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Non-competes in America are insane. The article points out the even fast food restaurants are forcing their fry cooks to sign non-compete contracts, preventing
by thomascgalvin 7y ago
Non-competes in America are insane. The article points out the even fast food restaurants are forcing their fry cooks to sign non-compete contracts, preventing them from flipping burgers at a different chain.
This is basically slavery. People that take these kinds of jobs tend to be vulnerable, tend to lack other options, and these non-competes remove even those few alternatives.
But they're morally wrong at every economic level. If a company wants to control what you do with your time, they should pay you for it. If you aren't actively employed by them, they should have no say in who you are employed by.
Protecting trade secrets is fine, but you don't get to tell an engineer that she can't write software for Amazon just because she also wrote software for Google.
- jjeaff 7y agoThe only immoral part is that the companies are using them to scare people that don't know any better. Because there is a 0% chance you could enforce a fry cook non-compete. And even trying would take so much more resources than could conceivably be recouped by enforcing it.
- neetle 7y agoWe're talking about people who wouldn't have enough money to fight this in court. All it would take is one attempt to enforce it with the right judge and it'd seem like a legitimate clause.
- BubRoss 7y agoI wonder whether exclusivity contracts are really ever positive. It seems like their very nature is anti-competition. From exclusive ISP contracts to non compete agreements they end up essentially made to be abused.