OP refers to a post from Joel Spolsky, but there is a better one that he wrote that I'll include the text below. It was one of those posts that stuck in my hea

OP refers to a post from Joel Spolsky, but there is a better one that he wrote that I'll include the text below. It was one of those posts that stuck in my head because it makes sense. There may be an overriding reason why an employer is likely to tell you to take the contract as-is or walk, no matter how much they want you to join. You may think that you are super-valuable engineer, and maybe even the hiring manager, but not if your negotiation is likely to hold up the due diligence of the investors' exit. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr... Even if a company decided, “oh gosh, we don’t want to own the 5:00-9:00 inventions,” they would soon get into trouble. Why? Because they might try to take an investment, and the investor would say, “prove to me that you’re not going to get sued by some disgruntled ex-employee who claims to have invented the things that you’re selling.” The company wants to be able to pull out a list of all current and past employees, and show a contract from every single one of them assigning inventions to the company. This is expected as a part of due diligence in every single high tech financing, merger, and acquisition, so a software company that isn’t careful about getting these assignments is going to have trouble getting financed, or merging, or being acquired, and that ONE GUY from 1998 who didn’t sign the agreement is going to be a real jerk about signing it now, because he knows that he’s personally holding up a $350,000,000 acquisition and he can demand a lot of money to sign. The above is an IP example, but non-competes may be the same (regardless of if they are enforceable). Q:"What is to stop everybody resigning after we announce the merger and working for the senior manager the next day?" A:"Every employee has signed one of <<these>> and most will be scared of the threatening lawyers letters that we send."