61–70 of 189 posts
You don't want me ot work for a competitor for a year? Great. You get to pay me full pay and benefits for that year. Let's see how keen companies are to enforce a noncompete then.
Even then they should be limited in scope but without paid gardening leave they should be utterly unenforceable.
We really need general regulations on non-competes. Bare minimum, it should be required that a company pay you a full salary if they want to block you from seeking employment elsewhere with your skills. If a company really cares that much about stopping competitors from taking advantage of your skillset, they need to be willing to pay up.
On top of that, non-competes shouldn't be enforceable on employees who are laid off or fired. If a company doesn't want to retain an employee, they shouldn't have any say over what that employee does with their skills afterwards.
I wish federal law would just abolish non-competes completely. When I gave advanced notice to Tudor Investment that I would be quitting they threatened to fire me with cause so that they could still enforce the non-compete without paying me in accordance with NY state law. And they followed through with their threat, sending me a letter telling me I was being terminated with cause the day I officially quit. To make t…
My spouse's previous employer humiliated them at their job repeatedly, and then went for blood and sued under the non-compete when they took a job elsewhere to stop the abuse. It was totally vindictive and there was really nothing we could do, as they were a multi-billion dollar company and signaled they'd be happy to just keep spending money, even if they were losing, until they bankrupted us. $30,000 in legal fees…
About 20 years ago I joined a large company in California, where non-compete clauses are essentially disallowed. A few years later, I moved to the company's offices in Washington State, where non-competes are allowed. Before the move I emailed HR and asked if I needed to sign the WA state employment agreement (with that non-compete clause) and they said "no". I saved that email. Forward a decade, I resigned to work f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My spouse's previous employer humiliated them at their job repeatedly, and then went for blood and sued under the non-compete when they took a job elsewhere to stop the abuse. It was totally vindictive and there was really nothing we could do, as they were a multi-billion dollar company and signaled they'd be happy to just keep spending money, even if they were losing, until they bankrupted us. $30,000 in legal fees…
Would you please spontaneously opine on some great and wonderful companies?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On top of that, non-competes shouldn't be enforceable on employees who are laid off or fired. If a company doesn't want to retain an employee, they shouldn't have any say over what that employee does with their skills afterwards.
But then if you want to avoid the non-compete you would just get fired on purpose. Classic unintended consequence of regulation. But I do agree that non-competes should be illegal or somehow highly disincentivized.
I worked for (and my wife still works for) a small company that provided a boutique set of engineering services. They had a non compete that was very narrowly tailored and called out by name the competitors that you couldn’t go work for directly (6 months or a year), all of which were also small companies. That sort of non-compete that seems reasonable to me- very specific, time limited, and only for people with actu…
One easy test for contract fairness I learned from my lawyer is, "Would it make sense if it were symmetric?" So, e.g., would your employer also agree not to go after clients that your next employer has? Or would they agree not to hire any engineers you consider competitive with yourself while you're there and for a year after you leave?
My guess is no.
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https://dol.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/03/ls223.2.pd... Labor Standards cannot accept every claim. Labor Standards will not accept claims if you: - Worked as an executive, administrative, or professional employee and earned over $900 per week
You know that limit was introduced because "most of the benefits of the labor standards board were going to the rich" or some BS like that.
We really need general regulations on non-competes. Bare minimum, it should be required that a company pay you a full salary if they want to block you from seeking employment elsewhere with your skills. If a company really cares that much about stopping competitors from taking advantage of your skillset, they need to be willing to pay up.