4 ms·
Non-Disclosure agreements exist. Employers can prevent an ex-employee from harming them with those. Yet, they insist on non-competes. It is amusing to ask onese
by mavelikara 3y ago
Non-Disclosure agreements exist. Employers can prevent an ex-employee from harming them with those. Yet, they insist on non-competes. It is amusing to ask oneself why.
I think it is because that employers don’t think that non-disclosures work as well in practice as they do in theory. As in, a person can sign a non-disclosure but if they are allowed to work at a competitors, they may - sometimes without malicious intent - disclose trade secrets that harm the ex-employer.
Which is a legitimate concern.
These same firms set up complicated corporate structures to prove that “barriers” exist between different parts of their business which prevent collusion and market manipulation. Yet, as the LIBOR manipulation scandal proves, these barriers are toothless when it comes to preventing collusion.
I think it is best to state the fears out in the open:
* we don’t trust non-disclosures enough, when a person works at a competitor
* we don’t trust different departments of the same company not to collude to manipulate markets
Etc
- scotty79 3y agoThe question is if it's a benefit to the society to have those fears placetated. Or maybe a company that managed to lose an employee should be losing control of whatever the employee knows.
- mavelikara 3y agoCA, one can argue, is existence proof that those fears are not beneficial to the society in the aggregate. But my point was something else - what people say, and what they mean are different. Employers roll eyes at the mention of non-disclosures. Citizens roll eyes at barriers that banks swear will prevent any sharing of information between different parts of their business.