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You perfectly described the alternative. Rather than relying on non-competes, employers must pay their employees sufficiently well and treat them well enough to
by bgentry 9y ago
You perfectly described the alternative. Rather than relying on non-competes, employers must pay their employees sufficiently well and treat them well enough to discourage poaching. Better in every way for employees, but possibly expensive for employers.
If the CA tech scene has shown us anything, it's that companies will do just fine without relying on repressive & anti-competitive employment contracts.
- unit91 9y ago> ... but possibly expensive for employers Very likely prohibitively expensive for a lot of employers. Suppose you're a small-business owner with a great product, albeit with a limited but growing customer base. You work where cost of living is much lower than SV. $100K for a developer is pretty good pay, and you can't afford to pay, say, $125K per year. One of the "big guys" offers some of your devs $200K per year remote to bring their knowledge and reimplement a knock-off. You're sunk, and not because you are too hard-hearted to pay better salaries. I'm not saying the current non-compete system is optimal (I've been bitten by it), but some reasonable level of protection needs to exist or we'll descend into (near) monopoly territory even more rapidly than we currently are.
- sedachv 9y agoWage fixing is not a "reasonable level of protection."