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White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

reuters.com

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Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#201

Post by brightball »

tristor wrote: post #186
brightball wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noncompetes are usually helpful in the service industry. If I hire you in my HVAC business and spend a year sending you on client jobs, then you leave, start your own HVAV business and start contacting all of my clients that I sent you to work on...that's a problem. Without a means of preventing that it's almost impossible to grow a service business.

Client lists are covered under NDA and you can add a non-solicitation clause which is different from a non-compete and seems both reasonable and fair. NDA + non-solicitation: You can't start your own HVAC company by handing your sales person a copy of my client list and calling everyone who currently works with me. Non-Compete: You can't start your own HVAC company. Full-stop. Do you see the difference? Do you unders…

See whenever I've seen a noncompete like that it's specifically said "within 5 miles of this location, up to 2 years, cannot contact any clients of this business"

I'm in a right to work state though and that means that noncompetes don't hold up at all unless they have a reasonable and non excessive scope. In a right to work state nobody can prevent you from earning a living so in order for a noncompete to hold it has to ensure that you have plenty of other options in your field in the area outside of the scope of that agreement.

I think we are talking about the same thing just using different terms.

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#202

Post by samtho »

GavinMcG wrote: post #152
throwaway_exer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reduces the employee to a mere company slave. Generally law enforcement will treat an employee as a slave if a company files any kind of complaint statement against the employee, regardless of how small the company is. Also, former employees have been convicted of violating employee handbooks. So slave is an apt description.

Can you please point to some examples of where employees were convicted of a crime simply for violating the private policies of their employer?

I would like to point out that the parent's comment may have been technically correct, but slightly misleading. Police can only arrest (in the US) if you are actively committing a crime or have a warrant out for your arrest. Many companies instill policies that also overlap with the law and may turn over evidence to authorities thus placing a warrant out for the (former) employee's arrest.

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#203

Post by fmavituna »

tristor wrote: post #184
fmavituna wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trade secrets, IP, secret sauce: covered by NDA and IP assignment agreements As a developer pretty much none of these matter or protects anything. Imagine this scenario; - John has no idea about video encoding but a good developer. - John joins to a video encoding startup - This startup encodes videos 3 times faster than the competitor - After working on the core product for 2 years, John knows a lot about video en…

To summarize your argument, you're saying that in practice NDAs are meaningless as a term of your employment contract, so adding an even more onerous and one-sided term, the non-compete is advisable? Contracts are only as good as their enforcement and the honor of those involved in the agreement. If an employee leaves and spreads your trade secrets to your competitor, then you sue them and the competitor, the same as…

Sorry I wasn't clear on the original comment, how can NDA stop a developer to use what he knows while writing code or creating procedures?

If you are a developer and worked on a code for 2 years. NDA cannot cover what you know what you don't. Your know-how that you captured on that company can simply be replicated in another company. You'll write the code from scratch, and NDA or copyright, or even patent in majority of the cases will not be enough to enforce or stop such a think. In rare cases patent can solve it but do we want all companies to patent everything?

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#204

Post by EliRivers »

tjic wrote: post #146
tristor wrote: post #139

I don't understand why there's so many people in the comments defending non-competes. They have literally no value to society, or to individual employees. They are a tool of restrictive coercion to stifle an employees freedom of movement in the job market. Trade secrets, IP, secret sauce: covered by NDA and IP assignment agreements Client lists, contract terms, sales strategies, reported metrics, financials: covered…

> I don't understand why there's so many people in the comments defending non-competes. They have literally no value to society, or to individual employees. To go meta for a moment: I think that this sort of statement exposes a flaw that many of us have in debates. It's related to the "argument from ignorance" fallacy, but is not exactly the same thing. I take it as one of my priors that people at news.yc are intelli…

freedom to contract is always a good thing.

I disagree. In an unbalanced relationship, the more powerful can take advantage of their power and impose contracts that leave the less powerful significantly worse off. If your choice is, for example, to contract to surrender your statutory rights or be unemployed, the freedom people have is the freedom to be worse off or much worse off. I wouldn't say this is a good thing. We rely on government and (if we're lucky) unions to prevent this freedom.

