3 ms·

I have a very hard time with anything less than 100%. You're talking about preventing people from using their main skills to put food on the table. And frankly

I have a very hard time with anything less than 100%. You're talking about preventing people from using their main skills to put food on the table. And frankly, even 100% discounts the professional development that comes in the natural course of employment. You will have missed opportunities for skill advancement and networking. After 2 years not working because of the non-compete, how are interviews for the next position going to go? You'll be rusty at best. Side projects are not, in general, a fair substitute: what does an Amazon SRE do on hardware at home that compares to what's on the job? Even for an individual developer, there's a world of difference hacking on your own web app and working on a team with large numbers of actual customers.

filoleg 5y ago
If that becomes the norm, attitudes towards it will change, because then you won't be perceived by hiring people as at a disadvantage, since everyone will be going through this. Of course, right now it sounds ridiculous, as the percentage of your current candidates with 1-2 year working gaps is a minority. The reason I believe this will work is because that's how it works in finance right now. 1.5-2 year long non-competes, you get paid full salary for those periods (minus the annual bonus). And you can make the same point, what are they gonna do in terms of personal projects? Kind of difficult to imagine someone trading hundreds of millions in some specialty equities for a hedge fund and then going back home for 2 years and doing the same kind of a "side project" there. Nothing they can do by themselves at home is comparable to what they could at the job. And yet, this is literally the norm now, and those people don't have any issues interviewing and getting jobs afterwards at competing finance shops.

3 ms·

I have a very hard time with anything less than 100%. You're talking about preventing people from using their main skills to put food on the table. And frankly

by b3morales 5y ago

filoleg 5y ago
If that becomes the norm, attitudes towards it will change, because then you won't be perceived by hiring people as at a disadvantage, since everyone will be going through this. Of course, right now it sounds ridiculous, as the percentage of your current candidates with 1-2 year working gaps is a minority. The reason I believe this will work is because that's how it works in finance right now. 1.5-2 year long non-competes, you get paid full salary for those periods (minus the annual bonus). And you can make the same point, what are they gonna do in terms of personal projects? Kind of difficult to imagine someone trading hundreds of millions in some specialty equities for a hedge fund and then going back home for 2 years and doing the same kind of a "side project" there. Nothing they can do by themselves at home is comparable to what they could at the job. And yet, this is literally the norm now, and those people don't have any issues interviewing and getting jobs afterwards at competing finance shops.