241–250 of 338 posts
If your local state/country doesn't have California like laws, maybe it's an indicator it's time to jump ship!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Obviously, if I work as a developer making a stock trading app, I shouldn't be making a competing stock trading app after hours. Why is that obvious? If I work as a studio musician can I also be working on my own album after hours?
Why is that obvious? Because it creates a clear conflict of interest; stock trading apps compete with each other much more directly than do music albums.
If you're not doing your job anymore, or are sabotaging your dayjob, then it's an employment issue. NCCs have no reason whatsoever to enter the equation before or after.
I.E. prior to this 'intervention' you could be hauled to court and/or jail for failure to meet a contractual obligation. Post 'intervention' nothing happens and you simply continue to search for a new job as you always had.
I understand that in our given legal framework every change must be some kind of positive action, but it seems odd to me to frame it in conversation (as this article did) as a positive action rather than negative one which is how it actually manifests.
I'll just finish by saying that I agree with the sentiment that non-competes should be unenforceable. If you do have company secrets an NDA has long standing precedent and is less intrusive.
Had a fun one just happen to me in the last few days. I got contacted by an agent out of the blue. "Hey Sean we've got a role that you seem perfect for, just sign this NDA so we can talk." I look at the NDA and it includes a noncompete for the duration of the project + 12 months after. The nda is also not mutual so the noncompete and nondisclosure is only binding on me not the other party. In fact I don't even know w…
The problem is that a lot of people in power would lose from this and manage to prevent it from happening.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe we could keep the protections for labor and drop the many additional protections for landowners.
I wonder if that would be necessary. San Francisco is kind of a special case as a small peninsula. That puts limits on the ways it can grow. You could probably build more housing units but you'll rapidly run into limits on streets, utilities, schools, etc. I don't know how much the issue is with the rest of Silicon Valley. There used to be a lot of undeveloped area not too far from Palo Alto. Texas may want to avoid…
I'm going to push back on this. Manhattan is less than half the size of San Francisco and has nearly four times the population density. The Bronx is roughly the same size and has double the population density. It isn't that San Francisco can't expand, it is that it doesn't want to.
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My offer letter explicitly stated that starting work (and accepting the stated pay) constituted agreeing to all the docs sent over, unless explicitly agreed upon otherwise. I can't wait to have enough savings to quit and move to california where the employee protections are so much higher.
It's interesting to hear you say that, moments after coming from a thread where people were explaining why California is so terrible. I feel like the symbol of the 2020s is Chesterton's Fence[1], people chafing against restrictions and then having to reinvent them. I'm sure that some people are indeed fleeing California, and will then immediately start reinventing it. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. The rein…
Please don't try to turn the non-compete issue into a california good-or-bad issue because it's just not a california thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Obviously, if I work as a developer making a stock trading app, I shouldn't be making a competing stock trading app after hours. For rank-and-file employees, I don't think this is so obvious. It presents a potential conflict of interest, sure, but if I'm fulfilling my job responsibilities and not holding anything back or stealing nonpublic info/trade secrets/whatever then what's the problem? It shouldn't be the mer…
It presents a potential conflict of interest, sure, but if I'm fulfilling my job responsibilities and not holding anything back or stealing nonpublic info/trade secrets/whatever then what's the problem? This is a bit like "sure I'm dating one of my direct reports, but as long as I don't show them any special treatment what's the problem?". In both cases even if you genuinely believe what you're saying, it causes your…
Employers have concrete strategies available to them for maintaining their position in this negotiated relationship. Typically they will have a performance review process, which should have no problem determining whether they're getting what they're paying me for. Separately, the legal system we're both subject to protects legitimate intellectual property perfectly well without overbearing noncompetes and invention assignments; cases of physical property theft, etc., are also covered.
So what's the problem? Why should employers have additional rights to make sure that, if the situation is ever remotely muddy, it goes their way by default?
(I say should in the moral sense, and the broader sense of socioeconomic utility. In a might-makes-right frame, obviously they should have it simply because they are strong enough to take it. That is what we have right now, in practice.)
literally walked away from business deals and job contracts because of this.
try to restrict me into the future beyond our agreement and you are not worth my time. don't tell me i cant feed my kids the best way i know how and we can always come to a deal, otherwise you are not my friend. i aint that desperate to make others wealthy. :X
There's so much wrong here. > The main idea of the non-compete agreement is that employers want to stop people from walking off the job and taking trade secrets to rival companies. If companies weren’t able to secure those protections, they’d need to pay lower salaries, and we’d all be worse off. No. If companies couldn't coerce workers to stay with them against their will, then they would have to pay better and be b…
That hardly seems like killed-off. In my experience, this exact sort of thing has been what I have been able to get, AT BEST, companies that required non-competes to change to, and even THEN, they were hugely disruptive. It's one of the reasons that I have nearly three decades of experience and almost never any two companies in a row in the same vertical.
This is categorically not killing off non-competes. It's barely even impacting them. It's just politically-correct "non-compete killing theater."