[abulman]

Every contract of employment I've received initially had a part saying I could not do outside work/projects, or that they would belong to the company.

None of them were there when I started work - as I had them all struck out, or changed to "work I do for the company belongs to the company, and I won't work on similar projects for other people while I work here".

It has never been a problem to arrange that. The only time it was, was during a initial phone-screen interview with the company HR person that said: a) they use Subversion and any discussion of changing to Git was never going to happen (this was in about 2017), and b) any outside projects were totally forbidden. No wonder I hadn't heard of the company before - despite their office being a few hundred metres from Silicon Roundabout and all the various meetups - no one was allowed to improve their skills...

What she had to do with making those decisions, I have no idea. And so that's the only interview I ever rage quit (though I did once tell someone else their puzzle-based questions were dumb during another interview).