9 ms·

Non-Competes being legal is only acceptable I think if the worker will continued being paid for the period of the non-compete. I can see reasons that non-compet

Non-Competes being legal is only acceptable I think if the worker will continued being paid for the period of the non-compete. I can see reasons that non-competes exist, but those reasons don't really make sense in a world where patents and trademarks also exist. The fact that they are essentially illegal in California, and California's economy works shows that they are unnecessary and also don't hinder technological development.

notch656c 4y ago
Should be reciprocal if it exists. I.e. if the employee leaves, the company would be barred from hiring anyone else for any remotely similar tasks. Make them taste their own medicine and decide if it's worth it.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
  [dead]
- mywittyname 4y ago
  They'd hire for a different role and "transfer" the person.
  - jakeinspace 4y ago
    This is the perfect use case for anonymous tips receiving a percentage of the fine.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      Works well for taxes and other whistleblowers.
  - notch656c 4y ago
    That just sets the precedent the non-compete bound employee can be hired in the same manner. Reciprocal.
- Rayhem 4y ago
  It is always interesting to me how much 'morality' (in the sense that an individual/corporation 'should' abide by these rules) can be derived from applying symmetry principles.
  - stcredzero 4y ago
    People aren't particles, though. What symmetry tests are good for with regards to human beings, is to see if something like a principle which claims to be "fundamental" is really fundamental.
    - andirk 4y ago
      I think it's safe to argue that every single thing in a contract is for the benefit of the employer and has zero to do with morality. And it is up to the employee to have their own internal contract that the employer must align to. It's like legal court where the prosecution and defense go full court press not out of morality but because the belief that if both sides pull their hardest then the truth will be found.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    The "golden rule". Only do unto others that which you wish others to do unto you (or something like that, you get the idea).
- falcor84 4y ago
  I would love to take a short vacation to an alternate universe where all job descriptions say that applicants MUST NOT have any recent experience in the area of employment.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    That's kind of how clean room design works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
    - secretsatan 4y ago
      Ignorance is bliss, especially if it’s well paid
- devmunchies 4y ago
  It IS reciprocal. You're welcome to present that "non-comparable hire" contract to the company before accepting your offer, but they no doubt will rescind your offer. You have the same right to reject the offer if you don't like the contract they present. It's common for executive's lawyers to negotiate contracts with the firm before accepting an offer (including what the firm can or cannot do to the executive without penalties). I wish it were more normalized for ICs.
  - Rayhem 4y ago
    I guess I'd say that's true to first order. Sure, if a company does something egregious that I don't like it is within the realm of possibility that I can go found another one, double their revenue, and grind them out of existence before doing things my way. I suppose you could say that's reciprocal since that's kind of what they did to me in this hypothetical example. Fortune rarely favors that, though, and if you ask me companies have vastly more economic firepower than independent contributors but haven't adopted the corresponding responsibility.
- Falkon1313 4y ago
  May as well really be fair. If the employee isn't allowed to work in that industry for 2 years, neither is the company. They'll just have to find some other source of revenue and retool their business for a couple years.
mumblemumble 4y ago
This is the standard I knew from the trading industry. I would say that, while it does initially seem more palatable, it also has some downsides. One that might be particularly relevant to programmers is that it sets up a structure that functions somewhat like a penalty of 1 year's worth of paid vacation for choosing a new job outside the industry. I don't have the business or economic bonafides to back this up, but it seems likely to me that such an incentive structure would not serve the benefits of society as a whole, and might become quite damaging were it to become widespread. My own sense is that, with the possible exception of the "you can't take your client sheet with you" style of noncompete that sometimes gets applied to salespeople and hairstylists, non-competes are simply anti-capitalist. Not in some sort of ideological sense, just in a very practical, "This is nothing but a tool for retarding GDP by further concentrating wealth in the pockets of the already-wealthy," sort of way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobr1 4y ago
  Even in California, you can get sued for violating an NDA when going to competitor if you bring private technical data, which seems like a reasonable compromise. You can bring your expertise, but no code. Intersecting with this are patents. A company can also protect its IP with patents, but when should choose to disallow, or have more liberal patent laws? It seems there are similar tradeoff between the value to companies, competitors and public interests.
  - mumblemumble 4y ago
    Also no material non-public information even if it's not technically technical. The standard I'm familiar with is, knowledge you acquired during your time at a previous employer is safe to share with your current one if you can support it with a citation.
  - deaddodo 4y ago
    > Even in California, you can get sued for violating an NDA when going to competitor if you bring private technical data, which seems like a reasonable compromise. You can bring your expertise, but no code. Intersecting with this are patents. A company can also protect its IP with patents, but when should choose to disallow, or have more liberal patent laws? It seems there are similar tradeoff between the value to companies, competitors and public interests. What does that have to do with non-competes? What you're describing is IP law and theft; and is illegal pretty much throughout the western world. Non-competes specifically and only exist in the context of barring employee competition and migration of talent. All via legal labor servitude at the justification of "training investment" and/or "unfair competition".
