What does your employment agreement look like? I'm curious if you can obtain a boring engineering job while asserting that "you (employer) will not, nor ever try to assert ownership or claims over code written when not-on-the-clock."

If the job is boring but the employment agreement puts your hobby projects at risk, because they can assert ownership is it worth it?

I'm guessing it's totally boring until you invent a novel algorithm as a hobby, at which point they are suddenly highly interested in being cutting edge and taking your creation.