that the business has no claim on them. I attach this to the contract/NDA as an addendum in order to protect myself. I have yet to have a company make a claim on anything I've ever put on the list. As far as multi-year NDA's, I work in a state where these rarely if ever hold up. The only limitations in these is if you're going to work for a direct competitor. Which means if you're a Ford engineer and you're going to work for Chevy. Then the courts could ban you from working at Chevy for a few years, but your company can't keep you from being gainfully employed anywhere. If you're able to be employed as an engineer elsewhere, it will hold up in court. But trying to keep someone from working in their chosen field at another company doesn't go well in court. I had one incident with a company who tried that and I took them to court. First day judge just laughed and told the company attorney that you can't legally keep someone from being gainfully employed just because you want to keep them from working at another company that also develops software. A few objections from the company's attorney got struck down immediately and I was out of there in a less than an hour.