wahnfrieden 4y ago
workers shouldn't benefit from rising wage markets?
Alex3917 4y ago
> The fact that they are essentially illegal in California, and California's economy works shows that they are unnecessary and also don't hinder technological development. The general rules that most states use for deciding when non-competes are enforceable aren't that bad. E.g. if you work at a bakery, you're not going to be allowed to open your own bakery two blocks away within a year, but it's fine if you do it a couple towns over. That doesn't seem especially crazy to me.
- Volundr 4y ago
  And if your employer is a national player? International?
- gameman144 4y ago
  I'm curious, why does that seem less crazy than the simpler case of being allowed to open a bakery two blocks away within a year?
- dagw 4y ago
  if you work at a bakery, you're not going to be allowed to open your own bakery two blocks away within a year What if you work at Starbucks and want to open your own coffee shop. Is it reasonable that you should not be able to open a coffee shop within two blocks of any existing Starbucks?
  - mcv 4y ago
    And if Starbucks closes a shop because of unionisation, can the employees reopen it as a co-op? I certainly think that should be possible, and encouraged.
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
  Why should employers have any control over your life whatsoever after they're not paying you?
  - Terretta 4y ago
    their investment in teaching you their IP -- that's the theory you trade getting to learn for agreeing not to use it against them for a while -- is the theory at line worker level i'd argue this is nonsense, at 'how to mill iPhones from a single block of metal' or 'self driving car brain' maybe its real, but there are ndas and patents for that
ericbarrett 4y ago
My understanding is that this arrangement is common in finance. However the worker is not given benefits or bonuses during this time. Since private health insurance is massively expensive and bonus comp can be a significant fraction of one's pay in the field, it can still be onerous.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  >it can still be onerous Sure you get paid less than you are used to but you are still getting more than 95% of the population to do literally nothing.
  - ericbarrett 4y ago
    In some cases the total comp is less than 50% salary. Might be fine for some quant PhD to go from $1M to $250k, but if this "workaround" to enforcing non-competes becomes more popular and spreads to different fields you could see positions that go from (say) $80k + benefits to $40k without, with furlough enforced for a year. That would be devastating for a family with children.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      But the people you are concerned with are not paid 40k plus 40k bonus that can be clawed away they are paid 80k. Bonuses are like options being worthwhile in that they are mostly out of your control. When I see a position pays 140,000 plus bonus which was almost 40,000 last year I know I can only count on 140,000 this year and if 40,000 happens to be awarded great.
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      This wouldn't be a widespread practice outside of fields with proprietary data, relationships, or trade secrets, which tend to have better compensation. The costs of having a non-working employee on the payroll, even at the $40k-level need to be worth it. It isn't going to be the case for a random grocery store manager or whatever that they are worth the costs.
  - 4y ago
makestuff 4y ago
IMO it should be full compensation of your last years' w2. In finance they pay you garden leave but only base pay. So they are only out a small portion of your actual cost.
- slymon99 4y ago
  Yea, I've always wondered if finance companies intentionally structure their comp this way to make garden leave more damaging
- 22SAS 4y ago
  Not all of them do it that way. The HFT I work with, pays the greater of base salary or 75% of base+bonus averaged over the last two years.
crazygringo 4y ago
But even that has major drawbacks -- if you're not actually working, then you're not building your resume, you're not getting promotions, you're not advancing. And if you find your work meaningful and satisfying, that meaning and satisfaction is gone. Not to mention who determines how much "being paid" means, when compensation isn't just base salary but also variable things like company bonuses, individual performance bonuses, stock compensation -- plus the increased compensation you'd get from potential raises. I too can see the reasons that non-competes exist, but I see more reasons why they shouldn't exist. And even if a company thinks it's worth it to pay someone's salary for a year or two to enforce a non-compete, is this really what's best for the economy overall? Motivated, highly skilled people excluded from the job market?
- jacobr1 4y ago
  I would agree these are system-wide less efficient, but shouldn't paid "garden leave" be legal if parties agree upfront?
  - fendy3002 4y ago
    Well if all companies are doing it, employees will have no option other than to agree. This is the current case with non compete afaik.
    - chadash 4y ago
      There's a big difference. Paid gardening leave means that the employer actually has skin in the game. I'd bet that 9 times out of 10 they won't actually enforce these non-competes if they actually have to bear some cost (certain industries might be exceptions). The problem with the status quo is that an employer will have the non-compete in play regardless of whether the "competition" would really hurt them.
      - throwaway09223 4y ago
        When I look at the last decade of my employment, my base salary is less than 10% of my overall comp. Maybe even 5%. For high demand folks (the kind we read about in executive emails between Apple and Google and so on) it seems very possible that a company would opt to pay 10% of the employee's comp to deny them from the competition.
peteradio 4y ago
> The fact that they are essentially illegal in California, and California's economy works shows that they are unnecessary and also don't hinder technological development. That's no argument. Parasites work as organism taxon, doesn't mean all life can become so.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Analogies are not arguments. An example of an economy outputting businesses at the highest levels of performance while barring non competes is an argument.
gdcbe 4y ago
