Resistance to Noncompete Agreements Is a Win for Workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Resistance to Noncompete Agreements Is a Win for Workers

#31

Post by baronswindle » Mon, May 20, 2019, 6:34 AM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #26

baronswindle wrote: post #7

I am bound by a non-compete agreement, but until a few months ago, I didn’t remember that I had signed it. At that time, I received an offer for much more money and more responsibility from a competitor. However, a close friend and co-worker reminded me about the agreement when I told him I was mulling the offer. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t want to risk asking my manager for a release, and I certainly didn’t want…

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is not solely your decision to make. We as a society, as taxpayers and potential jury members, are being placed on the hook for the costs of enforcement and the negative consequences on the local economy that these agreements produce. If you and your employer want to engage in a non-enforceable personal agreement to avoid competition, that’s (mostly) your business. B…

Can you point to empirical studies that demonstrate "the negative consequences on the local economy that these agreements produce"? This is an honest question. I think theoretical analyses point in a bunch of different directions, and I reckon data would help inform our arguments.

Re: Resistance to Noncompete Agreements Is a Win for Workers

#32

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, May 20, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

baronswindle wrote: post #31

matthewdgreen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is not solely your decision to make. We as a society, as taxpayers and potential jury members, are being placed on the hook for the costs of enforcement and the negative consequences on the local economy that these agreements produce. If you and your employer want to engage in a non-enforceable personal agreement to avoid competition, that’s (mostly) your business. B…

Can you point to empirical studies that demonstrate "the negative consequences on the local economy that these agreements produce"? This is an honest question. I think theoretical analyses point in a bunch of different directions, and I reckon data would help inform our arguments.

We have the natural experiment of California, which as I recall, if it were a country, would have the world's sixth or seventh largest economy.

Compare what's happened to the Boston metro area with Silicon Valley. Boston matches the Bay Area in top universities, and if you go back to the 1980s, had even more of the computer industry. But the Valley has outpaced it ever since, and by now has much greater economic vitality.

Re: Resistance to Noncompete Agreements Is a Win for Workers

#33

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

baronswindle wrote: post #7

I am bound by a non-compete agreement, but until a few months ago, I didn’t remember that I had signed it. At that time, I received an offer for much more money and more responsibility from a competitor. However, a close friend and co-worker reminded me about the agreement when I told him I was mulling the offer. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t want to risk asking my manager for a release, and I certainly didn’t want…

The reason to ban non-competes wholesale is that they diminish the economic vitality of a region by inhibiting the formation of new ventures. This doesn't make them immoral; it just makes allowing them bad policy.

If non-competes are allowed, it's in every existing employer's interest to use them. This means that the constituency for keeping them is concentrated and well-funded, while the constituency for banning them is diffuse, consisting of the entire pool of employees as well as all the startups that don't exist yet. People who haven't lived and worked in California, such as yourself, may just not know what they are missing. So once they are entrenched, banning them comes to be very difficult politically.

I suggest looking at the issue from the perspective of competition between regions. It's ironic to me how much effort states and localities will go to to attract employers, when they hardly even consider trying to attract better workers. Companies come and go; workers tend to put down roots. When you get a concentration of highly skilled workers, as we have here in Silicon Valley, it naturally attracts businesses; the startup I work for now, for instance, could hardly have been formed anywhere else. And if it had been formed elsewhere, and tried to hire people away from the Valley, it would have great difficulty getting the best people, in no small part because they wouldn't want to sign a non-compete. I know I will never sign one!

Re: Resistance to Noncompete Agreements Is a Win for Workers

#34

Post by MiddleEndian » Tue, May 21, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #32

baronswindle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to empirical studies that demonstrate "the negative consequences on the local economy that these agreements produce"? This is an honest question. I think theoretical analyses point in a bunch of different directions, and I reckon data would help inform our arguments.

We have the natural experiment of California, which as I recall, if it were a country, would have the world's sixth or seventh largest economy. Compare what's happened to the Boston metro area with Silicon Valley. Boston matches the Bay Area in top universities, and if you go back to the 1980s, had even more of the computer industry. But the Valley has outpaced it ever since, and by now has much greater economic vita…

As a Bostonian I agree. There was some recent Massachusetts legislation to limit non-competes but I wish they'd done away with them entirely like in California.