This isn't a bad argument, but it doesn't match up with the experience that OP had in the Twitter thread. I don't see the point in arguing about what most theo

This isn't a bad argument, but it doesn't match up with the experience that OP had in the Twitter thread. I don't see the point in arguing about what most theoretical cases are when we can instead talk about the actual case that actually happened here. It's difficult to argue that OP stole anything, and they weren't competing with Google, and OP is saying that they didn't use company resources to build anything. Unless your claim is that OP actually did something wrong, the rest of it a little too theoretical for me. I've written this elsewhere, but if obvious abuses were all that companies cared about, the terms wouldn't be written so broadly as to cover everything. A contract is not the place to put an egregious term and then say, "don't worry, we won't enforce it." Treat contracts like they will be enforced. In particular, we've seen this pattern with arbitration agreements. How many women signed Google's arbitration agreements when they joined under the (false) assumption that, "of course for something serious like sexual abuse, Google wouldn't enforce that"? > you should always tell your employer that you've started working on something and have it acknowledged as yours way before any valuable IP is created I do heavily agree with you on this. Don't do what OP did and just ignore the terms, be up front about what you're doing. It just removes doubt. And don't be afraid to walk away from a company if they won't negotiate on this kind of stuff. You want to be in a trusting relationship with your employer.