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New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

fortune.com

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Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#171

Post by zerbinxx »

sgift wrote: post #149
bradleyjg wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I think is great about the finance industry is that the CEOs don’t pretend that humanity is split into two subspecies: executives and peons. At other companies CEOs secure themselves giant equity packages to “retain the best talent and align shareholder interests” and then think they can motivate rank and file employees with t-shirts, “the mission,” and shoutouts during all hands. In finance, CEOs acknowled…

To be honest, I find this really refreshing in a - to me - weird way, cause at least no one lies to themselves or the other. It reminds me of what people say about Oracle, that it only has one goal: To make money. No bullshit about mission or whatever. Why are we at Oracle? To make money. The end. Maybe if more companies and their executives were so open with what they want (and maybe I'm cynical, but imho it is the…

Mark Fisher had an interesting comment on this, and this is more in the context of public/privatization but the point is relevant, calling it “market stalinism”. In Stalin era Russia, bureaucrats spent enormous amounts of time compiling reports and window dressing for their project (essentially advertising its success back to the Party before it was complete). As a result, projects would be well known but mismanaged, slow, broken, etc. but the glory of USSR would definitely be upheld. I’m always reminded of this when executives get on stage and do the Steve Jobs thing about how great we are for working nights and weekends for the “mission” while only they have a vested interest in us making a profit.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#172

Post by avar »

donatj wrote: post #155

Sometimes I feel like corporations do things just because their lawyers are cargo culting and adding clauses because everyone else does rather than some logical reason. My sister worked at Subway and had to sign a noncompete that she wouldn’t work at another sandwich shop for three years. Are they really afraid she’s going to steal their secrets of placing meat on bread? The more cynical will certainly assume malice,…

Let's say your sister and her coworker form a union, and Subway fires them.

Now they also won't have the legal ability to simply open a new sandwich shop right next to Subway.

I.e. you're imagining that non-competes are there to protect proprietary know-how.

That's mostly true for some companies, but for others (e.g. Subway) it's a wedge guarding them against the collective action of their employees.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#173

Post by Drakim »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #17

I've heard about a good compromise option existing in a country in Europe: noncompete agreements are not banned completely but are limited to last just half a year after the employee leaves the company. It can also last much longer in case the employer agrees to keep paying half the salary to the former employee.

In what universe is it a good compromise that fast food workers aren't allowed to work at another fast food restaurant for 6 months after they quit, without any compensation?

It incentivize companies to add it to their contract just because it makes it harder for employees to quit bad working conditions and low pays since they might not land a new job and be able to pay rent. It doesn't protect any sort of intellectual property, it's simply there to screw over the little guy.

The word "compromise" usually implies that both sides are getting something. What part of this would be a compromise?

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#174

Post by oldandboring »

avar wrote: post #172
donatj wrote: post #155

Sometimes I feel like corporations do things just because their lawyers are cargo culting and adding clauses because everyone else does rather than some logical reason. My sister worked at Subway and had to sign a noncompete that she wouldn’t work at another sandwich shop for three years. Are they really afraid she’s going to steal their secrets of placing meat on bread? The more cynical will certainly assume malice,…

Let's say your sister and her coworker form a union, and Subway fires them. Now they also won't have the legal ability to simply open a new sandwich shop right next to Subway. I.e. you're imagining that non-competes are there to protect proprietary know-how. That's mostly true for some companies, but for others (e.g. Subway) it's a wedge guarding them against the collective action of their employees.

> it's a wedge guarding them

Anybody reading this from Westchester County, NY will join me in chuckling about how appropriate the term "wedge" is in a discussion about making sandwiches on long loaves of bread.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#175

Post by JJMcJ »

potatolicious wrote: post #128
appplication wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you see this issue in tech? Certainly not CA.

