> Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time".

Not in my big tech company. You have to disclose any side work you do only if it is similar to the work you do. Not if it is similar to anything the company does. And they're not overly broad (so my doing SW doesn't mean I have to report all SW side work).

As someone else said, let's not normalize this crap.