Your problem is when someone you have a good relationship with is seduced by something hotter and sexier.
I can see why's that would be frustrating, but my employees are not "mine" - so they are free to go at any time and hence, I need to treat them well. If an employee is seduced by an offer that doesn't work out - they can (and have) come back and can bring back what they learned. One of the thing that I learned from such exits an re-entryies is that money is not always the best motivator - I used to run really lean to…
If I hadn't started my new job just this week, I'd ask if you were hiring.
I think there needs to be some middle ground. What is completely ignored by such an "all or nothing" law is the trade-offs required in order to create a high quality of life for individuals while also thinking of our society overall. It is in society's interest for some industries to be protected - in order to avoid low-cost competitors and worse employers. We are over-reacting.
Middle ground in inherently non-equal relationships (employer-employee, landlord-tenant, etc) doesn't usually work because the areas close to the line need courts to sort them out, and courts cost money, which one side of the relationship doesn't have, so what happens instead is that the line inches slowly but surely in favor of the powerful side of the relationship because no individual can afford to challenge it.
There are some ways to combat those effects - for instance, large statutory damages make the reward larger, and unionization makes the individual risk lower - but by far the simplest and most direct is to sacrifice nuance to at least avoid a worst-case option.
I think the reason some employers want them is because they don't want to put the effort into building up an employees skills just to have them move to a different company right when they become useful. When you are an employee under these laws, you tend to put a lot more thought into choosing a company you would be willing to stay with as long as you are interested in that section of the industry.
It's a valid concern - that by training your employees and giving them experience, you make then so valuable that they can leave. I fight this problem several ways: I turn our services into a products so that I can onboard people quickly and drive down costs - for example instead of telling each employees to setup a backup on a server, I had one employee make a script that we can deploy on all new servers. By turning…
> I fight this problem several ways
This is completely, totally, and nonsensically evil that I'm not sure even where to begin. Supposing your company hired me and I knew this was the opinion of anyone who worked in management I would be polishing my résumé my first day on the job. This is the best way to make sure that the only people working for you are mindless drones and your HR office is a revolving door rather than a ladder for people with an ounce of ambition.
Excellent. If you want your employees to stay, and to contribute their ideas to you instead of running off to your competitors or starting their own companies, it's so so so much better to just treat your employees better than the bind them legally.
I always found it weird when employers wanted to start a relationship entirely adversarially. I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center. Employees are life blood. If they aren't, get rid of them and get new life blood - but being so standoffish and adversarial is the antithesis of what an employer/employee relationship should be.
Just to argue the counterpoint, I prefer my employer to be up-front about the legal side. Our relationship is adversarial - mutually beneficial, yes, but also adversarial. Except for possibly in the case of a tiny company where I'm personal friends with the management, they're not going to be loyal to me in any sort of pinch. It'd be great if we could trust each other, but that's not how business works, and if I'm not assertive about my rights, or if I take them at their word that they're not going to assert theirs, then I'm the sucker.
As I understand it, non-competes are very hard to enforce and are more of an intimidation tactic than anything else. You cannot be prevented from earning a living the only way you know how given the demand for your skills. If you're bound by a non-compete and the only (or the best) job available is with the competition, you shouldn't be afraid to take it, and the courts will side with you if someone goes after you (w…
Washington and Massachusetts (states with significant high-tech employee bases) are also very friendly to employers in enforcing non-competes. (IANAL)
I can't speak for Massachussetts, but in Washington state non-competes have to be narrowly tailored resulting in them being relatively hard to enforce.
Excellent. If you want your employees to stay, and to contribute their ideas to you instead of running off to your competitors or starting their own companies, it's so so so much better to just treat your employees better than the bind them legally.
I always found it weird when employers wanted to start a relationship entirely adversarially. I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center. Employees are life blood. If they aren't, get rid of them and get new life blood - but being so standoffish and adversarial is the antithesis of what an employer/employee relationship should be.
A lot of management techniques come out of the manufacturing industry that was the backbone of the US economy until 1980ish. For manufacturing, it does sometimes make sense to treat employees as a cost center, rather than an asset.
Even for manufacturing, however, this was a significant simplification (but likely a good trade-off in the days before visicalc).
Excellent. If you want your employees to stay, and to contribute their ideas to you instead of running off to your competitors or starting their own companies, it's so so so much better to just treat your employees better than the bind them legally.
I always found it weird when employers wanted to start a relationship entirely adversarially. I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center. Employees are life blood. If they aren't, get rid of them and get new life blood - but being so standoffish and adversarial is the antithesis of what an employer/employee relationship should be.
> I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center
But they are pretty much the biggest cost center for any employer? I'm not saying employees should not be valued and treated well, but salaries add up to a lot of money.
A really good book to read on the subject is AnnaLee Saxenian's Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 ( http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition... ). It discusses why Route 128 failed while Silicon Valley flourished. A major part is that under California law, non-competes are not enforceable in California. As people moved freely between competing companies, t…
Yes - this is an instance where a law can help an ecosystem at the expense of individual players. In aggregate though, it's net neutral for most companies, since they benefit from being able to hire from competitors. The companies doing interesting things probably benefit, while the ones doing boring things get a little hurt. The (largely untrained) economist in me says that mobility of labor is very important for gr…
Thanks. You touch upon one of my pet peeves. A huge amount of legislative energy is spent to ensure that capital can move around unfettered. On the contrary, movement of skill and intellectual property seems purposefully hindered. Implicitly it says that capital is much more important than the others, I simply disagree.
Washington and Massachusetts (states with significant high-tech employee bases) are also very friendly to employers in enforcing non-competes. (IANAL)
I can't speak for Massachussetts, but in Washington state non-competes have to be narrowly tailored resulting in them being relatively hard to enforce.
I always found it weird when employers wanted to start a relationship entirely adversarially. I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center. Employees are life blood. If they aren't, get rid of them and get new life blood - but being so standoffish and adversarial is the antithesis of what an employer/employee relationship should be.
> I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center But they are pretty much the biggest cost center for any employer? I'm not saying employees should not be valued and treated well, but salaries add up to a lot of money.
and without them, a company adds up to a whole lot of nothing