I've been pushing back against these IP ownership clauses for years, although the last couple of years they seem to have gotten much less common. Generally, mos

I've been pushing back against these IP ownership clauses for years, although the last couple of years they seem to have gotten much less common. Generally, most companies I've talked to have been very happy to make a change to the contract, but you have to explicitly ask them to do it. If you simply bring up that there's a problem with the contract, most recruiters and hiring managers default to empathy-but-inaction. I think that it doesn't really occur to people that you _can_ change the contract unless you specifically ask about it. I also think it's helpful to realize that for a lot of companies, they are pretty happy to change an employment contract, you can make the process a lot nicer for everyone if you given them a heads up early in the process that you intend to review the documents and might ask for changes. Most recruiters I've worked with have been happy to send over all of the standard documents well ahead of a final offer so that I have time to review them, and it gives them a chance to get changes made before you actually sit down to fill out the final versions of all of the paperwork (but still review the version you are actually signing). I will say that while my experiences negotiating these things have generally been good, I've also specifically avoided larger companies that have a reputation for overreaching IP ownership clauses. If a startup has an overly broad ownership clause, it's quite likely that they are just using a form contract and didn't think too much about it. If large company with thousands of developers has a similar clause, I'm much more likely to assume it's intentional and simply not interview to save myself the trouble of trying to negotiate with a behemoth.