8 ms·

Maybe don't sign these types of contracts? We are fortunate enough that even the most mediocre among us can hold out for the next employer that doesn't demand

• rmason 13y ago
  You don't have to agree to sign such agreements. Once a company has invested in hiring you they aren't likely to let you go when you're at the proverbial starting line. Its more a case of who is going to blink first. I just know that I've refused to sign more than once. Do you think, especially in Silicon Valley, that the employer not only wants to lose the employee but be bad mouthed about restrictive agreements online where it's likely they will lose even more battles in the recruiting wars?
• A_COMPUTER 13y ago
  I basically did whistle my way out the door because of this. I worked as a contractor for a very large defense company. After a year, they offered me full time employment. I specifically asked if there was a "we own everything you make" clause in the employment agreement, but I was assured there was not. I went through about five digital form contracts, and when I got to the last one, it had the clause in there. I told the woman that I wanted to amend the contract and she huffed and told me they don't do that. I replied that I was promised that I would not have to agree to such a clause, and she told me that it was mandatory, so I could take it or leave it. I asked if there was anyone in HR I could talk to about this, and was told no. So I stood up and said "please escort me out the door, starting immediately I am resigning. At the gate, I would like the security guard to search my things." (it was a secured facility, and I didn't want anyone to claim I was stealing anything later.) She asked me if I was serious, and I said yes. I was berated for how much time and money was wasted on getting me ready for employment, and I replied I was promised repeatedly that I would not have to sign away my rights, and this was absolutely a deal breaker and I didn't appreciate being told repeatedly this would be honored until the very last minute. So really, my time was being wasted too. This really, really didn't go over well. My heart was beating like crazy the entire time. My former boss was furious, the HR person was furious. The security guard was cool about it though.
  • nraynaud 13y ago
    walking the walk. Literally.
  • ISL 13y ago
    Strong work. Not everyone has the will, nor the financial wherewithal, to do such a thing.
    • wyager 13y ago
      >Not everyone has the will... to do such a thing. This may just be crotchety old man talk, but sometimes I wonder if the extremely protective child-rearing (particularly in schools) that seems to be abundant today will make future adults particularly susceptible to this kind of bullying. If you never have to deal with this kind of social stress as a child, how can you possibly deal with it as an adult? Perhaps getting bossed around on the playground is a good way to train the mind to appropriately deal with intimidation from employers, salesmen, etc.
      • conformal 13y ago
        i'm in my 30s and i am in total agreement with you: the modern helicopter parents are so preoccupied with "bullying" that the next generation of kids are going to be soft-minded nitwits on the average. catching a beatdown on the playground now and again made me who i am today and i would never have had it any other way. having the balls or wisdom to walk away from a situation where you're being bullied, whether literally or figuratively, is becoming rarer nowadays.
      • vectorpush 13y ago
        Rest assured, children are still being bullied quite regularly.
      • pekk 13y ago
        Being humiliated and beaten as a child with no control over the situation is not "training" for anything. It's abundantly clear that you did not experience that and have no idea what it is like for a child. Let's hope as a crotchety old man that nobody ever decides to show you what it's like when you're stuck in a nursing home where no one believes or cares to help you because of some stupid reason like that it should toughen you up.
• redwall_hp 13y ago
  Non-compete is wrong, too. I have a lot of respect for California's courts for ruling against them and making them unenforceable there.
• rodgerd 13y ago
  > We are fortunate enough that even the most mediocre among us can hold out for the next employer that doesn't demand this kind of control over you, or start your own company. That's great this year. When the bubble pops - as it surely will, and if you think otherwise you're as bad as the cretins who were writing about all the rules changing forever in 2000 - things will be different. The time to press for change is when times are good and when you have leverage.
• JAnderton 13y ago
  Funny, I had the same conversation yesterday. A specific non-compete to say you can't work on the precise product segment (say, if you're at Facebook, you can't work on Google+ directly or something more specific like a segment your company is developing a patent in) for "x months" seems something that you can sign off if market segment is such. If I pay for a car, I'm paying for a product. If I pay someone to clean my garden, I'm buying his time, expertise etc. for the time to clean my garden. I look at me being paid at work the same way. I'm paid to work for 'n' hrs a day, 'm' days a week per year for cost 'x'. I provide you service and I get paid in return. What I do after work, as long as I don't infringe on any IP from work, is my business.
  • TheLoneWolfling 13y ago
    Question: is such a clause enforced in laboratories?
• tjmc 13y ago
  Why is the alternative to signing walking away? Whenever I've been handed terms like this in a contract I've struck them off and explained why prior to signing. I've never lost a job because of it and it's usually a sub-10 minute conversation.
  • crdoconnor 13y ago
    There is a limit to how much an employer can ask for in negotiations before I start to assume bad faith. A 2 year non-compete covering the entire industry I work in? That's not even halfway reasonable. You're actively trying to fuck me over. I don't care that it's not enforceable. You're still trying to fuck me over. I don't care that you're willing to compromise on that clause when I argue. You're still trying to fuck me over. This is not going to be a productive relationship even if I do get you to remove that clause because you started out trying to fuck me over. Every employer who attempts this kind of bullshit is a cancer upon this industry. They are preying upon people's tendencies to assume honesty and good faith. A reasonable clause to put in is a 6 month non-compete in the very specific industry covering maybe two or three companies. That would be a good starting point for negotiations. I've accepted jobs where they tried to pull this kind of bullshit on me right out of the gate. I used to think I was smart getting them to slice the contract up and make it reasonable like you suggested. Maybe it was, but it still would have been smarter to never have taken the job in the first place. Those people made terrible employers and are best just avoided.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • nitrogen 13y ago
      I've seen "unenforceable" non-competes, combined with bogus accusations of infringement, destroy entire companies and the products that other companies built on them, just through attrition.
    • tjmc 13y ago
      I totally respect that stance and I wish it was more widespread. Just speaking from my own experiences – I’ve been presented 2 or 3 very unreasonable contracts that I renegotiated and the employers were fine to work with. I think the non-compete clauses were there out of their own insecurities about competitors rather than any intention to screw me over. I can’t know that for sure, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is it was all out of the contract before I signed it. In business, a lot of people like to play hardball. Doesn't mean they’re all assholes. Taking them on and negotiating mutually agreeable terms can be a good outcome in itself. It’s a very useful skill to have.
• izacus 13y ago
  > I once saw a contract that stated I couldn't work in the field for TWO YEARS after terminating. Not just large machine equipment, but ANY mobile/web applications, related to integration with embedded systems or not. Yeah no thanks. Interestingly, here the legislagtion allows this kind of clauses only if you're receiving a "significant part" of your original pay from that company until the end of that period. Also, they have 2 weeks time after you quit to decide if they'll enforce it or not and the clause has to be written into the contract from the start of your employment. Which is actually way more reasonable that some contracts I've seen from the US-based companies.
• walshemj 13y ago
  that's a noncompte cluase (which is a totaly diferent thing) which I suspect would be impossible to enforce.
  • zecho 13y ago
    I get that. I was pointing out dumb contract clauses in general. As the OP says, there's a large array of these types of things found in contracts, which is why I brought up overly restrictive non-competes and arbitration clauses, both of which are just as scummy as claiming ownership of any IP during the period of employment.
    • walshemj 13y ago
      But non competes are hard to enforce whereas having releted work/ip belongs to the employer is prity much custom and practice. The employee employer relsionship is very one sided