Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

casetext.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 179 posts

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

#151

Post by michaelochurch »

kabouseng wrote: post #110
michaelochurch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-competes aren't there to be enforced, but to make the person stinky to future employers. A decent company will cover legal expenses and, in the extreme outlier case, judgments-- and an indecent one will fire you, but you probably won't get sued in either case. The effect of a non-compete on a star hire is relatively small, but if you're an entry-level engineer, the difference between $85,000 per year and $85,000…

Except that the junior engineer's old company won't sue because he is just a junior engineer... The non-compete risk probably comes only with the star hires / client facing employees (risk of clients being lured to the other company).

Except that the junior engineer's old company won't sue because he is just a junior engineer...

True in practice, but there is risk.

Plus, it's just a shitty conversation to be compelled to have when you're trying to convince someone to hire you. ("One last thing, I'm under this non-compete, so can I get a written agreement to cover legal costs?") An executive can probably get that protection. For a junior, that's a deal breaker. And typically, the vindictive or paranoid firm won't actually sue your next company, they'll just ask your new firm to fire you... and often (for low-level people like software engineers) they will.

Tech is diverse enough and "competition" generally amorphously-defined enough that junior engineers rarely get strung up on non-competes. It's more of an issue in finance.

The only time it happens in tech is when there's a deliberate attempt to destroy someone's reputation, like what a few people (none especially important) from Google tried to do after I left that place.

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

#152

Post by fapjacks »

javert wrote: post #131
fapjacks wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh? And Zynga "needs" something? Or is going to accomplish anything nearly as worthwhile as Wikipedia? Or... ?

People enjoy the games, they pay for them, those payments accure to employees of the company and eventually investors who make it all possible. So the whole goal of the business is literally creating happiness. The investors, having produced value, can then invest in something else. The people playing the games are also producing value, because they earned their paychecks doing something productive for somebody. Of c…

I feel sorry for you, needing to resort to those kinds of statements. Whatever made you that way, please know that life gets better, and it's possible to draw inspiration for positive change from many different things around you. It'll get better, buddy, I promise.

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

#153

Post by hwstar »

colanderman wrote: post #107
lgleason wrote: post #50

Good for Hawaii! Georgia went the other way. My advice to anybody is to not sign them if you are asked to. They are bad for everybody.

Doesn't work in my experience. I started not too long ago at a startup whose founder actively publicly campaigns against non-competes. Yet there was still a non-compete in my employment contract, and they wouldn't let me strike it, presumably due to pressure from their lawyers regarding potential investors. They have laudably since removed the clause, even retroactively from current employees' contracts, but it just…

Investors and banks are the root of the problem when it comes to non-competes. They insist that companies include these in all employee agreements.

If you live in a state where non-competes are legal, and if you are a job candidate and they refuse to let you strike the non-compete, then push back with the following: If employment is terminated by them and not you, ask them to pay you 100% of your salary during the non-compete duration so you can go on "Gardening leave". If they refuse to do this, then decline the job offer.

Oh, and make sure you state that you need to see everything up-front I will need to sign in the next 6 months as an employee in the offer documentation package. Some ethically-challenged companies wait until you have accepted the offer and hit you with the non-compete and invention agreements on your first day of employment with a "sign or be fired" requirement.

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

#154

Post by belenos46 »

djur wrote: post #118
benjohnson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't clear enough - by investing time and energy into simplifying our mundane services into a product, we're able to expand into more interesting projects - and we have the profitability to do charity work and blue sky work. I'm certain that there are employees that like rote work, but for me, I can't stand it and project that onto others.

What I reacted to was the suggestion that > it also has the side effect of diminishing job prospects is a good or desirable thing.

For the employee it's not. For the employer, it obviously is. If you can't get hired somewhere else, you're not going to bail.

As someone dealing with basically this situation, it sucks, but if I was also getting handed one-off "solve this puzzle and we're going to use the code you make every day" problems and raises early and often, it wouldn't suck nearly this much.

