4 ms·

Been in Tech for 20 years and never encountered a non compete clause

toomuchtodo 3y ago
I had one for the first time in 20+ years for my last gig out of a Midwest state. Said I wouldn’t take the job if it was forced. They folded.
sidlls 3y ago
There were non-compete clauses in every employment contract I saw when I started my software career (east coast circa 2005). Companies even tried to weasel them into the independent work contracts they signed with me when I did independent contracting for a while.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
As someone who's been in tech in Texas for nearly 25 years, I've always had to sign a non-compete as a full time employee. It's all state/locale dependent.
photonbeam 3y ago
Banks have asked me for one, when all the job is writing internal tools, no deep trading secrets
- echelon 3y ago
  Probably easier to apply across the board instead of on a per-role basis.
pengaru 3y ago
It's not just the non-competes though. California explicitly protects ownership of inventions made on your own time/equipment[0]. AFAIK other states tend to default to employer ownership of inventions. This alone is a huge win for Cali when it comes to HN/maker type folks... [0] https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2010/lab/2870-2872.html https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2010/lab/2870-2872.h...
neilv 3y ago
I see non-compete agreements in tech employment all the time in the US. I also had to push back against an overly broad non-compete when contracting. When I was leading engineering at an early startup, I had to push back against our lawyer, who drafted an employment agreement that none of us wanted to sign. It included broad non-compete, and a bunch of other grabby clauses. That startup one was tricky, because we were getting rumors that supposedly investors were demanding non-competes from tech startups. Silicon Valley notwithstanding. (And a bunch of clauses I hadn't seen before, including things like, IIRC, the company has right to do search and seizure in the home of the employee, on IP grounds. This was pre-Covid.) It's hard to argue, when you're an aspiring actor, fresh off the bus in LA, and a producer is claiming to you that every role starts with the casting couch. To resolve the argument-from-authority impasses on the startup's employee agreement, the company reimbursed me to hire a lawyer representing me as an employee. Both for my own interests as an employee, and to provide some kind of balance for the interests of employees in general.

I had one for the first time in 20+ years for my last gig out of a Midwest state. Said I wouldn’t take the job if it was forced. They folded.

sidlls 3y ago

There were non-compete clauses in every employment contract I saw when I started my software career (east coast circa 2005). Companies even tried to weasel them into the independent work contracts they signed with me when I did independent contracting for a while.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

As someone who's been in tech in Texas for nearly 25 years, I've always had to sign a non-compete as a full time employee. It's all state/locale dependent.

photonbeam 3y ago

Banks have asked me for one, when all the job is writing internal tools, no deep trading secrets

echelon 3y ago
Probably easier to apply across the board instead of on a per-role basis.

pengaru 3y ago

It's not just the non-competes though. California explicitly protects ownership of inventions made on your own time/equipment[0]. AFAIK other states tend to default to employer ownership of inventions. This alone is a huge win for Cali when it comes to HN/maker type folks... [0] https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2010/lab/2870-2872.html https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2010/lab/2870-2872.h...

neilv 3y ago

I see non-compete agreements in tech employment all the time in the US. I also had to push back against an overly broad non-compete when contracting. When I was leading engineering at an early startup, I had to push back against our lawyer, who drafted an employment agreement that none of us wanted to sign. It included broad non-compete, and a bunch of other grabby clauses. That startup one was tricky, because we were getting rumors that supposedly investors were demanding non-competes from tech startups. Silicon Valley notwithstanding. (And a bunch of clauses I hadn't seen before, including things like, IIRC, the company has right to do search and seizure in the home of the employee, on IP grounds. This was pre-Covid.) It's hard to argue, when you're an aspiring actor, fresh off the bus in LA, and a producer is claiming to you that every role starts with the casting couch. To resolve the argument-from-authority impasses on the startup's employee agreement, the company reimbursed me to hire a lawyer representing me as an employee. Both for my own interests as an employee, and to provide some kind of balance for the interests of employees in general.