6 ms·

Why can't congress do something about this? Non-competes are clearly terrible for workers, and should at the least be illegal without a severance agreement. If

Why can't congress do something about this? Non-competes are clearly terrible for workers, and should at the least be illegal without a severance agreement. If a company wants to keep me from working they should pay for the privilege. Workers also need to start refusing to sign egregiously bad non-compete agreements.

jomamaxx 10y ago
"If a company wants to keep me from working they should pay for the privilege." They are paying you. You join the company on those terms. If you don't want to join, then don't join. What they don't want you dong is taking all their IP, walking off and passing it onto a competitor. It would be extremely naive to not understand that this happens all the time. It's a tricky and nuanced problem, but it's real.
- aikah 10y ago
  > What they don't want you dong is taking all their IP, walking off and passing it onto a competitor. Bullshit, that's what NDAs are for.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    "Bullshit, that's what NDAs are for." Totally false and completely naive. Most knowledge and know-how is not explicit - they are often learned. For example - suppose you worked at Nuance, and helped develop their new AI/Neural Network speech recognition system. Everything you know about Speech + AI you learned from them, in that language specific setting. If you went to work on Google's new Speech Recognition, which is AI-based - it would basically be impossible not to pass on know how and relevant knowledge. The application-specific skills are basically IP.
    - aikah 10y ago
      > For example - suppose you worked at Nuance, and helped develop their new AI/Neural Network speech recognition system. Everything you know about Speech + AI you learned from them, in that language specific setting. And the knowledge and experience you got from your previous job before Nuance ? where does it come from ? why would the buck stop at Nuance ? or the former company ? or the company before it ? your point is ridiculous. The knowledge I acquire, if it doesn't involve a company's secret is my own and no company owns it. There is no such thing as intellectual slavery which you basically promote. If you don't pay me I owe nothing more than the respect of your patents and other corporate secrets and those are covered by NDA.
      - dvtv75 10y ago
        Actually, that's a very interesting question - your prior knowledge in a field, particularly if you've paid for your education, might become significantly more valuable if a non-compete is implemented. Valuable enough perhaps to refuse Nuance the right to use your work. Of course, the counter-argument there is that they paid you for your work, and that's why it's their property. It may follow that if the work is theirs and you can't use it, then surely your student loan in its entirety would also be their responsibility for just that reason. Shame I have more important problems to solve in the meantime, that idea could be quite fascinating to work through.
    - alkonaut 10y ago
      > If you went to work on Google's new Speech Recognition, which is AI-based - it would basically be impossible not to pass on know how and relevant knowledge. The application-specific skills are basically IP. If Nuance wants to pay me to not work for google for a long time - fine. As long as the non compete is fully paid that's fine. Without pay from my former competitor, it must of course be completely within my rights to go to Google and develop in 1 year what took me 10 years at Nuance. That's what my experience does - helps me do the same thing quicker. That experience, and nuances "Trade Secrets" are more or less the same thing. Nuance paid me for years of failed attempts and dead ends. Google pays me (more) to not repeat them.
    - dozzie 10y ago
      > The application-specific skills are basically IP. No. Those application-specific skills are called experience.
- throw_away_777 10y ago
  Companies aren't paying you for the duration of the non-compete, they only pay you when you are working there. If a company really wants non-competes to prevent you from working for a competitor, they could afford to pay for that. Instead companies are using non-competes as a form of control, to coerce workers into keeping working for that company.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Once again they paid for a finite duration of your time and labor not the contents of your brain. For you to somehow by dint of experience BECOME employer property in whole or in total is a truly bizarre perspective. If you can't own them forever as slaves then preventing them from freely applying their learned skills for a period of time isn't coherent and logical.