171–180 of 223 posts
After, sure. But anything they say before you sign the contract is totally void, because every contract explicitly says "this is the only contract, anything beforehand is overruled by this".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tech industry in California does just fine without noncompetes. In fact, lack of noncompetes is probably one of the biggest reasons Silicon Valley was able to take off in the 1950s-60s when people were constantly leaving their jobs to start new chip companies, starting with the original "traitorous 8" who founded Fairchild Semiconductor. There just aren't good arguments for noncompetes. People often bring up trad…
The main argument for non-competes comes from banking/professional services (thinks accountants or lawyers). It's to stop you taking all your clients with you when you jump ship. It's typically only enforced for partners or really senior managers and the theory is, it allows the company time to cement their relationship with the client while you're out of the market. I have often seen it enforced as, you can go (afte…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There just aren't good arguments for noncompetes. I think the standard argument isn't trade secrets. The standard argument is that you want to incentivize employers to train employees. If I, as an employer, train you for 6 months, then you leave at month 7 for a higher salary (which you can demand cause you have more training/experience), I lose out. So I have no incentive to train you. So training or hiring of peo…
> The standard argument is that you want to incentivize employers to train employees. Charge tuition for training and offer "student loans" with no payments or interest while you're working for the company which are forgiven if you stay for five years or whatever. Then if somebody wants to poach you right away, that's fine, they can just pay off your training loan.
Ugh, this garbage again. AWS came after someone I had hired trying to enforce the same non-compete, under more or less the same circumstances (Washington-based employee, working remote out of California). In the process I learned a bunch about this non-compete, and in particular about Amazon's behavior with respect to it: as of 2012, they had tried to enforce this non-compete "hundreds" of times -- and to the knowled…
It's quite an interesting strategy and for all Amazon's "long-termism", it's a strategy that seems quite short-term focused. It may make their current employees decide not to leave, but it may also lower morale and make future recruits not join. Talk to decision makers deciding which database to buy and see their thoughts about Oracle. Many have been around for decades and have worked for or with the company and refu…
>awyers for Hall say Amazon executives repeatedly led him to believe the company would not enforce the non-competition provision of its “boilerplate” confidentiality agreement, in discussions before and after he signed the contract in June 2018. After, sure. But anything they say before you sign the contract is totally void, because every contract explicitly says "this is the only contract, anything beforehand is ove…
Early-career, you'll likely get f-ed by "boilerplate" contracts, since you don't have the negotiating leverage to push back yet. Expect it.
Once you're established, push back or don't join.
These kinds of litigations don't make the news often (it's to no one's benefit they become public, and everyone signs an NDA at the end), but they're pretty common.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cooperative bargaining is a positive-sum game. If you and I work together to negotiate a contract, we can get better terms than either of us could get individually.
The first sentence is true. The second sentence can be true but often isn’t. If 90% of the workers at a firm are worth $50,000 a year and 10% are worth $200,000 a year a union will represent the average worker, screwing the top 10%. The closer you are to the average of the members in your union the better they represent your interests. If you are far from a representative member the degree to which they will fight fo…
They don't have to hurt everyone -- there are definite good unions -- but there are bad ones too.
Example: Look at the police unions now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds abusable. You get some company (possibly owned by a friend of yours) to offer you a massive salary, then your original company has to pay that massive salary for 3 months or whatever. Then as soon as you start at the new company, they fire you.
That sounds like a feature to me. Noncompetes are terrible, and you should be prepared to pay out of your nose if you want to keep an employee off the market. As long as you're not forced to pay that money, it's all good. It just means that the employee can actually switch jobs immediately (for a better pay or not) unless you're willing to pay them however much they're willing to stay out of the market for. Say I mak…
Then just be open about it and say you want to remove non-competes. Nothing bad about it, but inventing clauses which makes them effectively forbidden, but not really just clogs up courts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what most outside counsel in WA advise their corporate clients. Use non-competes. Even though everyone knows they are essentially unenforceable. A "venomous separation" is more lucrative for outside counsel than an amicable one where they are not needed.
Would a company like Amazon not have full time lawyers retained on salary instead of relying on outside counsel with that conflict?
That was a good laugh for a bit. Thanks. I read the first few words of yours as:
Would a company like Amazon not have full time lawyers retained on salary to lie ....This makes me think Amazon it starting to worry a bit more about Google Cloud. Have they been gaining a lot on Amazon recently?
That includes multi-million dollar partners sometimes.
I'd work for Google, but I wouldn't use their systems outside of Google. I wouldn't work for Amazon, but I definitely use AWS.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This wouldn't be able to happen in EU as well. Previous employer can't force you to not being able to offer your services in the job market. They can pay you instead.
It's usually unwise to speak in general terms about the EU. It's 27 different legal systems, after all. For instance, in the Netherlands non-compete clauses are enforceable, though with some restrictions [1]. [1] https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Onderwerpen/Concurrentiebeding