(In Australia...)

As an employee, everything you do in company time is theirs, anything more or less is contractual.

As a contractor, everything you do is yours, with some task or work product assigned by contract to them.

Between contract jobs and employee jobs, I've created a variety of development tools of my own, to assist with my job ( faster, more efficient, etc ). Most good professionals have these code libraries or tools.

What I've always done when interviewing for an employee job is to mention this vast library of stuff that makes me a far better asset to them than someone coming in with no code ( it also helps to display value... shitty coders don't code at home ). In doing this, you can let them know that in order to bring in this code, you need to maintain ownship to it, any improvements to it, and any new tools/code that isn't related to work projects.

My general angle has been "I own any improvements or new tools, you own the work product, and I'll give you an unlimited, non-cancellable, commercial license to all my private code".

This covers their risk, in that they get full and continuing access to anything of yours they need, even after you leave. Any company time spent on improvements to your stuff stays yours, and everyone is happy.

When the time comes where they give you the "everything you think is ours" forms, which are likely just boilerplate and bundled, just mention the arrangement you have and get the language changed.

Get the "I own my stuff" clause in your original employment contract, in which case if some _other_ part of the company yells at you for the "All your base" form, you can truthfully say you are unable to sign it because it conflicts.

This has worked for me for the last 4 years...

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