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    "Once again they paid for a finite duration of your time and labor not the contents of your brain." + Absolutely false. Whenever you work for a company, you will gain knowledge that is their property - almost always. It doesn't matter who/what/when/how you work for - that knowledge is theirs. Even McDonald's workers are subject to private info such as operating details. + "For you to somehow by dint of experience BECOME employer property in whole or in total is a truly bizarre perspective." Nobody is anybodies property. If nearly everything you know about a subject is a trade secret, then you obviously cannot use that elsewhere. + "If you can't own them forever as slaves then preventing them from freely applying their learned skills for a period of time isn't coherent and logical." Would you children stop talking about slavery? If your skills and experience are tantamount to trade secrets than you cannot use them elsewhere. The idea that some company is going to let you in on their $1 Billion dollars and research, so you can walk across the street and hand it over to another company 'because you think it's your right' - is not coherent or logical. Put yourself in the perspective of the manager of that IP.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
      “If your skills and experience are tantamount to trade secrets than you cannot use them elsewhere.“ What is protected is defined in terms of patents, trade secrets, and non disclosure. It looks like the long term prospects of software patents is extremely grim and neither of the later items can be so broadly construed. Your skills and experience can't be owned by your employer. It looks as if you actually understand that none of the above are so broad and want to use non competes to protect some sort of moral right. The problem is that such employers are 0.0001% of the population the freedom of everyone else and in fact the efficiency of the labor market as a whole is vastly more important than some sort of moral right for Bob the employer to keep Jim the employee from learning the trade and using that experience down the road. Your perspective is antiquited and based on a belief in an entire social framework of mutual employee employer loyalty that was always mostly imaginary and now practically fictional. It's highly likely that you have personal issues heretofore unexpressed wherein you feel badly treated. Maybe you should elaborate on THAT.
nickff 10y ago
How would a company "pay for the privilege" of preventing you from transferring their trade secrets without being able to enforce non-competes?
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  With a severance package. Non-competes should not be allowed to last any longer than the severance package. P.S. Non-competes should have nothing to do with trade secrets; those should be covered by an NDA.
  - nickff 10y ago
    So the company should keep paying an employee's full salary without any guarantee that the employee won't 'quit' the severance to work for a competitor? This is basically guaranteeing that nobody who has valuable knowledge can be fired for cause or laid off. NDAs are nice, but there is no way to know whether a trade secret has been transferred to a competitor (if the competitor keeps their secrets secret). The other problem with allowing NDAs but disallowing non-competes is that it provides a huge loophole, where businesses can classify all non-public information as trade secrets, thereby preventing the former employee from implementing any competing system (which will inevitably contain some non-public process from the previous employer).
    - throw_away_777 10y ago
      No, the point is the non-compete keeps the employee from working for a competitor, so the employer pays the salary to prevent the employee from working for a competitor. The employer chooses to either pay the salary of the employee or free them to find work elsewhere. Why is it fair that an employer can fire someone or lay someone off and keep that person from working for a year?
      - nickff 10y ago
        Why is it fair that an employee can stop working at their job or commit fraud, then immediately sell all the non-public information they have to a competitor?
dredmorbius 10y ago
Among other reasons, Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce, but not intrastate commerce. Congress might, say, prohibit noncompetes across state lines, but would have a harder time making the case for a noncompete prohibition within a given state. Perhaps not impossible. OTOH, there are Federal standards for labour in the US under the NLRA -- National Labor Relations Act. Lay understanding of law.
- sjg007 10y ago
  They can regulate companies who do any business across state lines.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Point.
- didgeoridoo 10y ago
  Wickard v. Filburn can be twisted in virtually any way you like: "Noncompetes in one state affect national labor market price levels, thus are subject to the commerce clause, and are heretofore banned." Not that I support this reading, but it's been used to shake off commerce clause challenges for the better part of a century now.