If they pay me close to my salary for doing nothing I’m all in. I can always side hustle something completely different on the side or just take the money and focus more on my kids. Please do enforce the agreement :D
monksy 4y ago
Non-competes do not protect an organization against IP theft or trade sceret dismenination. Those are portected by NDAs, confidentiality agreements, copyrights, patents, etc. Non-competes limit where your staff can go to. Without proper compensation for the time period in which they apply for, they're a very one sided (and in some cases illegal [NCs are legal in IL unless they assert an economic hardship]) way to prevent employees leaving. The claims for them is "training cost is expensive and it's to limit staff from training at one company and leaving" (which as we know.. companies generally don't do training in house)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chadash 4y ago
  > Those are protected by NDAs, confidentiality agreements, copyrights, patents, etc. This gets thrown around HN a lot but I don't think it matches reality. Say I work in machine learning algorithms for show recommendations at Netflix. Amazon hires me to work on their machine learning algorithm recommender on Prime Video. Sure, I might have NDAs to protect what I learned at Netflix, but how does Netflix realistically show whether or not I disseminated that knowledge at Amazon? It's not like they can just ask to see Amazon's code to see if the knowledge has been ported over to there. The only way to really show that I infringed an NDA is for someone to rat me out, which is probably pretty rare. To that end, I understand why companies want non-competes (I'm not saying they should be allowed to have them... I'm just saying that there are reasons that they exist beyond "we don't want employees to leave). In finance, it's very common to get a paid non-compete where you get your full salary for as long as the company wants to enforce the non-compete. Companies aren't paying these high salaries just because "training cost is expensive and it's to limit staff from training at one company and leaving". They are doing it because they actually fear the consequences of the employee's new firm competing with them based on the knowledge that the employee has. For this reason, it's also pretty common for companies in finance to not pay out gardening leave when they aren't worried about the employee's new company directly competing.
  - danaris 4y ago
asveikau 4y ago
One of the biggest problems I see with non competes is that "competition" can be subjective, especially in a world of large employers with extremely diversified business interests. Eg. If you move from one big tech co to another, you may be technically moving to a competitor, but the subject matter of your work could be unrelated. This is probably true of other industries too.
- mcv 4y ago
  My current client had a non-compete in their contract specifying I would not be allowed to work for one of their customers, or something like that. This client is one of the big four accountancy firms; their customers can really include everyone, and I have no way to tell who is or isn't their customer. And my work doesn't even include any contact with their customers! What they really wanted was that I wouldn't do for, or even share with, the other big accountancy firms what I was going to do for them, because it's something unusual that's their idea and they think it gives them an advantage. That's completely fine of course. The original reading was ridiculous. I don't think they changed it in the contract, but they did explain it by email.
  - acheron 4y ago
    That sounds like it might be an audit restriction. Those places have very strict rules separating who they do accounting or consulting for vs who they audit, for obvious reasons. So it might be that they’re saying you can’t do work for them in one capacity and then go work for somebody they audit.
gnicholas 4y ago
> but those reasons don't really make sense in a world where patents and trademarks also exist. Trademarks don’t really help with this. The bigger issue is trade secrets. You can’t make someone forget how your as-yet unreleased prototype is designed, and proving that their subsequent work for a competitor draws on that knowledge is expensive and time consuming. Not to say that non competes are a good idea, just saying trademarks are irrelevant to the conversation, and trade secrets are a more complicated issue than patents.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"The fact that they are essentially illegal in California, and California's economy works shows that are unnecessary and also don't hinder technological development." If there were another US state where noncompete agreements were "essentially legal" whose economy "worked" what would that show. Are there any other factors one should consider that affect whether a state's economy "works". Is it possible to work for a competitor of one's former employer without violating the former employer's intellectual property rights. (NB. I am in favour of regulating non-competes.)
- pacetherace 4y ago
  If something unethical works doesn't mean it should be condoned.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
    "Dark Patterns", "Surveillance Capitalism", "Big Tech" It works!
- deaddodo 4y ago
  I mean, if you want the counter example; we already have it. Texas and Massachusetts both had much more developed and supported engineering industries + talent pools in the first half+ of the 1900s. Talent specifically moved to California to be able to innovate without the encumbrances of current legislation in those states. Sure, it's more complex than that and there are other reasons. But ultimately, a single piece of legislation had a huge hand in turning California into the preeminent global leader in the vast span of technology industries.
heavyset_go 4y ago
That'll still hurt you because entitled employers will want to know why you didn't just take another job and will worry that if you sign their non-compete, they might have to pay out your salary + benefits for a year or more when you decide to leave.
- mjevans 4y ago
  On your resume you'd list the NDA period as employment by the other company in technical terms.
cwkoss 4y ago
Pay shouldn't just continue, it should increase exponentially at a rate that outpaces inflation by enough to disincentivize maintaining it. Make it compound monthly at 200% APR. Might be worth 3 years of pay to keep someone silent and idle for 2 years in some exceptional cases, but 7 years for 3 years would be exceedingly rare and 15 for 4 would be unheard of. I'd be happy to sink all my time in my hobbies for 200% APR exponentially growing pay as long as anyone would like.

