4 ms·

A company I worked for recently had non-competes and non-solicit clauses. A new employees was negotiating their contract, and I told them to push back against t

by tibbon 11y ago

A company I worked for recently had non-competes and non-solicit clauses. A new employees was negotiating their contract, and I told them to push back against the NC/CS clauses. I spoke with the management and asked why they needed them, "to prevent problems" they said. I pointed out that they didn't have the non-competes for their employees in California and asked if they had problems there. They weren't aware of any problems in California, yet they thought it perfectly logical and needed to ask for them elsewhere.

vinhboy 11y ago
because lawyers...
- lordnacho 11y ago
  Not just funny, but true. When you invite a lawyer into a discussion, what is most straightforward way for them to show they are contributing? More clauses. My firm's done negotiations with banks, and they all do the same vanilla business. Some have lawyers very close to the process, and some keep them at a distance. Of course there's always more back-and-forth when the lawyers are there, even though the business is the same for everyone. They try to sneak in ridiculous clauses and fight you on everything.
  - yourapostasy 11y ago
    In my personal experience, that "wtf clause" embedding is because lawyers are at the coalface of dealing with the assholes of the business world. When it comes to rules-based systems like law, the assholes of the world are the ones that drive fractal-like complexity in the rulesets, with their continuous seeking of edge cases to externalize costs upon everyone else they can possibly unload to while profiting from finding said edge cases, and the subsequent response by the body of law or by a law instrument to counter that behavior. In other words, the assholes work the contract instead of the actual relationship. We need something like Iain Banks' envisioned "slap drone" for the assholes, but in the meantime, I'll settle for discreetly negotiated relationships that create exceptions for my company. Law also needs to evolve more formalisms around invocation of privacy and other personal space / personal resource (time, especially) concepts that are currently not well defined at the moment, but are rife with predation by the assholes. I have found company counsel to always be willing to strike clauses for me if I negotiate with them amicably and agreeably, and preemptively provide them a "trust but verify" action they can perform that absolutely cannot be faked by an asshole participant. Clauses ranging from "all your bases are belong to us" IP seizures, sky-high insurance requirements, invasive financial reporting, you name it I've probably seen it, have all be negotiated away in this manner.
- gnohit 11y ago
  In Hawaii before this law, lawyers were the only profession exempted from non-competes. Our lawyers in Hawaii are well trained and the many firms are very competitive. They were smart enough to exempt themselves.

by tibbon 11y ago

vinhboy 11y ago

because lawyers...

lordnacho 11y ago
Not just funny, but true. When you invite a lawyer into a discussion, what is most straightforward way for them to show they are contributing? More clauses. My firm's done negotiations with banks, and they all do the same vanilla business. Some have lawyers very close to the process, and some keep them at a distance. Of course there's always more back-and-forth when the lawyers are there, even though the business is the same for everyone. They try to sneak in ridiculous clauses and fight you on everything.
- yourapostasy 11y ago
  In my personal experience, that "wtf clause" embedding is because lawyers are at the coalface of dealing with the assholes of the business world. When it comes to rules-based systems like law, the assholes of the world are the ones that drive fractal-like complexity in the rulesets, with their continuous seeking of edge cases to externalize costs upon everyone else they can possibly unload to while profiting from finding said edge cases, and the subsequent response by the body of law or by a law instrument to counter that behavior. In other words, the assholes work the contract instead of the actual relationship. We need something like Iain Banks' envisioned "slap drone" for the assholes, but in the meantime, I'll settle for discreetly negotiated relationships that create exceptions for my company. Law also needs to evolve more formalisms around invocation of privacy and other personal space / personal resource (time, especially) concepts that are currently not well defined at the moment, but are rife with predation by the assholes. I have found company counsel to always be willing to strike clauses for me if I negotiate with them amicably and agreeably, and preemptively provide them a "trust but verify" action they can perform that absolutely cannot be faked by an asshole participant. Clauses ranging from "all your bases are belong to us" IP seizures, sky-high insurance requirements, invasive financial reporting, you name it I've probably seen it, have all be negotiated away in this manner.
gnohit 11y ago
In Hawaii before this law, lawyers were the only profession exempted from non-competes. Our lawyers in Hawaii are well trained and the many firms are very competitive. They were smart enough to exempt themselves.