My experience is biased towards technical roles (like most on HN), but I've worked for startups, …

I've had a "we own everything you make" clause in contracts before, it's just copy pasted boilerplate, and they were fine with removing it when I asked. Noncompetes I've been fine with, because they were always quite niche companies, and the wording was something along the lines of "don't join our direct competitors for a few years", and that seems ok to me. I will grant that it gets more complicated with megacorporations that work on everything though, as their "competitors" are roughly everyone.

> many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract Contracts are entirely negotiable. If there's a job you want, but the contract contains an objectionable clause, tell them that you're willing to accept if they strike that clause. If you're at the point in the hiring process where they're showing you the contract, that means that they've sunk resources into you that they don't want to throw away. And the fact that these clauses are boilerplate, as you say, works in your favor, because nobody involved in the hiring process consciously chose to put that clause in and they probably don't really give a damn.

> But in reality if you stick to these rules hard and fast, you'll basically never accept a job offer. That's clearly an exaggeration, but many-to-most of these clauses are in every boilerplate contract. In the tech industry, yeah, but there are industries that aren't so employee hostile where you can find better contract terms. I'd have to say in my experience, the tech industry is one of the worst when it comes to the malicious application of employment contracts. Apple is especially egregious with forcing interviewees to sign expansive NDAs; the Dilbert cartoon is spot on by making them dress like Apple store employees.