jomamaxx 10y ago

"If a company wants to keep me from working they should pay for the privilege." They are paying you. You join the company on those terms. If you don't want to join, then don't join. What they don't want you dong is taking all their IP, walking off and passing it onto a competitor. It would be extremely naive to not understand that this happens all the time. It's a tricky and nuanced problem, but it's real.

aikah 10y ago
> What they don't want you dong is taking all their IP, walking off and passing it onto a competitor. Bullshit, that's what NDAs are for.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Bullshit, that's what NDAs are for." Totally false and completely naive. Most knowledge and know-how is not explicit - they are often learned. For example - suppose you worked at Nuance, and helped develop their new AI/Neural Network speech recognition system. Everything you know about Speech + AI you learned from them, in that language specific setting. If you went to work on Google's new Speech Recognition, which is AI-based - it would basically be impossible not to pass on know how and relevant knowledge. The application-specific skills are basically IP.
  - aikah 10y ago
    > For example - suppose you worked at Nuance, and helped develop their new AI/Neural Network speech recognition system. Everything you know about Speech + AI you learned from them, in that language specific setting. And the knowledge and experience you got from your previous job before Nuance ? where does it come from ? why would the buck stop at Nuance ? or the former company ? or the company before it ? your point is ridiculous. The knowledge I acquire, if it doesn't involve a company's secret is my own and no company owns it. There is no such thing as intellectual slavery which you basically promote. If you don't pay me I owe nothing more than the respect of your patents and other corporate secrets and those are covered by NDA.
    - dvtv75 10y ago
      Actually, that's a very interesting question - your prior knowledge in a field, particularly if you've paid for your education, might become significantly more valuable if a non-compete is implemented. Valuable enough perhaps to refuse Nuance the right to use your work. Of course, the counter-argument there is that they paid you for your work, and that's why it's their property. It may follow that if the work is theirs and you can't use it, then surely your student loan in its entirety would also be their responsibility for just that reason. Shame I have more important problems to solve in the meantime, that idea could be quite fascinating to work through.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    > If you went to work on Google's new Speech Recognition, which is AI-based - it would basically be impossible not to pass on know how and relevant knowledge. The application-specific skills are basically IP. If Nuance wants to pay me to not work for google for a long time - fine. As long as the non compete is fully paid that's fine. Without pay from my former competitor, it must of course be completely within my rights to go to Google and develop in 1 year what took me 10 years at Nuance. That's what my experience does - helps me do the same thing quicker. That experience, and nuances "Trade Secrets" are more or less the same thing. Nuance paid me for years of failed attempts and dead ends. Google pays me (more) to not repeat them.
  - dozzie 10y ago
    > The application-specific skills are basically IP. No. Those application-specific skills are called experience.
throw_away_777 10y ago
Companies aren't paying you for the duration of the non-compete, they only pay you when you are working there. If a company really wants non-competes to prevent you from working for a competitor, they could afford to pay for that. Instead companies are using non-competes as a form of control, to coerce workers into keeping working for that company.
michaelmrose 10y ago
Once again they paid for a finite duration of your time and labor not the contents of your brain. For you to somehow by dint of experience BECOME employer property in whole or in total is a truly bizarre perspective. If you can't own them forever as slaves then preventing them from freely applying their learned skills for a period of time isn't coherent and logical.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Once again they paid for a finite duration of your time and labor not the contents of your brain." + Absolutely false. Whenever you work for a company, you will gain knowledge that is their property - almost always. It doesn't matter who/what/when/how you work for - that knowledge is theirs. Even McDonald's workers are subject to private info such as operating details. + "For you to somehow by dint of experience BECOME employer property in whole or in total is a truly bizarre perspective." Nobody is anybodies property. If nearly everything you know about a subject is a trade secret, then you obviously cannot use that elsewhere. + "If you can't own them forever as slaves then preventing them from freely applying their learned skills for a period of time isn't coherent and logical." Would you children stop talking about slavery? If your skills and experience are tantamount to trade secrets than you cannot use them elsewhere. The idea that some company is going to let you in on their $1 Billion dollars and research, so you can walk across the street and hand it over to another company 'because you think it's your right' - is not coherent or logical. Put yourself in the perspective of the manager of that IP.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    “If your skills and experience are tantamount to trade secrets than you cannot use them elsewhere.“ What is protected is defined in terms of patents, trade secrets, and non disclosure. It looks like the long term prospects of software patents is extremely grim and neither of the later items can be so broadly construed. Your skills and experience can't be owned by your employer. It looks as if you actually understand that none of the above are so broad and want to use non competes to protect some sort of moral right. The problem is that such employers are 0.0001% of the population the freedom of everyone else and in fact the efficiency of the labor market as a whole is vastly more important than some sort of moral right for Bob the employer to keep Jim the employee from learning the trade and using that experience down the road. Your perspective is antiquited and based on a belief in an entire social framework of mutual employee employer loyalty that was always mostly imaginary and now practically fictional. It's highly likely that you have personal issues heretofore unexpressed wherein you feel badly treated. Maybe you should elaborate on THAT.

nickff 10y ago

How would a company "pay for the privilege" of preventing you from transferring their trade secrets without being able to enforce non-competes?

bryanlarsen 10y ago
With a severance package. Non-competes should not be allowed to last any longer than the severance package. P.S. Non-competes should have nothing to do with trade secrets; those should be covered by an NDA.
- nickff 10y ago
  So the company should keep paying an employee's full salary without any guarantee that the employee won't 'quit' the severance to work for a competitor? This is basically guaranteeing that nobody who has valuable knowledge can be fired for cause or laid off. NDAs are nice, but there is no way to know whether a trade secret has been transferred to a competitor (if the competitor keeps their secrets secret). The other problem with allowing NDAs but disallowing non-competes is that it provides a huge loophole, where businesses can classify all non-public information as trade secrets, thereby preventing the former employee from implementing any competing system (which will inevitably contain some non-public process from the previous employer).
  - throw_away_777 10y ago
    No, the point is the non-compete keeps the employee from working for a competitor, so the employer pays the salary to prevent the employee from working for a competitor. The employer chooses to either pay the salary of the employee or free them to find work elsewhere. Why is it fair that an employer can fire someone or lay someone off and keep that person from working for a year?
    - nickff 10y ago
      Why is it fair that an employee can stop working at their job or commit fraud, then immediately sell all the non-public information they have to a competitor?

dredmorbius 10y ago

Among other reasons, Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce, but not intrastate commerce. Congress might, say, prohibit noncompetes across state lines, but would have a harder time making the case for a noncompete prohibition within a given state. Perhaps not impossible. OTOH, there are Federal standards for labour in the US under the NLRA -- National Labor Relations Act. Lay understanding of law.

sjg007 10y ago
They can regulate companies who do any business across state lines.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Point.
didgeoridoo 10y ago
Wickard v. Filburn can be twisted in virtually any way you like: "Noncompetes in one state affect national labor market price levels, thus are subject to the commerce clause, and are heretofore banned." Not that I support this reading, but it's been used to shake off commerce clause challenges for the better part of a century now.