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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

#251

Post by cableshaft »

cmdrfred wrote: post #231
dllthomas wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no point in putting one in the contract when there's 95% chance you'll get big fat middle finger in whatever labor court has jurisdiction if you try to activate it. There's potentially plenty of point if you don't expect your employees to understand that (or be able to count on it)

That's how it works in the US, most of the time a non-compete is entirely unenforceable.

Depends on the state. I live in Illinois. It's been enforced plenty of times here. They tend to argue over what is a 'reasonable' restriction, and it goes back and forth. For example: http://www.w-p.com/Articles/Illinois-Non-Compete-World-Now-E...

And in 2013, the TekSystems recruitment company sued its former employee (a recruiter) over a noncompete and it got upheld in Illinois court: http://paulporvaznik.com/court-can-shorten-overly-broad-non-...

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

#252

Post by YCode »

imglorp wrote: post #229
falcolas wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why there's so many people in the comments defending non-competes. There are many "temporarily embarrassed" entrepreneurs that read HN who can't stomach the thought of their future tech lead stealing their idea. I personally worked for one such person, whose startup was so new that employees were being paid only with shares, but still had about 10 pages of legal documentation for new employees to…

As most readers here would agree, ideas are worth almost nothing but executing on them is the value.

There is an argument to be made that a larger organization might be able to take your idea and run faster than you with it.

In practice though, most of the time your idea is too small or too risky to be on the radar of those organizations.

A bit like how when you wake up a dream you had makes perfect sense until you try to describe it to someone else.

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

#253

Post by brightball »

jackmaney wrote: post #247
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.

No business has a fundamental right to exist. If you hire me for your HVAC business, and I manage to leave, build a competing business, and shut you down, then that isn't my problem. Your business never had a right to be free of competition from me. Period.

It doesn't and that's true, however, no business should have to constantly fear their own employees gutting their business from the inside either - and it appears that the above mentioned non-solicitation agreements cover that as entirely reasonable.

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

#254

Post by logfromblammo »

savanaly wrote: post #240
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…

>The only thing a non-compete does is say that Employee A cannot work in their chosen field for some period of time after they are fired or quit. In doing so it offers no consideration or compensation typically in the contract. I know you probably know this, but it doesn't have to be laid out explicitly to be compensated. The compensation would be present silently through higher wages, better perks, higher vacation e…

"Silent compensation" is no compensation at all.

An ordinary person would rightly believe that 100% of their job compensation is in exchange for doing their job, and that any additional bonus compensation for doing something else must be explicitly laid out in a separate contract.

In order for what you say to be true, jobs with non-compete agreements should in aggregate pay more than jobs without them. I do not have that data, but I believe that they actually pay less, due to the tautological competition-suppressing effect of non-competes.

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

#255

Post by savanaly »

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #250
savanaly wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only thing a non-compete does is say that Employee A cannot work in their chosen field for some period of time after they are fired or quit. In doing so it offers no consideration or compensation typically in the contract. I know you probably know this, but it doesn't have to be laid out explicitly to be compensated. The compensation would be present silently through higher wages, better perks, higher vacation e…

What about non competes for low wage workers like subway and mcdonalds? Cuz thats beeen starting to happen.

That's a point in favor of banning it, because we have minimum wage laws and piling on disadvantages would allow employers to effectively get below the minimum wage.

In practice that probably isn't necessary because the employer doesn't see much benefit from having a non-compete. Workers are no more qualified to work for their competitors after having worked for subway for a year than they were when they were first hired.

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

#256

Post by zappo2938 »

ad_a wrote: post #236

There's a coffee shop in our town that makes barristas sign a non-compete i.e. no working at other coffee shops in town. This is beyond mind-blowingly stupid.

Jimmy John's the sandwich shop made their employees sign non-compete contracts too. [1]

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/jimmy-johns-drops-non-compete...

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

#257

Post by gm-conspiracy »

cgag wrote: post #122
ekianjo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California also prohibits any employee agreement which claims employer ownership of intellectual property developed on the employee's own time I have always wondered how could such a claim on ownership could exist in the first place. This reduces the employee to a mere company slave.

I also don't understand how using company property justifies ownership of intellectual work. What about using a company pencil should give you the right to any sketches I produce with it?

Unfortunately, yes. As long as your employment agreement is legal.

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

#258

Post by jomamaxx »

michaelmrose wrote: post #167
jomamaxx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If a company wants to keep me from working they should pay for the privilege." They are paying you. You join the company on those terms. If you don't want to join, then don't join. What they don't want you dong is taking all their IP, walking off and passing it onto a competitor. It would be extremely naive to not understand that this happens all the time. It's a tricky and nuanced problem, but it's real.

Once again they paid for a finite duration of your time and labor not the contents of your brain. For you to somehow by dint of experience BECOME employer property in whole or in total is a truly bizarre perspective. If you can't own them forever as slaves then preventing them from freely applying their learned skills for a period of time isn't coherent and logical.

"Once again they paid for a finite duration of your time and labor not the contents of your brain."

+ Absolutely false. Whenever you work for a company, you will gain knowledge that is their property - almost always. It doesn't matter who/what/when/how you work for - that knowledge is theirs. Even McDonald's workers are subject to private info such as operating details.

+ "For you to somehow by dint of experience BECOME employer property in whole or in total is a truly bizarre perspective."

Nobody is anybodies property. If nearly everything you know about a subject is a trade secret, then you obviously cannot use that elsewhere.

+ "If you can't own them forever as slaves then preventing them from freely applying their learned skills for a period of time isn't coherent and logical."

Would you children stop talking about slavery?

If your skills and experience are tantamount to trade secrets than you cannot use them elsewhere.

The idea that some company is going to let you in on their $1 Billion dollars and research, so you can walk across the street and hand it over to another company 'because you think it's your right' - is not coherent or logical. Put yourself in the perspective of the manager of that IP.

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

#259

Post by cableshaft »

microcolonel wrote: post #221
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…

>They are a tool of restrictive coercion to stifle an employees freedom of movement in the job market. This is why they are a valuable part of an agreement. Including a non-compete means that your contract is lower risk for the employer, which can mean higher salary or better retention. Early termination terms exist for the same reason. That said, a non-compete which prevents you entirely from practicing your craft w…

> If there are non-compete clauses in entry-level food service jobs, I hardly think they would bother to enforce them.

Well at least one fast food company forced employees to sign non-competes up until earlier this year: Jimmy John's sandwiches: http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/jimmy-johns-non-compete-agreem...

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

#260

Post by Declanomous »

falcolas wrote: post #243
imglorp wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As most readers here would agree, ideas are worth almost nothing but executing on them is the value.

> As most readers here would agree And yet we are still confronted with NDAs just to listen to "Facebook for Farmers" pitches. Perhaps it's better to say those entrepreneurs are afraid of their implementers leaving with all of the domain specific knowledge; believing that it would allow them re-create the product and outmaneuver the entrepreneur. Of course it's never really that easy, but so few fears are rational.

I work at an organization with about 75 employees, and I'm the only person who can program. Half the time I go out for drinks with coworkers, someone corners me and wants to tell me about this awesome idea they have. Unfortunately, they can't tell me anything because I haven't signed an NDA yet. So they spend a few hours being coy, and I spend a few hours trying to politely decline. It's always an iPhone app too. I've never worked on mobile development or Apple products before. This does not discourage them in the least.

Half the reason I want increased computer science education is because I'd like this madness distributed across more people.

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