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U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#161

Post by Daishiman »

cbb330 wrote: post #125

Government intervention is heavy handed and will cause unintended side affects with 100% certainty. What should happen is for: 1) employees to choose to not join companies with contracts that they don't agree with 2) employers offer better incentive to not leave for roles at risk to poaching e.g. RSUs. A natural market response to bad company policy is always preferred to government mandates.

NDAs are just one axis when considering employment that has no upsides but the downsides are not necessarily bad enough for people who need work to consider them.

They’re just not useful and themselves an arbitrary restriction of employment that has no place in a a free market.

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#162

Post by All4All »

I agree with the notion of ridding noncompetes entirely. Former employers should be limited to bringing cases against former employees who actually take something of legal value-i.e. trade secret misappropriation claims which require a higher standard of proof, as opposed to the broad restrictions that noncompetes impose on employees.

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#163

Post by ericbarrett »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #116
ericbarrett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that this arrangement is common in finance. However the worker is not given benefits or bonuses during this time. Since private health insurance is massively expensive and bonus comp can be a significant fraction of one's pay in the field, it can still be onerous.

>it can still be onerous Sure you get paid less than you are used to but you are still getting more than 95% of the population to do literally nothing.

In some cases the total comp is less than 50% salary. Might be fine for some quant PhD to go from $1M to $250k, but if this "workaround" to enforcing non-competes becomes more popular and spreads to different fields you could see positions that go from (say) $80k + benefits to $40k without, with furlough enforced for a year. That would be devastating for a family with children.

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#164

Post by brightball »

Ethan_Mick wrote: post #91

Good. I've seen over and over this harm friends in frustrating ways. Tech aside, non-competes in other industries are completely insane. My wife is an optometrist and all local shops have draconic noncompetes you are forced to sign. If you leave the shop you can't work within 30 miles (or more!) of that location. I've had friends move entire cities just so they can get out of a terrible work situation. Worse, I've ha…

IMO the primary concern at an office like that is having access to patient data and then enticing them to go elsewhere. If the person wants to go work elsewhere, totally fine. The concern is trying to take customers or other staff with them.

I know somebody that happened to. Company opened a branch office and one of the senior staff rented an office around the corner, took half the staff and patients. Stuck them with multi year lease agreements, after the business already bore the entire startup cost of paying people while building up a patient load, marketing, etc.

I understand the opposition to draconian non-competes but there’s a flip side of this to protect an investment that is very valid.

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#165

Post by bumby »

Ethan_Mick wrote: post #91

Good. I've seen over and over this harm friends in frustrating ways. Tech aside, non-competes in other industries are completely insane. My wife is an optometrist and all local shops have draconic noncompetes you are forced to sign. If you leave the shop you can't work within 30 miles (or more!) of that location. I've had friends move entire cities just so they can get out of a terrible work situation. Worse, I've ha…

>If you leave the shop you can't work within 30 miles

I know one person who worked in sales and was banned from selling in an entire region of the country. She was completely open about this when being recruited by another employer. That new employer appeared completely willing to work around the non-compete clause to bring her onboard.

That was, until she was actually hired and she was almost immediately pressured to sell throughout the forbidden area. When she said she was willing to, but only if the new employer would sign an agreement to cover any of her associated legal fees, they eventually backed off on the demands.

These situations always seem to push the risk to the employee to the benefit of the employer.

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#166

Post by not_the_fda »

cbb330 wrote: post #125

Government intervention is heavy handed and will cause unintended side affects with 100% certainty. What should happen is for: 1) employees to choose to not join companies with contracts that they don't agree with 2) employers offer better incentive to not leave for roles at risk to poaching e.g. RSUs. A natural market response to bad company policy is always preferred to government mandates.

Often times you are not informed about non-compete until your first day of work unless you know to explicitly ask about it. They have you over the barrel at that point.

I once took a job at a design service company. Asked about any non-competes and invention stuff. Said there wasn't any verbally. I get there and they have this draconian non-compete that you can't work for any other design services, start your own design service, or work for any of their clients for five years.

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#168

Post by bumby »

ericmay wrote: post #154
bumby wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all good points. I would probably push back on the idea that economic efficiency is treated as an end to itself, rather than a means to an end. There's a tipping point where increased economic efficiency isn't necessarily a net good for society overall. I think part of me just laments the fact that previous generations took a much bigger risk to form unions and modern generations have largely let it fall to…

I would agree that treating economic efficiency as an end to itself isn't ideal - that creates lots of obvious problems. It's probably super efficient to have child labor, for example. > I think part of me just laments the fact that previous generations took a much bigger risk to form unions and modern generations have largely let it fall to the wayside. I agree, and it's frustrating not just here but in the politica…

>suburbanization and social media

This is interesting. Can you expand on the how you think this changed the overall sentiment of civic responsibility?

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#169

Post by kmod »

I mostly think this is a good thing, but there are some fields where I feel like employers will have to take other precautions that are not as nice.

Most of us here are in tech where "ideas are cheap" is mostly true and commonly thought, but there are other fields (in particular, finance) where single ideas can easily be worth millions of dollars. (Imagine something like "the stock market goes down on Friday the 13th's".) How are employers supposed to let employees know these ideas? If there aren't noncompetes then I suspect employers will limit employees (and their growth) in other ways.

At least here in NY firms will pay ex-employees during their non-compete. My understanding though is that they only have to pay the base salary, which is usually a minority of the total compensation (even guaranteed compensation). Would be nice if that were fixed.

Re: U.S. moves to bar noncompete agreements in labor contracts

#170

Post by 8ytecoder »

notch656c wrote: post #99
sailfast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agencies do not make laws, full stop. Agencies are empowered by congress via laws to regulate industries. These regulations can be challenged in court as to whether they have overreached the scope of their regulation written in the original law, but they are not making laws. Agencies should not make laws (in the United States). Even good ones.

They do in all but name. One day a polymer80 frame in a box with a jig is a gun. Another day it is not. The only difference is a letter from an ATF agent. Lawmakers make laws intentionally vague to hide their nefarious motives, and then let the courts "determine" the agencies can "clarify." Then the lawmakers point their fingers at the evil agencies while secretly laughing it was all in their plan to offload blame fo…

That’s not “making” a law. The law already says certain types of firearm are legal and certain are illegal. Now if this law were to be maintained by congress, they’d need, I don’t know, a group of experts who understand firearm and congress will constantly revise and add or remove items from a list. May be they’ll give this group a name at some point and then they’d realise that it’s really hard to manage all this while also having to make new laws. So they’ll hire someone to execute this for them and assign this group of people to that executive.
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