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Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

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Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#111

Post by ghaff »

lazide wrote: post #108
ghaff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I've known companies in the IT industry that took a very hard line on non-competes. Whether they won in court, I don't know. But I've know people who took a year off rather than involving the lawyers. Small pretty well-defined segment of the industry and a couple of the big players apparently did take it seriously. (Never worked for either.)

Just because the employer ‘takes it seriously’ doesn’t mean the court won’t laugh at them. In my experience, the more the employer puts up a show, the more unenforceable it is.

As I say, no personal experience. But people I know took fairly serious actions because of the threat.

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#112

Post by schmichael »

tianqi wrote: post #45

I think the Chinese law is effective in this regard: in order to maintain any non-competition agreement, the company must continue to pay you a monthly compensation amount equal to 30% of your total monthly income when you were at the company. Whenever the payment stops, the non-competition agreement is automatically void.

Oregon at least makes it 50% IIRC. Anything less than 100% seems useless though. Usually when taking a new job in the same industry you expect a pay bump, so even a 100% rate is likely leaving money on the table.

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#113

Post by Esophagus4 »

luke5441 wrote: post #105
dakiol wrote: post #34

In some countries that's illegal. So when presented with a contract that contains such claims, I have 2 options: 1) ask them to remove it... and so I risk not getting the job 2) don't say anything, and sign it If I'm really interested in the job, I'll go for option 2 because I know they cannot enforce such claims, so I'll be fine.

Having probably signed such a contract, how do I find out if it is enforcable? Probably talk to a lawyer, but how do you find one that gives you a straight, but correct, answer to such a complex topic. For me it is even more complex since I'm a fake employee (contractor) in another country working for a US company. The answer to those questions might be really unsatisfying in practice, since it breaks down to a cost…

[not legal advice]

Having talked to lawyers about this sort of case, be prepared to speak to several to find a match, or read between the lines - when you ask questions like, “If I break this clause, what sorts of liabilities am I exposing myself to, and how often in your experience does that happen?” Be prepared for, “as my client, I don’t advise you to do that.” Not super helpful in my case, as I was trying to understand the possible outcomes and likelihoods.

The best advice I got was from a business mentor which was, “if you don’t rub it in their face, they probably won’t notice, and probably won’t care.”

Which is, as you mentioned, a probability calculation.

What I would personally guess [not legal advice] is that you rate the likelihood of your employer suing higher than they do (absent anything egregious).

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#114

Post by Esophagus4 »

btilly wrote: post #43
xhrpost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just looking this up but appears NY finally caught up here in 2023 https://newyork.public.law/laws/n.y._labor_law_section_203-f

Thanks for the correction. It was only 20 years too late to help me.

I would love to hear whatever you’re comfortable sharing of your (anonymized) story, if you’re up for it!

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#115

Post by OutOfHere »

lovich wrote: post #85
kragen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an average Joe, I was able to negotiate employment contract changes every place I worked in the tech industry in California in the early 02000s. I don't remember having been faced with contract clauses that I felt needed alteration as an entry-level tech employee in the 01990s.

If you are negotiating terms you are not an average Joe. Average Joe’s don’t even interact with people capable of requesting someone higher up to approve the change. Average Joe’s get given a take it or leave it deal

It's worse than that for the average Joe. The offer can be rescinded altogether if one raises too many concerns about the offer.

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#116

Post by inetknght »

mapmap wrote: post #56
TrackerFF wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that your advice is in good faith - but if we touch grass for a second, only the tiniest fraction of even professional workers have a lawyer at hand. And one that specializes in contract law? Even less.

It’s not that difficult to have legal help with your contract. Call your local bar association and ask for an employment law specialist. It will likely cost a couple hundred for them to review your contract.

> It’s not that difficult to have legal help with your contract.

It's difficult to have legal help with your contract responsive within the timeframe that you have available for signing it before the business rescinds their offer and moves on.

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#117

Post by inetknght »

kragen wrote: post #82
iLoveOncall wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your lawyer That presupposes that people have a lawyer, and one specialized in employment law at that, which is highly unlikely to be the case for 99% of the population.

We're talking about negotiating a contract with a value on the order of a million dollars (say, US$200k total compensation per year for five years). Even if you don't have a lawyer normally, it may be worth the few hundred dollars it costs to hire one for this purpose, unless you have no savings. I never did, though. I just crossed out the clauses I didn't want to accept and initialed them.

> I just crossed out the clauses I didn't want to accept and initialed them.

Places like Zoho or Verisign don't let you do that.

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#118

Post by thfuran »

bobbruno wrote: post #109
aforwardslash wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only in the US; without going into too much detail, many countries in south America and Africa have strong business connections with the US, and it is quite common to see the ever-abusive dumb dumb US contract templates being used in those countries, even when local law differs significantly. Usually, the posture is "we can do whatever you want and you keep your mouth shut, or else we'll sue you for everything".…

If the law has specific clauses about this that the contract disrespects, these conditions are not worth the paper they are written on. At least in Brazil you can't enforce something the law doesn't allow in a contract - that clause would be considered void without nullifying the contract. And Labour law in Brazil leans (or used to lean) more in favor of the employee,so yes, the law would win. Another aspect there is…

>If the law has specific clauses about this that the contract disrespects, these conditions are not worth the paper they are written on

Unless the law also has severe penalty for including such terms, of course they are. They don't need to dissuade 100% of people from breaking 100% of the terms to be of use to the company.

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#119

Post by thfuran »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #72
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #33

OTOH, beware letting yourself be intimidated by scary looking but unenforcable clauses that are all over contracts. In doubt, spend a bit of money on a lawyer to figure out what your real situation is. I know of several cases where lawyers said "don't bother arguing with them about clause X, just sign it and ignore it".

I suspect our primary school upbringing of “follow the rules” holds a lot of people back. Seems like a lot of successful people in business know exactly how far they can step over the line without suffering serious consequences.

Societies where no one has any regard for rules aren't great either.

Re: Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

#120

Post by idkfasayer »

onion2k wrote: post #81
tianqi wrote: post #45

I think the Chinese law is effective in this regard: in order to maintain any non-competition agreement, the company must continue to pay you a monthly compensation amount equal to 30% of your total monthly income when you were at the company. Whenever the payment stops, the non-competition agreement is automatically void.

Imagine if Tesla had been able to stop Andrej Karpathy working at Open AI just by spending 1/3 of what his salary was when he was on Autopilot. That sounds like a terrible idea.

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