notch656c 4y ago

Should be reciprocal if it exists. I.e. if the employee leaves, the company would be barred from hiring anyone else for any remotely similar tasks. Make them taste their own medicine and decide if it's worth it.

sieabahlpark 4y ago
[dead]
mywittyname 4y ago
They'd hire for a different role and "transfer" the person.
- jakeinspace 4y ago
  This is the perfect use case for anonymous tips receiving a percentage of the fine.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    Works well for taxes and other whistleblowers.
- notch656c 4y ago
  That just sets the precedent the non-compete bound employee can be hired in the same manner. Reciprocal.
Rayhem 4y ago
It is always interesting to me how much 'morality' (in the sense that an individual/corporation 'should' abide by these rules) can be derived from applying symmetry principles.
- stcredzero 4y ago
  People aren't particles, though. What symmetry tests are good for with regards to human beings, is to see if something like a principle which claims to be "fundamental" is really fundamental.
  - andirk 4y ago
    I think it's safe to argue that every single thing in a contract is for the benefit of the employer and has zero to do with morality. And it is up to the employee to have their own internal contract that the employer must align to. It's like legal court where the prosecution and defense go full court press not out of morality but because the belief that if both sides pull their hardest then the truth will be found.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  The "golden rule". Only do unto others that which you wish others to do unto you (or something like that, you get the idea).
falcor84 4y ago
I would love to take a short vacation to an alternate universe where all job descriptions say that applicants MUST NOT have any recent experience in the area of employment.
- kube-system 4y ago
  That's kind of how clean room design works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
  - secretsatan 4y ago
    Ignorance is bliss, especially if it’s well paid
devmunchies 4y ago
It IS reciprocal. You're welcome to present that "non-comparable hire" contract to the company before accepting your offer, but they no doubt will rescind your offer. You have the same right to reject the offer if you don't like the contract they present. It's common for executive's lawyers to negotiate contracts with the firm before accepting an offer (including what the firm can or cannot do to the executive without penalties). I wish it were more normalized for ICs.
- Rayhem 4y ago
  I guess I'd say that's true to first order. Sure, if a company does something egregious that I don't like it is within the realm of possibility that I can go found another one, double their revenue, and grind them out of existence before doing things my way. I suppose you could say that's reciprocal since that's kind of what they did to me in this hypothetical example. Fortune rarely favors that, though, and if you ask me companies have vastly more economic firepower than independent contributors but haven't adopted the corresponding responsibility.
Falkon1313 4y ago
May as well really be fair. If the employee isn't allowed to work in that industry for 2 years, neither is the company. They'll just have to find some other source of revenue and retool their business for a couple years.