NY, WA, other tech hubs in the US that aren’t California. That said garden leave is not all sunshine and roses like OP describes. It’s common on Wall Street but a huge part of your normal compensation is performance bonuses - and typically garden leaves only cover base salary. A typical garden leave doesn’t come close to full income replacement for the period. But it’s better than nothing - which is the status quo in…

> which is the status quo in tech

Even severance is usually not much. Typical is one week for year of service, minimum two weeks.

Given turnover in the industry, very few people are going to get 20 weeks severance.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#176

Post by latency-guy2 »

izacus wrote: post #68
infecto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General strategies of trading on financial markets. Entirely different than working at Google.

And what benefit does the economy and society get by allowing monopolization of these strategies by a single company at the expense of basic right for workers to switch jobs to the ones that pay them the most? It sounds so profoundly anti-capitalist - if the knowledge of certain strategy is so important, the employee should be retained by paying them more and giving them better perks instead of enforced labor contrac…

> It sounds so profoundly anti-capitalist

Only if you have an extremely vague and poorly defined definition of "capitalist", which I don't blame you, most people are ignorant, and we live in a society that prefers to throw out opinions like they're reality.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#177

Post by bastard_op »

malux85 wrote: post #159
donatj wrote: post #155

Sometimes I feel like corporations do things just because their lawyers are cargo culting and adding clauses because everyone else does rather than some logical reason. My sister worked at Subway and had to sign a noncompete that she wouldn’t work at another sandwich shop for three years. Are they really afraid she’s going to steal their secrets of placing meat on bread? The more cynical will certainly assume malice,…

Is there a version of Hanlons Razor but instead of incompetence, it’s money? I’m a firm believer in that. The clause was probably put in there so the lawyers could bill more hours. I can easily imagine a legal firm noticing a drop in billable hours so they start reaching out to existing clients, throwing in a bit of fear, saying everyone is putting non-competes in their agreements you should too. Boom, all clients ge…

I'm sure one can find plenty to say about this in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition that probably sum up even our corporate insanity best. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#178

Post by latency-guy2 »

delfinom wrote: post #58
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #2

God bless Lina Khan our based monopoly busting, employee supporting FTC queen.

The FTC isn't the org with much power over employee rights. That's the DoL.

It's not uncommon for various government orgs to overstep beyond their stated mission, goals, or purpose. Khan seems like the kind of person to abuse their power indeed.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#179

Post by avar »

sgift wrote: post #149
bradleyjg wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I think is great about the finance industry is that the CEOs don’t pretend that humanity is split into two subspecies: executives and peons. At other companies CEOs secure themselves giant equity packages to “retain the best talent and align shareholder interests” and then think they can motivate rank and file employees with t-shirts, “the mission,” and shoutouts during all hands. In finance, CEOs acknowled…

To be honest, I find this really refreshing in a - to me - weird way, cause at least no one lies to themselves or the other. It reminds me of what people say about Oracle, that it only has one goal: To make money. No bullshit about mission or whatever. Why are we at Oracle? To make money. The end. Maybe if more companies and their executives were so open with what they want (and maybe I'm cynical, but imho it is the…

If you (or others) haven't seen it you owe it to yourself to see the "Larry Ellison lawnmower" talk: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?si=SMpYPck-EJqe1uEv&t=35m00s

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#180

Post by BobaFloutist »

cj wrote: post #105
izacus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you’re advocating for is normalizing the stealing of company IP. I am not. > The way you solicit clients from a prior company is downloading the client list, exporting to a personal drive, quitting, then using the list to poach. Which part of this is "IP"? The whole concept of "stealing IP" is something that was lobbied in to prevent market competition and establish monopolies. Calling a list of clients that m…

> Which part of this is "IP"? I should have said conditional customer data. (Client lists, phone numbers, email addresses - basically whatever you can export out of Salesforce) In order to poach your old company’s customers, you’ll need confidential data from your prior employer, assuming that your employer doesn’t publish their client roster publicly. The debate is being dragged from poaching customers to how IP pro…

Is it ok if you just memorize it and recreate it?
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