[mondoshawan]

No, realistically, it is called exempt salary works for hire, and there are legal limits to it. No salaried job has "set hours".

The limits you can work with are: working on your own equipment, non-working hours, working on it at home in an area not typically used for $dayjob, the subject of the work, and above all else your locality. These agreements are generally overreaches by the lawyers drafting them, depending on the nature of the job. Remember: no contract can limit rights granted to you under the law, every contract has limits, and you cannot be prevented from working, even if stated otherwise.

Washington, for instance, has state laws against this kind of IP assignment.

IANAL, so don't read into this too much, but I have consulted IP attorneys about this. If you're doing something like this, definitely consult -- the kind of work you do does matter. In this guy's case, it seems he does have a conflict of interest w.r.t. the work he does for IBM.

[Communitivity]

Many consultancies do, as you have billable hours and even your non-billable hours have to be accounted for. These are your hours on company time.

[mondoshawan]

We weren't talking about contracting or consultancies...