mumblemumble 4y ago

This is the standard I knew from the trading industry. I would say that, while it does initially seem more palatable, it also has some downsides. One that might be particularly relevant to programmers is that it sets up a structure that functions somewhat like a penalty of 1 year's worth of paid vacation for choosing a new job outside the industry. I don't have the business or economic bonafides to back this up, but it seems likely to me that such an incentive structure would not serve the benefits of society as a whole, and might become quite damaging were it to become widespread. My own sense is that, with the possible exception of the "you can't take your client sheet with you" style of noncompete that sometimes gets applied to salespeople and hairstylists, non-competes are simply anti-capitalist. Not in some sort of ideological sense, just in a very practical, "This is nothing but a tool for retarding GDP by further concentrating wealth in the pockets of the already-wealthy," sort of way.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jacobr1 4y ago
Even in California, you can get sued for violating an NDA when going to competitor if you bring private technical data, which seems like a reasonable compromise. You can bring your expertise, but no code. Intersecting with this are patents. A company can also protect its IP with patents, but when should choose to disallow, or have more liberal patent laws? It seems there are similar tradeoff between the value to companies, competitors and public interests.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  Also no material non-public information even if it's not technically technical. The standard I'm familiar with is, knowledge you acquired during your time at a previous employer is safe to share with your current one if you can support it with a citation.
- deaddodo 4y ago
  > Even in California, you can get sued for violating an NDA when going to competitor if you bring private technical data, which seems like a reasonable compromise. You can bring your expertise, but no code. Intersecting with this are patents. A company can also protect its IP with patents, but when should choose to disallow, or have more liberal patent laws? It seems there are similar tradeoff between the value to companies, competitors and public interests. What does that have to do with non-competes? What you're describing is IP law and theft; and is illegal pretty much throughout the western world. Non-competes specifically and only exist in the context of barring employee competition and migration of talent. All via legal labor servitude at the justification of "training investment" and/or "unfair competition".

wahnfrieden 4y ago

workers shouldn't benefit from rising wage markets?

Alex3917 4y ago

> The fact that they are essentially illegal in California, and California's economy works shows that they are unnecessary and also don't hinder technological development. The general rules that most states use for deciding when non-competes are enforceable aren't that bad. E.g. if you work at a bakery, you're not going to be allowed to open your own bakery two blocks away within a year, but it's fine if you do it a couple towns over. That doesn't seem especially crazy to me.

Volundr 4y ago
And if your employer is a national player? International?
gameman144 4y ago
I'm curious, why does that seem less crazy than the simpler case of being allowed to open a bakery two blocks away within a year?
dagw 4y ago
if you work at a bakery, you're not going to be allowed to open your own bakery two blocks away within a year What if you work at Starbucks and want to open your own coffee shop. Is it reasonable that you should not be able to open a coffee shop within two blocks of any existing Starbucks?
- mcv 4y ago
  And if Starbucks closes a shop because of unionisation, can the employees reopen it as a co-op? I certainly think that should be possible, and encouraged.
dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
Why should employers have any control over your life whatsoever after they're not paying you?
- Terretta 4y ago
  their investment in teaching you their IP -- that's the theory you trade getting to learn for agreeing not to use it against them for a while -- is the theory at line worker level i'd argue this is nonsense, at 'how to mill iPhones from a single block of metal' or 'self driving car brain' maybe its real, but there are ndas and patents for that

ericbarrett 4y ago

My understanding is that this arrangement is common in finance. However the worker is not given benefits or bonuses during this time. Since private health insurance is massively expensive and bonus comp can be a significant fraction of one's pay in the field, it can still be onerous.