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#205

Post by hammock »

This comes one week after - and in contrast to - Donald Trump promising in his first 100 days in office a five-year ban on White House officials and Congressman from becoming lobbyists, and a lifetime ban on White House lobbyists from lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#206

Post by fmavituna »

debaserab2 wrote: post #174
fmavituna wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trade secrets, IP, secret sauce: covered by NDA and IP assignment agreements As a developer pretty much none of these matter or protects anything. Imagine this scenario; - John has no idea about video encoding but a good developer. - John joins to a video encoding startup - This startup encodes videos 3 times faster than the competitor - After working on the core product for 2 years, John knows a lot about video en…

> So how is this good for anyone but John? How about the consumer/society as a whole who now widely benefits from advanced technology being proliferated through the industry instead of being hoarded by one company?

I agree, but if we want that we should start from demolishing "patents" and many other similar more basic issues first, but we all know why that's not going to happen.

Secondly when you do that, aren't you actually killing commercial research? Why would I spend $10M to research something if one of my employees can just take that know-how and move to my competitor?

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#207

Post by driverdan »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #9

I just signed one of these ridiculous clauses because pretty much everyone is just slapping this into their contracts now. Law needs to catch up on this one and fast. I like the idea of making non-compete enforceable only if you can prove malicious intent. Similar to how tax works. If onus is on the tax payer to prove that if you buy something and sell it at profit you must prove that the _intention_ was not to turn…

You should have refused to sign it.

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#208

Post by driverdan »

ahlatimer wrote: post #29
enraged_camel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Texas and I'm interested to know if this is actually true. Asking for a friend.

I also live in Texas and recently signed a non-compete after talking to my attorney. The general gist is that, yes, they are enforceable. The legislature keeps pushing for them, and the courts have, at various times, pushed back against them. There are limitations on them, but you'd have to talk to an attorney to figure out what they are -- I don't remember exactly what my attorney said. I do know that my attorney sa…

Why did you sign it? Why didn't you refuse this time?

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#209

Post by RodericDay »

tjic wrote: post #146
tristor wrote: post #139

I don't understand why there's so many people in the comments defending non-competes. They have literally no value to society, or to individual employees. They are a tool of restrictive coercion to stifle an employees freedom of movement in the job market. Trade secrets, IP, secret sauce: covered by NDA and IP assignment agreements Client lists, contract terms, sales strategies, reported metrics, financials: covered…

> I don't understand why there's so many people in the comments defending non-competes. They have literally no value to society, or to individual employees. To go meta for a moment: I think that this sort of statement exposes a flaw that many of us have in debates. It's related to the "argument from ignorance" fallacy, but is not exactly the same thing. I take it as one of my priors that people at news.yc are intelli…

The "flaw" you talk about here has an exact opposite, which is a reactionary knee-jerk defense of the status quo just because it must have been arrived to optimally.

Often called "Panglossianism" as per Voltaire's character in Candide:

> Dr. Pangloss was the pedantic old tutor in Voltaire's satirical novel Candide. Pangloss was an incurable, albeit misguided, optimist who claimed that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." So persistent was he in his optimism that he kept it even after witnessing and experiencing great cruelty and suffering. The name "Pangloss" comes from Greek pan, meaning "all," and glossa, meaning "tongue," suggesting glibness and talkativeness.

The idea that there's always a good reason for every societal practice that we currently observe is arrogant too, just in a different way.

Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers

#210

Post by neogodless »

I'm not sure if you came here for anecdotes, but my very first full time web developer position had a non-compete clause. After 2.5 years, I moved to a new company about 15 miles away for a roughly 20% raise. Some time into this job, I ended up doing some work for a client that had left my previous employer. I reached out to the previous employer because I needed something changed on the server (they still managed hosting) - this tipped them off that I was (gasp) doing work for one of their previous clients. They ended up attempting to sue me and my new employer based on the non-compete! We went to a disposition, but then the lawyers huddled, and the end result was that the non-compete was reduced from 5 Years (!!) to just 1 year, and that we agreed I wouldn't do work on that specific client for the duration. Otherwise, there was no penalty or fallout. I consider it a big dramatic show with no benefit to the previous employer; they stomped their feet and pouted, the end.

Depending on the phrasing of the non-compete, I tend to cross that section out, initial them, and then include a note when I submit them to my employer. Most are fine with that change.

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