White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by yurty » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

Steeeve wrote: post #113

I've heard of two or three people in my lifetime that had a company try to enforce a non-compete. Two were during a Microsoft/Google fight, and one was in the late 60s with a scientist. Has anybody around here been sued after leaving a company due to a non-compete clause?

I know someone who was threatened with a lawsuit over a non-compete contract by a web development contracting company. He consulted with a lawyer in the state the contract was signed, and ended up settling with his original employer for a series of cash payments. It led some people (including myself) to quit the company that sued, but it has also resulted in a number of employees deciding that looking for new employment was too risky. I'm posting under a throwaway for obvious reasons.

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

#342

Post by st3v3r » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:11 PM UTC

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…

I'm sorry, but I cannot take any of those arguments seriously. They are all coming from a point of corporate worship, to the point where one believes that a company can do absolutely no wrong.

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

#343

Post by st3v3r » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

omouse wrote: post #273

jedrek wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logical conclusion of a regulation-free system is of corporations large enough to destroy competition before it starts.

That's not the logical conclusion. Have you ever seen a large corp and how inefficient they are? The only reason they can remain large is because they can afford to buy politicians and legislation to keep their competitors small. Big Corp creates new regulations to protect their business, the most clear examples are in telecommunications and the music/movie/copyrightable industries. If we removed more regulations tod…

Of course it's the logical conclusion. Power abhors a vacuum. Do you honestly think that companies are going to sit back and not try to take that power for themselves?

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

#344

Post by st3v3r » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

omouse wrote: post #273

jedrek wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logical conclusion of a regulation-free system is of corporations large enough to destroy competition before it starts.

That's not the logical conclusion. Have you ever seen a large corp and how inefficient they are? The only reason they can remain large is because they can afford to buy politicians and legislation to keep their competitors small. Big Corp creates new regulations to protect their business, the most clear examples are in telecommunications and the music/movie/copyrightable industries. If we removed more regulations tod…

Of course it's the logical conclusion. Power abhors a vacuum. Do you honestly think that companies are going to sit back and not try to take that power for themselves?

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

#345

Post by savanaly » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #254

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…

"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…

"Silent compensation" definitely is compensation. To turn things around, I don't know for certain but I doubt Google puts in its software engineer contracts "we are paying you $X less in salary because of the free food". Rather, they offer a salary and list the other benefits (and negatives like noncompetes) in the contract and let the job candidate consider it.

It sounds like it would be beneficial to list out each of the non-monetary advantages and disadvantages of a job and how much money they're each worth, but in reality there's too many [1] to make that practical. Not only are there a ton of these unseen effects but their value is different for each individual.

One person may value their ability to take another job at a competitor quite highly while another may not. And that's the case for all these unseen effects.

[1] Examples of unseen effects that make the implicit wage different from the explicit one:

* having to sign a noncompete

* do you like the sorts of people you'll be working with?

* do you like the tasks you'll be working on?

* do you have flexible hours?

* do you like the place where you work?

* do you like the length of the commute to work?

* do you like the smell of the rhododendron's outside your office window?

etc.

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

#346

Post by saryant » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

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 used to help run 3 Day Startup San Antonio. Part of the format is that the first night includes pitches by a select number of people hoping to get voted into the top X ideas that are worked on for the rest of the weekend.

We once had a guy whose first slide was just an NDA in tiny font that he actually read aloud to 50 people. I was in the back of the room with some of the other staff and I had to step out because I was laughing too much.

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

#347

Post by cmdrfred » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #306

cmdrfred wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might work. If I wanted to put an employee under a non-compete the easiest way seems to offer something in return. Something along the lines of: "...Employee shall not work for any competitor during his employment and 6 months thereafter, as such he will receive a one time payment of 10,000 dollars...". I think the main issue here is employers want this service for free.

I'd consider even $10,000 insulting in the Bay Area - that's 1 month salary in return for having control over them for 6 months.

The key is that number is negotiable. If it was low and static that agreement won't be enforceable.

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

#348

Post by jnicholasp » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

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.

The idea that ideas have no value is prima facie ridiculous. The reason we aren't just a slightly odd species of chimpanzees is that we developed the ability to produce ideas. Ideas are the only thing of fundamental value to us as an intelligent species.

The statement that ideas don't matter, only execution matters, can only apply among sets of trivial ideas that don't change the landscape. Yes, if you want to make Facebook for Farmers, that's an idea that is completely interchangeable with hundreds of other equally trivial ideas, and it doesn't matter which one you choose so much as how well you execute on it. But if you have a genuinely significant idea, something that can fundamentally alter the landscape or advance humanity, then execution is secondary, and, in fact, lots of different people or organizations could implement it. That isn't to say that you can't screw up the execution and fail thereby, but the limiting factor to success is different for trivial ideas vs significant ideas: there are thousands of trivials and the major factor of success is how well you execute the one you choose; there are few significants, and the major factor in success is having them first/getting to market first. If you think you have one of the latter, NDAs might make sense.

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

#349

Post by wfo » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:29 PM UTC

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…

There are a number of legal constructions -- non-competes, mandatory binding arbitration, civil asset forfeiture, and even plea bargains -- that simply should never have been allowed to exist because they are obviously fraud/theft/abuse/coercion and it's mind boggling that the nearly all of the "esteemed" "scholarly" attorneys and judges who represent the elite of the elite in our society have worked themselves through the mental contortions required to simply accept that the status quo is essentially criminal from a moral perspective and that's okay because that's just how it is.

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

#350

Post by RIMR » Wed, Oct 26, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

AnonymousFan9 wrote: post #338

drawkbox wrote: post #10

Non-competes, the most anti-innovation, anti-skilled worker, anti-free market, anti-business and anti-American thing in working today. Non-competes are protectionism for larger businesses over small/medium businesses. As a freelancer, contractor and self-employed business owner/worker, please make these illegal, tired of these. The worst part about non-competes is they are blanket protectionism usually and up to 2+ y…

I posted this above, but it applies here too: Non-competes allow employees to get training they otherwise would not get. A non-compete allows a company to make an investment in you (in the form of training) with some assurance that you will not immediately turn around post-training and go work for a direct competitor. NDAs/IP assignment agreements do not address this need. If it weren't for non-competes, that investm…

>Non-competes allow employees to get training they otherwise would not get.

Yeah, because employers refuse to train employees unless they sign a non-compete. It's not that they are unable to provide training, it is that they are unwilling. If Non-competes are banned, then they can start providing better training to more workers because there's no more needless red tape...

>A non-compete allows a company to make an investment in you (in the form of training) with some assurance that you will not immediately turn around post-training and go work for a direct competitor.

Then why to most non-competes extend 2 years after you leave a company, and why do they get applied to workers who have been with a company for years? You, like many others in this thread, seem to be confusing "experience", a thing the employee owns, with "training" and "know-how", things the employer owns.