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Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

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Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#41

Post by kasey_junk »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #24

As I understand it, non-competes are very hard to enforce and are more of an intimidation tactic than anything else. You cannot be prevented from earning a living the only way you know how given the demand for your skills. If you're bound by a non-compete and the only (or the best) job available is with the competition, you shouldn't be afraid to take it, and the courts will side with you if someone goes after you (w…

And is very dependent on jurisdiction and changes over time in any given jurisdiction.

Illinois for instance went from "non-compete's were basically not worth the paper they were printed on" to "hmm, might need a judgement to figure it out, is it worth it?"

Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#43

Post by benjohnson »

hueving wrote: post #27
benjohnson wrote: post #19

As an employer, I'm quite fine with this - as the law still allows for an agreement to be made about soliciting clients. If relationship with an employee and my company sours, all I really care about is that poor relationship not transferring to the relationship between my company and my clients. Artificially locking ourselves into to a bad employer/employee relationship does nobody any good.

I think the reason some employers want them is because they don't want to put the effort into building up an employees skills just to have them move to a different company right when they become useful. When you are an employee under these laws, you tend to put a lot more thought into choosing a company you would be willing to stay with as long as you are interested in that section of the industry.

It's a valid concern - that by training your employees and giving them experience, you make then so valuable that they can leave.

I fight this problem several ways:

I turn our services into a products so that I can onboard people quickly and drive down costs - for example instead of telling each employees to setup a backup on a server, I had one employee make a script that we can deploy on all new servers. By turning processed into an easy to deploy product - It also keeps boredom low.

I give raises quickly and early to match new skills, so that when they do go job hunting they don't see a tremendous pay increase.

I compartmentalize employees so that they get really really good at a smaller range of skills - this lets me charge the customer more, and lets me pay my employees more, but it also has the side effect of diminishing job prospects.

Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#44

Post by sib »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #24

As I understand it, non-competes are very hard to enforce and are more of an intimidation tactic than anything else. You cannot be prevented from earning a living the only way you know how given the demand for your skills. If you're bound by a non-compete and the only (or the best) job available is with the competition, you shouldn't be afraid to take it, and the courts will side with you if someone goes after you (w…

Washington and Massachusetts (states with significant high-tech employee bases) are also very friendly to employers in enforcing non-competes. (IANAL)

Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#45

Post by tcheard »

danielweber wrote: post #22
lfowles wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the post is about non-compete ("I won't go work for a company in the same market for X time") and non-solicit ("I won't convince my coworkers to come with me") clauses. IP assignment is separate. https://www.ieeeusa.org/members/IPandtheengineer.pdf

IP assignment can be non-compete. Had one company give me a non-compete and IP agreement that said they owned all the stuff I invent while working there or for 12 months after I stopped working there.

So what?

If I work for Tech Company A (that develops products in one market area), and leave to go to Tech Company B (that develops products in a completely separate market. ie. They don't compete in any way for market share), everything I do for Company B in the 12 months after leaving Company A, actually belongs to Company A?

Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#46

Post by ams6110 »

sosborn wrote: post #31
CognitiveLens wrote: post #11

In unrelated news, Hawaii's High-Tech industry collapses. I think this policy is awesome and should be universal, but it seems a little crazy to enact it unilaterally - if a company can choose which state to operate in, Hawaii is going to lose out to all the others that allow unfair (IMO) employer protections.

> Hawaii's High-Tech industry collapses. That would require that we actually have a functioning high-tech industry to begin with. >if a company can choose which state to operate in, Hawaii is going to lose out to all the others that allow unfair (IMO) employer protections. If a company is based in Hawai‘i, the only reason is that they don't have any other choice to begin with. We have terribly high costs of living an…

Yeah I thought most tech jobs in Hawaii were contracting gigs for the Navy.

Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#47

Post by tomasien »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #24

As I understand it, non-competes are very hard to enforce and are more of an intimidation tactic than anything else. You cannot be prevented from earning a living the only way you know how given the demand for your skills. If you're bound by a non-compete and the only (or the best) job available is with the competition, you shouldn't be afraid to take it, and the courts will side with you if someone goes after you (w…

They're hard to enforce, but I can tell you from experience (current) that it doesn't matter - their existence and enforceability in ANY way in a given state is harmful in a big way. California has basically done the right thing and decided to ignore them, but my home state only has rendered them ALMOST entirely unenforceable. That almost leaves a lot of room for the casual observer to judge - and it stings.

Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#48

Post by rhino369 »

littletimmy wrote: post #6
wheaties wrote: post #3

Wish NY did the same. In NY they get to own all your ideas both at work and "off the clock."

Are you serious? Do you have a source for that? That sounds like working on a plantation. Everything you pick is your master's.

Depending on the state the rules are different. Generally if the work is the scope of your employment it is your companies IP. Scope of employment typical factors in the time it was created, the place it was created, and the similarity of the work.

The safe bet is to get approval from the company so it doesn't cause issues.

Re: Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment

#49

Post by tibbon »

A company I worked for recently had non-competes and non-solicit clauses. A new employees was negotiating their contract, and I told them to push back against the NC/CS clauses.

I spoke with the management and asked why they needed them, "to prevent problems" they said. I pointed out that they didn't have the non-competes for their employees in California and asked if they had problems there. They weren't aware of any problems in California, yet they thought it perfectly logical and needed to ask for them elsewhere.

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