The specific problem seems to be about patents and trade secrets. If a contract covered those two things well, would an employer have legitimate cause to push further than that?

People have agency and can decide for themselves if a job offer is worth it

if they desperately need a job then they don't.

the pandemic actually demonstrated that. many more people than before are refusing to work when a job forces them to be in an office. that means previously they accepted that work even though they would have preferred not to. but they didn't have the agency to voice that preference. only the demonstrated evidence that work from home is possible and the collective awareness of that gave them that agency.

likewise, most people are uninformed as to the consequences for signing away the right of a digital version of themselves. at a minimum they are not aware of its value.

that is a power imbalance the film industry seeks to exploit, and that power imbalance must be corrected by giving individuals more protection.

it is similar to copyright. i know the US doesn't recognize this but at least in europe copyright includes the inalienable right for a creator to be associated with their work even if they sold away the right to profit from it financially.

Do the people who pose for stock photos have special laws?

yes, they have the right to control how their image is used.

in a similar manner, at a minimum it must be recognized that an individual should always have the right to use their own digital version as they wish and to control how their digital version is used by others and that selling the rights to someone else must not prevent them from doing so.

where there large likelihood of individuals being exploited, the law must step in to reduce the risk for that exploitation.

that's why we have minimum wage laws. that's why in europe health insurance is mandatory for any job and even available if you don't have one. that's why in many countries you can't dismiss an employee without proper justification, or you can't evict tenants unless they egregiously violate their tenant agreement (and failing to pay rent on time is not such a violation).

there are plenty of examples of how the law protects individuals from being exploited. to suggest that such laws are unnecessary is completely missing the power imbalance that exists here, or worse willfully ignoring it.

seems reasonable to me. not a ban, but we should have the right to refuse.

if a company continuously flies by the seat of its pants and needs a sysadmin at all times, then hire more sysadmins, come up with a better solution, or rightfully go out of business.

hospital doctors is a very different animal, and honestly I haven't thought long enough on it nor have enough information on it to make an opinion, so I'll leave that to the field to decide.

as far as utilities, I believe they are paid overtime. like 2x. in my first job that was a support role, I was told to stay on call 5-8 and work 1 extra weekend shift from home every 4 weeks without additional pay.

It is not in societies interest to bond employee to employer, ever.

I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. The employee individually isn't obligated to the company any more than the company is obligated to the society collectively. Without the public obeying rules such as copyright, the said company wouldn't even be in business.

The west's definition of freedom is confounding. Capitalism has eroded the rights of the individual and left him utterly powerless and subservient. To the extent that many people don't even realize how much of their rights have been ceded.

Apple, google, and other companies we're already found working in a cartel to keep software engineer wages down, and those were just the high profile explicit agreements.

I don't get people like you who find it ok for corporations to pool capital and output from all their employees in the negotiation process, but the second employees want to work together to even the playing field it's a deadly sin

> It's unfathomable to me that corporations can have so much power over one's time outside of work.

I think this, and the general brain-drain from the broader industry, is really holding the tech sector back. So much OSS could be written if contracts weren't abusive in this way.

As for the more general, companies have interests, just like individuals, and seek to maximize them. Numerous people have pointed out that they are able to negotiate exceptions or get such clauses removed from their employment contracts. I'm sorry about your sick cat, but I also think that economic/contractual negotiations are a fact of life that it's better to prepare for than expect protection from.

Let people know upfront what they are getting into, and then let them make their own choice about whether it's worthwhile or not.

There might be some argument about whether this kind of 'consenting adults' approach to labour regulation is the right or wrong approach for less well off people. (Many people seem to think that the poor are like kids and need to be protected from themselves by someone who knows better what's good for them..)

But for people in the ever-booming field of software, that's a hard argument to make.

Because the power is on the side of the guy giving the job, not on the guy having to pay mortgage and feed a family with two kids.

Sought after, rock-start, "I'll shop around", programmers are by definition few and far between. And even if somehow everybody managed to be one, their value and "shop-around"-ability would fall too (because there would be many to pick from).

The law must also protect regular joe employees.

If you as an employer have made your business completely dependent on a single employee you haven't done your job, especially if that person decides to leave suddenly.

If you want to hire someone, hire them. If an employee leaves, let them leave. No hard feelings. If you really don't want them to leave, offer them more. Preferably do that before they think about leaving. This sort of unfair limitations on employee's employability is or should be illegal.

It's an ethical dilemma, but in my opinion the fundamental right to earn a living (basic economic freedom) trumps the letter of an overly-restrictive contract, _if_ the employee's outside activities don't impact the employer in a material way. That's not law, that's just my opinion, and I realize it could be a bit of a slippery slope. However I just don't see how a company can own an employee's time away from work (again unless the employee is competing in the employer's direct line of business). See the work of Brandeis.

That's why we need protective laws and regulations for the workers. What governments aren't allowed to do, companies should probably not be allowed to do either.

Let me guess, you want power to control what people and companies can or can not do? I don’t trust you enough to put you in control of that.