Weekly_Marionberry

This is standard at big tech firms. Your job contract generally contains a clause that assigns ownership of all your creative output, on work hours or not, to the company. If you have a personal project you want to work on over weekends you need to get the company to sign a waiver (and often they won't do that if the project is related to the company's business).

They get by because there's an endless supply of entry-level college grads

They very explicitly only hire very senior engineers, not new college grads. You very clearly have no idea what you are talking about and have lost all credibility on this issue.

Netflix is very up-front that they operate like a professional sports team: join if you want to perform highly around the highest performers, don't join otherwise. The moment you stop performing, you are out. Same with everyone around you. That's the deal, and it's made explicit up front.

This is also the reason they pay some of the highest comp around, but in cash, not stock. That differs from most SV companies where the vast majority of your comp is in stock, but it vests over the course of 4 years. At Netflix if you stop performing and get fired, at least you've still been paid a shit-ton of cash; everywhere else, you lose all your unvested stock/options and wasted your time at the company for a relative pittance.

It's a hardcore culture but the company isn't tricking anyone into accepting it, it's part of the deal. Everyone has the opportunity to not join. Joining then complaining about it later in a blog or newspaper article is a psychological defense mechanism, nothing more.