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The case for banning non-competes

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Re: The case for banning non-competes

#161

Post by jonnycomputer »

etothepii wrote: post #75
jonnycomputer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-competes undermine one of the main ideas underpinning capitalism: the free flow of labor. Otherwise, you're just a damned serf.

I wonder if the "I have read the Terms and Conditions" checkbox has some responsibility for this. I'm constantly amazed at how many people don't seem to understand that a contract is a negotiation. Most people wouldn't dream of taking a job that didn't pay enough financially, but agree to jobs with awful terms and conditions because they didn't read. We are all used to contracts that are too long to understand.

Libertarians would permit people to sell themselves into slavery by contract. Another reason why libertarianism take too far is pure madness, and infantile fantasy.

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#163

Post by lamontcg »

lacker wrote: post #152
mabbo wrote: post #23

There are two kinds of non-competes, and both have problems. First, there's the really nasty ones saying "If you ever work here, you can't work for any competitor for X years", and they're clearly abusing of employees, labor, etc. I hope there is a straight up ban on that. The second kind is "You can't compete with us while you work here". And that is a much more complex beast. Obviously, if I work as a developer mak…

The second kind is "You can't compete with us while you work here". It's just semantics, but these restrictions are usually not covered by "non-compete agreements". They are more often called something like an "IP assignment agreement", where you agree that anything you produce in your employer's area of work while you are employed there, the IP belongs to your employer. In practice, many employees simply ignore thes…

Yeah that would be solved by NDAs and trade secrets.

Then if you write a stock trading app... Did you have any contact with the team that was writing the companies stock trading app, did you sign any NDAs about that, did you receive any information about that, did you have any trade secrets? No? Then they shouldn't have any claim.

IP assignment and non-competes should be eliminated for non-managerial employees.

Or for IP assignment it needs to be whittled down to narrowly apply only to what the employee actually worked on, not anything the business does.

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#164

Post by arcanus »

heipei wrote: post #9
fallingknife wrote: post #2

Should be a requirement that, to be enforceable, a non-compete must pay the agreeing employee his salary for the duration of the agreement.

In Germany, a non-compete can only be enforced for up to two years and pays 50% of the last salary (by law).

Why not 100%?

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#165

Post by ncallaway »

lacker wrote: post #152
mabbo wrote: post #23

There are two kinds of non-competes, and both have problems. First, there's the really nasty ones saying "If you ever work here, you can't work for any competitor for X years", and they're clearly abusing of employees, labor, etc. I hope there is a straight up ban on that. The second kind is "You can't compete with us while you work here". And that is a much more complex beast. Obviously, if I work as a developer mak…

The second kind is "You can't compete with us while you work here". It's just semantics, but these restrictions are usually not covered by "non-compete agreements". They are more often called something like an "IP assignment agreement", where you agree that anything you produce in your employer's area of work while you are employed there, the IP belongs to your employer. In practice, many employees simply ignore thes…

> So just ignore your legal department and work on your side project.

Nah, I just quit, and in my exit interview I told them why.

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#166

Post by wwweston »

heipei wrote: post #9
fallingknife wrote: post #2

Should be a requirement that, to be enforceable, a non-compete must pay the agreeing employee his salary for the duration of the agreement.

In Germany, a non-compete can only be enforced for up to two years and pays 50% of the last salary (by law).

This feels like it starts to get to the heart of the matter. If you want to compel someone's activities, especially if it involves restricting their employment, seems pretty fair to compensate them throughout the period in which it applies.

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#167

Post by softwaredoug »

Consultant/freelancers frequently deal with:

Client: "you can't work with competitors"

Consultant: "ok, how do you define competitor?"

Client: "Anyone that might compete with a line-of-business we have or plan to have"

Consultant: "ok, can you list those lines of businesses?"

Client: "no... some are in R&D phases... many won't even work out"

Consultant: "can you just give us a list of competitors?"

Client: "not really, because who knows what kind of company we'll be in 3 years!"

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#168

Post by caconym_ »

mabbo wrote: post #23

There are two kinds of non-competes, and both have problems. First, there's the really nasty ones saying "If you ever work here, you can't work for any competitor for X years", and they're clearly abusing of employees, labor, etc. I hope there is a straight up ban on that. The second kind is "You can't compete with us while you work here". And that is a much more complex beast. Obviously, if I work as a developer mak…

> 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 mere possibility of competition--we like competition, remember?

In America we default to the corporation's rights taking precedence over the individual's rights. We say the mere risk that an employee's side projects might step on their employer's (poorly defined) rights in some way is enough to preemptively assign ownership of all the employee's work to their employer, just in case. From the viewpoint of the corporate masters and the lifelong-conditioned wage-slave masses, that seems good and right; in a vacuum, IMO, it seems completely backwards. We should be trying to nucleate innovation, not stifle it. Why should an employee with a good idea, who is not paid to have ideas in that scope, jump through whatever hoops it takes to get their employer to notice it--probably at the cost of their own time, uncompensated--and let said employer reap the lion's share of the rewards?

Even for employees who are literally paid to generate ideas, for product design or strategy or whatever else, the onus should be on the employer to provide a good value proposition for employees to share their ideas (the original contents of their own minds) rather than hold onto them. In reality I see plenty of cases where this does happen, so while the "shower idea" argument is compelling enough, I don't think it's an effect that stands to substantially threaten corporate success regardless of whatever rote legalese appears in employment agreements.

At the very least, even if (the general) you don't agree with me, you should take a step back and consider whether your personal ethic of capitalism is giving employers more moral weight than they are really due.

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#169

Post by throw1234651234 »

jvreagan wrote: post #136
masklinn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problematically though, in most of the US ridiculously broad NCCs are enforceable. The only place where you're safe is California, where the only way for an NCC to stick is related to business (co)-ownership (selling the business, dissolving a partnership, or dissolving an LLC). Out-of-state NCCs are also un-enforceable in California.

I would like to understand whether there are any states that even occasionally backs the employer in non-competes for the general layperson. In my experience, courts tend to side with someone who's willing to work over employers. This is why non-competes are a joke in the US. Courts aren't going to enforce them. Almost every state has an industry where moving between companies, or starting companies to compete with e…

Can you elaborate on this? Are you a lawyer? Do you follow cases? Not being sarcastic, genuinely want to know.

Re: The case for banning non-competes

#170

Post by tracyhenry »

j4yav wrote: post #102
tracyhenry wrote: post #86

A noob question: how can a small business get to keep the secret ingredient of their success if employees are allowed to jump ship as they wish? From the employee perspective banning non-competes are ofc the best thing. But this feels terrible if it means that secret sauces of small startups will get copied easily (potentially by bigger players).

Patents if they are really secret sauce. If your startup fails because someone finds out what you are working on then you are already doomed.

I don't feel this is the right answer. Patents are very time-consuming. Lawsuits (esp against big players) are something most startups can't afford.
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