sebzim4500 4y ago
>it can still be onerous Sure you get paid less than you are used to but you are still getting more than 95% of the population to do literally nothing.
- ericbarrett 4y ago
  In some cases the total comp is less than 50% salary. Might be fine for some quant PhD to go from $1M to $250k, but if this "workaround" to enforcing non-competes becomes more popular and spreads to different fields you could see positions that go from (say) $80k + benefits to $40k without, with furlough enforced for a year. That would be devastating for a family with children.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    But the people you are concerned with are not paid 40k plus 40k bonus that can be clawed away they are paid 80k. Bonuses are like options being worthwhile in that they are mostly out of your control. When I see a position pays 140,000 plus bonus which was almost 40,000 last year I know I can only count on 140,000 this year and if 40,000 happens to be awarded great.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    This wouldn't be a widespread practice outside of fields with proprietary data, relationships, or trade secrets, which tend to have better compensation. The costs of having a non-working employee on the payroll, even at the $40k-level need to be worth it. It isn't going to be the case for a random grocery store manager or whatever that they are worth the costs.
- 4y ago

makestuff 4y ago

IMO it should be full compensation of your last years' w2. In finance they pay you garden leave but only base pay. So they are only out a small portion of your actual cost.

slymon99 4y ago
Yea, I've always wondered if finance companies intentionally structure their comp this way to make garden leave more damaging
22SAS 4y ago
Not all of them do it that way. The HFT I work with, pays the greater of base salary or 75% of base+bonus averaged over the last two years.

crazygringo 4y ago

But even that has major drawbacks -- if you're not actually working, then you're not building your resume, you're not getting promotions, you're not advancing. And if you find your work meaningful and satisfying, that meaning and satisfaction is gone. Not to mention who determines how much "being paid" means, when compensation isn't just base salary but also variable things like company bonuses, individual performance bonuses, stock compensation -- plus the increased compensation you'd get from potential raises. I too can see the reasons that non-competes exist, but I see more reasons why they shouldn't exist. And even if a company thinks it's worth it to pay someone's salary for a year or two to enforce a non-compete, is this really what's best for the economy overall? Motivated, highly skilled people excluded from the job market?

jacobr1 4y ago
I would agree these are system-wide less efficient, but shouldn't paid "garden leave" be legal if parties agree upfront?
- fendy3002 4y ago
  Well if all companies are doing it, employees will have no option other than to agree. This is the current case with non compete afaik.
  - chadash 4y ago
    There's a big difference. Paid gardening leave means that the employer actually has skin in the game. I'd bet that 9 times out of 10 they won't actually enforce these non-competes if they actually have to bear some cost (certain industries might be exceptions). The problem with the status quo is that an employer will have the non-compete in play regardless of whether the "competition" would really hurt them.
    - throwaway09223 4y ago
      When I look at the last decade of my employment, my base salary is less than 10% of my overall comp. Maybe even 5%. For high demand folks (the kind we read about in executive emails between Apple and Google and so on) it seems very possible that a company would opt to pay 10% of the employee's comp to deny them from the competition.

peteradio 4y ago

> The fact that they are essentially illegal in California, and California's economy works shows that they are unnecessary and also don't hinder technological development. That's no argument. Parasites work as organism taxon, doesn't mean all life can become so.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Analogies are not arguments. An example of an economy outputting businesses at the highest levels of performance while barring non competes is an argument.

gdcbe 4y ago

If they pay me close to my salary for doing nothing I’m all in. I can always side hustle something completely different on the side or just take the money and focus more on my kids. Please do enforce the agreement :D

