391–400 of 421 posts
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This reads like someone who feels that while they were studying the works of Ayn Rand, the rest of the world was eating Oreos and watching Jersey Shore.
Aren't those roughly equivalent activities?
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> If you work at DWAVE for 5 years and learn everything you know about Quantum Computing there - and go to Google to work on Quantum Computing - then there is basically a 100% chance that you are passing on 'know how' and 'trade secrets' - otherwise - Google would not hire you. That isn't trade secrets, it's experience.
"That isn't trade secrets, it's experience" No. 100% false. If that information is key to the nature and success of a product, then it's called 'know how' and it's both legally and rationally protectable. You people need to grow up and grasp that fact that once you go to a company and they teach you what they have spent $100 Million dollars on developing, that you cannot walk across the street and spill the beans on…
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That's how it works in the US, most of the time a non-compete is entirely unenforceable.
In New York, the fear that drives some of us [edit:] to [not fight against] non-competes [on an individual level] is the threat of expensive litigation. If I get sued by my employer, it might cost us the same but I can't afford the legal costs as much as they can afford them. In New York State, commonly it's expected that the courts will enforce a year of non-compete, even if the contract is for more. It's nice to sa…
In one of my previous gigs, the language of the non-compete was so broad that it engulfed in scope the entire industry - being legal language it was borderline ambiguous, one of those things you could argue either way. Anyway, that 'argue either way' piece could encompass what's basically the biggest and highest-paying employing industry in IT here.
One guy I knew there had told me that, after he got an offer from a new employer, sent them the non-compete of this current place - and never heard from them again. It was for a mid-level manager role in a large corporation in a very cautious (in a CYA way) industry. It was even worse because both of us has understood from management that they'll probably not enforce it, unless one of the partners feels resentful and could send the lawyers your way.
It has a chilling effect that's totally beyond the scope of the usefulness of the employer demanding the non-compete, especially when you encompass a whole industry.
I think that the right approach is to legislate to make them illegal (like in California, right?), or enforce some compensatory aspect like in some countries as people in this thread mentioned (eg. I'd love to be paid 70% of my salary during the period of non-compete). The most likely scenario in favor of the employee right now I believe is the courts having the employer show that damage was committed in order for the contract to be valid. I'm pretty sure this employer got around that by tying the non-compete+non-solicitation to stock option grants!
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Which full salary, the one you got before, or the one you could make as a skilled software developer moving to a much better gig with a rival employer willing to offer a more attractive deal?
Are you more attractive to the new employer because of the training and education that your current employer has provided?
Even if it weren't, employers aren't hiring machines, they're hiring human beings. If they've become so greedy that they have forgotten that, I see no reason our laws shouldn't compel them to treat their employees (and past employees) properly.
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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 throu…
What's with the hate for plea bargains? Should every charge go to trial? In cases where a conviction isn't guaranteed, why shouldn't they split the difference between going free and the full penalty? Every time I've challenged someone on this point, their objection turns out not to be about plea bargains per se, but the (unrelated) fact that the law permits such severe punishments in the first place, defendants have…
I agree the extreme and severe punishments exacerbate the problems with plea bargains but plea bargains are bad by themselves, in isolation, even if other punishments are fair.
The government should NEVER be in the business of giving people special treatment and rewards for waiving their fundamental rights because it's more convenient for the government. Everyone has the right to a trial, but people who exercise it are punished. Which means people don't REALLY have a right to a trial. Imagine if the government promised it would tax people less if they chose to avoid engaging in political speech critical of the government. This case is identical to a plea bargain. Except it's less serious, since it's about money, not about jailing somebody.
I'm okay with someone pleading guilty and throwing themselves at the mercy of the court and asking forgiveness. Then it's up to the human beings in the trial to decide how to handle it. Creating a formal system where you do this in exchange for something tangible? Before a trial? No. Innocence or guilt is too important to be bartered like that.
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…
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 investment would be infeasible and we would all be pa…
As an employer, after investing in training an employee you only need to ensure that you get an acceptable return on investment before the employee leaves. You want to prevent the employee leaving, so your agreement should specifically target that.
Non-competes are overly broad here and this has the consequence of making them coercive and punitive, both completely unnecessary. The non-compete doesn't guarantee your ROI except as a knock-on effect of its coercive nature. It only prevents your (former) employee from working at all. A net negative for society and arguable for you as an employer.
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In 2013 I turned down a job in Philadelphia, with a company who was headquartered in Boston. They wanted me to sign a 1yr non-compete with the stipulation that I wouldn't work for a company sold similar products within a +/- 30% wholesale cost of their product. After two trans-continental flights, interviews etc, I said no because of the NC. The recruiter flipped over it. He basically yelled at me "you're going to co…
I'm glad you did that. It shows principle. You may have been able to negotiate it out but the fact that they wanted it shows you a good deal about the company character.
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When the company purchases equipment for use by you-as-employee, and you use that equipment for your own company spare time, how is that fair? A pencil is so cheap and undetectable that it makes a poor example, but if you stole my paint and painted a picture I would expect some compensation?
Up to the value of the paint only. If Leonardo had painted Mona Lisa with stolen colours, no-one would expect the painting itself to be ownership of the paint merchant.
When you loan from VCs, you can't tell them "you only get back what I loaned". They want a cut of the result.
If you borrow something from the company for your own use, you are in a very real way making use of their investment. Since assumption is you didn't ask, why do you assume they want to give a bank-kind loan, not a VC-kind loan? (In fact, what we are discussing here are employee contracts where it is stipulated that such loans are of the VC variety... If you want to borrow under other terms, make a contract for it...)
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That was so on the money. This happens to me too. My financial advisor and his friend want me to build them an iphone app. Please save me.
> My financial advisor and his friend want me to build them an iphone app You can get a new financial advisor. My _wife_ wants me to build her an iPhone app.
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1) deontological: freedom to contract is always a good thing. It is a human right, and government has no legitimate moral power to remove that right from people. That's not a strong argument either. You could substitute "contract" with anything. I say this as a staunch libertarian. Government restrictions aren't bad because "government", but because restrictions. The free market works best when government restricts t…
>>[...] restricts the freedom to restrict freedom [...] That's a great turn of phrase. I'll try to use it the next time somebody asks me to summarize the GPL, which has similar restrictions built in as per Stallman's original intent.