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

#155

Post by gtrubetskoy »

michaelochurch wrote: post #151
kabouseng wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the junior engineer's old company won't sue because he is just a junior engineer... The non-compete risk probably comes only with the star hires / client facing employees (risk of clients being lured to the other company).

Except that the junior engineer's old company won't sue because he is just a junior engineer... True in practice, but there is risk. Plus, it's just a shitty conversation to be compelled to have when you're trying to convince someone to hire you. ("One last thing, I'm under this non-compete, so can I get a written agreement to cover legal costs?") An executive can probably get that protection. For a junior, that's a…

I think the winning strategy in this case is to conceal from your prospective employer that you're under a non-compete and hope for the best.

If your former company is not vindictive enough to send a copy of the form to your new employer, you win. If they are vindictive enough - you lose, but you would have lost if you told your prospective employer that you were bound by a non-compete anyway.

The mere fact that skilled workers need to contemplate such deceptive tactics as part of their everyday "pursuit of happiness" so that a business can enjoy some risk mitigation I think underlines that Hawaii is spot on in making non-competes outright illegal.

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

#156

Post by mjcohen »

fapjacks wrote: post #152
javert wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People enjoy the games, they pay for them, those payments accure to employees of the company and eventually investors who make it all possible. So the whole goal of the business is literally creating happiness. The investors, having produced value, can then invest in something else. The people playing the games are also producing value, because they earned their paychecks doing something productive for somebody. Of c…

I feel sorry for you, needing to resort to those kinds of statements. Whatever made you that way, please know that life gets better, and it's possible to draw inspiration for positive change from many different things around you. It'll get better, buddy, I promise.

Until our civilization collapses. Then it will get better for all except humanity.

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

#157

Post by belenos46 »

tcheard wrote: post #45
danielweber wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Depends how hard Tech Company A can push, basically.

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

#158

Post by Lawtonfogle »

mcv wrote: post #127
skarap wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 months for both sides? So if an employee wants to leave the employer can make them stay for one more year? Doesn't sound like a good thing to me.

12 months is extreme. But it's extreme for both sides.

If the company goes under, good luck getting a year of pay from them.

It is better than many deals, but still seems to favor the employer for the reason most laws do, which is that when a deal is between a person and a company, the law never treats them the same and the company gets what I always see to be the favorable treatment (for example, company can't go to jail).

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

#159

Post by sillygeese »

mcv wrote: post #148
sillygeese wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth treating them well. Again, I agree. > Without them, you're nothing. Plenty of lifestyle business owners would beg to differ. > If a company wants loyalty from their employees, they have to demonstrate their own loyalty towards their employees first. How? What's loyalty in this context anyway? Working your ass off for your employer? Or perhaps not firing someone even though he's holding your business back…

You seem to have a very limited view of employer-employee relationships. Work is a big part of our life, but not all of it. We don't live to work, but work to live. Just acknowledging that would go a long way. Give employees the room they need to get their lives in order if they need it. Don't work them til they drop, but give them a healthy amount of vacation time, and only ask them to work overtime in extreme cases…

What exactly prompted you to give me that advice?

I'm planning to treat my employees very well, if I ever have some.

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

#160

Post by guelo »

srean wrote: post #88
mathattack wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - this is an instance where a law can help an ecosystem at the expense of individual players. In aggregate though, it's net neutral for most companies, since they benefit from being able to hire from competitors. The companies doing interesting things probably benefit, while the ones doing boring things get a little hurt. The (largely untrained) economist in me says that mobility of labor is very important for gr…

Thanks. You touch upon one of my pet peeves. A huge amount of legislative energy is spent to ensure that capital can move around unfettered. On the contrary, movement of skill and intellectual property seems purposefully hindered. Implicitly it says that capital is much more important than the others, I simply disagree.

Yes! Imagine if these trade deals were also about allowing the unfettered movement of people.
Post reply on HN