monksy 4y ago

Non-competes do not protect an organization against IP theft or trade sceret dismenination. Those are portected by NDAs, confidentiality agreements, copyrights, patents, etc. Non-competes limit where your staff can go to. Without proper compensation for the time period in which they apply for, they're a very one sided (and in some cases illegal [NCs are legal in IL unless they assert an economic hardship]) way to prevent employees leaving. The claims for them is "training cost is expensive and it's to limit staff from training at one company and leaving" (which as we know.. companies generally don't do training in house)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chadash 4y ago
> Those are protected by NDAs, confidentiality agreements, copyrights, patents, etc. This gets thrown around HN a lot but I don't think it matches reality. Say I work in machine learning algorithms for show recommendations at Netflix. Amazon hires me to work on their machine learning algorithm recommender on Prime Video. Sure, I might have NDAs to protect what I learned at Netflix, but how does Netflix realistically show whether or not I disseminated that knowledge at Amazon? It's not like they can just ask to see Amazon's code to see if the knowledge has been ported over to there. The only way to really show that I infringed an NDA is for someone to rat me out, which is probably pretty rare. To that end, I understand why companies want non-competes (I'm not saying they should be allowed to have them... I'm just saying that there are reasons that they exist beyond "we don't want employees to leave). In finance, it's very common to get a paid non-compete where you get your full salary for as long as the company wants to enforce the non-compete. Companies aren't paying these high salaries just because "training cost is expensive and it's to limit staff from training at one company and leaving". They are doing it because they actually fear the consequences of the employee's new firm competing with them based on the knowledge that the employee has. For this reason, it's also pretty common for companies in finance to not pay out gardening leave when they aren't worried about the employee's new company directly competing.
- danaris 4y ago

asveikau 4y ago

One of the biggest problems I see with non competes is that "competition" can be subjective, especially in a world of large employers with extremely diversified business interests. Eg. If you move from one big tech co to another, you may be technically moving to a competitor, but the subject matter of your work could be unrelated. This is probably true of other industries too.

mcv 4y ago
My current client had a non-compete in their contract specifying I would not be allowed to work for one of their customers, or something like that. This client is one of the big four accountancy firms; their customers can really include everyone, and I have no way to tell who is or isn't their customer. And my work doesn't even include any contact with their customers! What they really wanted was that I wouldn't do for, or even share with, the other big accountancy firms what I was going to do for them, because it's something unusual that's their idea and they think it gives them an advantage. That's completely fine of course. The original reading was ridiculous. I don't think they changed it in the contract, but they did explain it by email.
- acheron 4y ago
  That sounds like it might be an audit restriction. Those places have very strict rules separating who they do accounting or consulting for vs who they audit, for obvious reasons. So it might be that they’re saying you can’t do work for them in one capacity and then go work for somebody they audit.

gnicholas 4y ago

> but those reasons don't really make sense in a world where patents and trademarks also exist. Trademarks don’t really help with this. The bigger issue is trade secrets. You can’t make someone forget how your as-yet unreleased prototype is designed, and proving that their subsequent work for a competitor draws on that knowledge is expensive and time consuming. Not to say that non competes are a good idea, just saying trademarks are irrelevant to the conversation, and trade secrets are a more complicated issue than patents.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"The fact that they are essentially illegal in California, and California's economy works shows that are unnecessary and also don't hinder technological development." If there were another US state where noncompete agreements were "essentially legal" whose economy "worked" what would that show. Are there any other factors one should consider that affect whether a state's economy "works". Is it possible to work for a competitor of one's former employer without violating the former employer's intellectual property rights. (NB. I am in favour of regulating non-competes.)

pacetherace 4y ago
If something unethical works doesn't mean it should be condoned.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  "Dark Patterns", "Surveillance Capitalism", "Big Tech" It works!
deaddodo 4y ago
I mean, if you want the counter example; we already have it. Texas and Massachusetts both had much more developed and supported engineering industries + talent pools in the first half+ of the 1900s. Talent specifically moved to California to be able to innovate without the encumbrances of current legislation in those states. Sure, it's more complex than that and there are other reasons. But ultimately, a single piece of legislation had a huge hand in turning California into the preeminent global leader in the vast span of technology industries.

heavyset_go 4y ago

That'll still hurt you because entitled employers will want to know why you didn't just take another job and will worry that if you sign their non-compete, they might have to pay out your salary + benefits for a year or more when you decide to leave.

mjevans 4y ago
On your resume you'd list the NDA period as employment by the other company in technical terms.

cwkoss 4y ago

Pay shouldn't just continue, it should increase exponentially at a rate that outpaces inflation by enough to disincentivize maintaining it. Make it compound monthly at 200% APR. Might be worth 3 years of pay to keep someone silent and idle for 2 years in some exceptional cases, but 7 years for 3 years would be exceedingly rare and 15 for 4 would be unheard of. I'd be happy to sink all my time in my hobbies for 200% APR exponentially growing pay as long as anyone would like.