When I was a freelancer working on my own, a few companies would include a non compete clause. I challenged them on this always and they were all very happy to alter the wording. It&#x27;s about the wording mostly, and about definition of competition. For example if I am working for a web agency shop that does e-commerce websites for sports and I am just working on a site for a surf shop, I would alter the clause to read &quot;in the realm of surf shops&quot; rather than competition in general.   They were happy to change it because it kept the spirit of the agreement, what they actually meant there. Yeah, I was fine not making directly competing in a specific domain, but I wasn&#x27;t going to be limited by contract in competing in a general sense. It was also clear that reducing from 12 months to 6 months is usually acceptable also.<p>Now. The worst clause in a permanent contract is the other works &#x2F; open source projects etc. They sometimes want to own all your code even the things you do in your spare time. They will ask for a list of all projects you contribute to before working, and if you want to contribute to something new in your spare time you will need approval from management. Now, I think this is very unreasonable, and I&#x27;ve pushed back on this so much that I&#x27;ve rejected job offers because of it.  What I do in my own time is my business.