<story><title>Why I Don&apos;t Sign Non-Competes</title><url>https://penguindreams.org/blog/why-i-dont-sign-non-competes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lmkg</author><text>(IANAL)&lt;p&gt;Not signing the contract is one thing. Misrepresenting your position is something else. If you &lt;i&gt;gave the impression&lt;/i&gt; that you agreed to the terms provided, then it&amp;#x27;s possible you could be held to those terms.&lt;p&gt;A contract isn&amp;#x27;t defined by a signature. A contract is defined by a &amp;quot;meeting of the minds.&amp;quot; The signature is commonly-accepted evidence that such a thing occurred, but it&amp;#x27;s not essential.&lt;p&gt;By pocketing the contract rather than pointing it out to them, you&amp;#x27;ve arguably violated the &amp;quot;meeting of the minds.&amp;quot; The company was under the impression that was part of the agreement. You can dither about &amp;quot;due diligence&amp;quot; and say it was there responsibility to check, but in some cases that can be seen as an intentional misrepresentation on your part, for which there are consequences.&lt;p&gt;I will concede that this is unlikely to come back to bite you in practice. But others should be aware that it is technically playing with fire. And personally, I consider it unethical.</text></item><item><author>tomohawk</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had non-compete agreements provided to me to sign in the past, usually as part of a packet of things to sign.  In each case I just pocketed them without signing them.  I&amp;#x27;ve never had a company come back later and demand that I sign the thing.  If they don&amp;#x27;t do their diligence, I don&amp;#x27;t see why I should do it for them.&lt;p&gt;In other words, just because someone puts something in front of you to sign doesn&amp;#x27;t mean you have to sign it, or even comment or push back on it.  You can just ignore it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>boomlinde</author><text>If the employer wants the NDA to be part of the agreement, they should include it in the conditions of the employment contract.&lt;p&gt;If they offer me a separate contract to sign for their non-disclosure terms and I agree neither verbally nor in ink, I think it&amp;#x27;s a stretch to call it a misrepresentation of my position. Given that this type of contract usually offers absolutely nothing in exchange, it would be more reasonable to assume that I &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; agree, if I don&amp;#x27;t sign it or express agreement otherwise.&lt;p&gt;Also IANAL, but at the very least I don&amp;#x27;t think that this is unethical.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I Don&apos;t Sign Non-Competes</title><url>https://penguindreams.org/blog/why-i-dont-sign-non-competes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lmkg</author><text>(IANAL)&lt;p&gt;Not signing the contract is one thing. Misrepresenting your position is something else. If you &lt;i&gt;gave the impression&lt;/i&gt; that you agreed to the terms provided, then it&amp;#x27;s possible you could be held to those terms.&lt;p&gt;A contract isn&amp;#x27;t defined by a signature. A contract is defined by a &amp;quot;meeting of the minds.&amp;quot; The signature is commonly-accepted evidence that such a thing occurred, but it&amp;#x27;s not essential.&lt;p&gt;By pocketing the contract rather than pointing it out to them, you&amp;#x27;ve arguably violated the &amp;quot;meeting of the minds.&amp;quot; The company was under the impression that was part of the agreement. You can dither about &amp;quot;due diligence&amp;quot; and say it was there responsibility to check, but in some cases that can be seen as an intentional misrepresentation on your part, for which there are consequences.&lt;p&gt;I will concede that this is unlikely to come back to bite you in practice. But others should be aware that it is technically playing with fire. And personally, I consider it unethical.</text></item><item><author>tomohawk</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had non-compete agreements provided to me to sign in the past, usually as part of a packet of things to sign.  In each case I just pocketed them without signing them.  I&amp;#x27;ve never had a company come back later and demand that I sign the thing.  If they don&amp;#x27;t do their diligence, I don&amp;#x27;t see why I should do it for them.&lt;p&gt;In other words, just because someone puts something in front of you to sign doesn&amp;#x27;t mean you have to sign it, or even comment or push back on it.  You can just ignore it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rhacker</author><text>Oh no this is not true - if they can&amp;#x27;t find the signed paper work it is Absolutely on them. I&amp;#x27;ve been square in this situation before - the company&amp;#x27;s legal &amp;quot;person&amp;quot; is absolutely in charge and responsible for collecting whatever signatures they want and which ones are optional and required. I absolutely disagree with this post.</text></comment>