<story><title>The case for banning non-competes</title><url>https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-for-banning-non-competes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trentnix</author><text>&lt;i&gt;But my employer does everything. There is no field that my employer is not involved in, somehow. You can guess who they are, probably, or just read my profile. And they say &amp;quot;You cannot do anything that competes with anything we do&amp;quot;. Which is everything. Want to make a Sudoku app? That&amp;#x27;s a game, we do games. Want to do some open source ML library work? We do ML, you can&amp;#x27;t do ML outside of work (I asked legal that one). And that&amp;#x27;s ignoring the who-knows-how-many secret un-released projects that might relate.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m in a US state that allows non-competes. I recently turned down a job because I wasn&amp;#x27;t comfortable with the non-compete I was compelled to sign expressly because the company&amp;#x27;s opinion of its own market was so broad. They implored me to trust that they had &amp;quot;never sued anyone&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;have no intentions to&amp;quot;, and I think they honestly believe that. But then why have the non-compete at all?&lt;p&gt;And even if they are true to their word, what happens when they sell the company to someone else that exploits the leverage the non-compete provides?&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine was sued by their ex-employer over the violation of a non-compete. He lawyered up and fought it. And he won! But it was a Pyrrhic victory that resulted in a significant expensive of time (the judge granted an injunction that forced him out of business until the case was resolved - which was around 18 months) and money (he was granted no financial judgement). I am convinced the plaintiff&amp;#x27;s lawyer knew they&amp;#x27;d lose, but to the suing party the process was punishment and that became their goal.&lt;p&gt;His should be a cautionary tale - even if you&amp;#x27;re advised that the non-compete isn&amp;#x27;t enforceable, it can still hurt you.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>There are two kinds of non-competes, and both have problems.&lt;p&gt;First, there&amp;#x27;s the really nasty ones saying &amp;quot;If you ever work here, you can&amp;#x27;t work for any competitor for X years&amp;quot;, and they&amp;#x27;re clearly abusing of employees, labor, etc. I hope there is a straight up ban on that.&lt;p&gt;The second kind is &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t compete with us while you work here&amp;quot;. And that is a much more complex beast. Obviously, if I work as a developer making a stock trading app, I shouldn&amp;#x27;t be making a competing stock trading app after hours.&lt;p&gt;But my employer does &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;. There is no field that my employer is not involved in, somehow. You can guess who they are, probably, or just read my profile. And they say &amp;quot;You cannot do anything that competes with anything we do&amp;quot;. Which is everything. Want to make a Sudoku app? That&amp;#x27;s a game, we do games. Want to do some open source ML library work? We do ML, you can&amp;#x27;t do ML outside of work (I asked legal that one). And that&amp;#x27;s ignoring the who-knows-how-many secret un-released projects that &lt;i&gt;might&lt;/i&gt; relate.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t even tell us &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; anymore. They just say &amp;quot;read the non-compete agreement and do what it says&amp;quot;. Basically &amp;quot;do what you like, but if we ever feel like it wasn&amp;#x27;t right, you&amp;#x27;re fired and maybe sued&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;And when I apply to other companies, they ask &amp;quot;do you have a github account?&amp;quot;. No, I&amp;#x27;ve been highly motivated not to.&lt;p&gt;Edit: eesh, this was a bit of a rant, wasn&amp;#x27;t it? Apologies for that. But maybe folks have ideas on what to do about it, apart from the obvious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zippergz</author><text>Also the people claiming (and believing) that they have no intention of suing are not the people who make the decision to sue or not (unless it&amp;#x27;s an extremely small company, or you are an important enough hire to be discussing this with the CEO and General Counsel). Even if they have the best intentions, some random recruiter or manager really has no insight into this.</text></comment>
<story><title>The case for banning non-competes</title><url>https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-for-banning-non-competes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trentnix</author><text>&lt;i&gt;But my employer does everything. There is no field that my employer is not involved in, somehow. You can guess who they are, probably, or just read my profile. And they say &amp;quot;You cannot do anything that competes with anything we do&amp;quot;. Which is everything. Want to make a Sudoku app? That&amp;#x27;s a game, we do games. Want to do some open source ML library work? We do ML, you can&amp;#x27;t do ML outside of work (I asked legal that one). And that&amp;#x27;s ignoring the who-knows-how-many secret un-released projects that might relate.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m in a US state that allows non-competes. I recently turned down a job because I wasn&amp;#x27;t comfortable with the non-compete I was compelled to sign expressly because the company&amp;#x27;s opinion of its own market was so broad. They implored me to trust that they had &amp;quot;never sued anyone&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;have no intentions to&amp;quot;, and I think they honestly believe that. But then why have the non-compete at all?&lt;p&gt;And even if they are true to their word, what happens when they sell the company to someone else that exploits the leverage the non-compete provides?&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine was sued by their ex-employer over the violation of a non-compete. He lawyered up and fought it. And he won! But it was a Pyrrhic victory that resulted in a significant expensive of time (the judge granted an injunction that forced him out of business until the case was resolved - which was around 18 months) and money (he was granted no financial judgement). I am convinced the plaintiff&amp;#x27;s lawyer knew they&amp;#x27;d lose, but to the suing party the process was punishment and that became their goal.&lt;p&gt;His should be a cautionary tale - even if you&amp;#x27;re advised that the non-compete isn&amp;#x27;t enforceable, it can still hurt you.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>There are two kinds of non-competes, and both have problems.&lt;p&gt;First, there&amp;#x27;s the really nasty ones saying &amp;quot;If you ever work here, you can&amp;#x27;t work for any competitor for X years&amp;quot;, and they&amp;#x27;re clearly abusing of employees, labor, etc. I hope there is a straight up ban on that.&lt;p&gt;The second kind is &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t compete with us while you work here&amp;quot;. And that is a much more complex beast. Obviously, if I work as a developer making a stock trading app, I shouldn&amp;#x27;t be making a competing stock trading app after hours.&lt;p&gt;But my employer does &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;. There is no field that my employer is not involved in, somehow. You can guess who they are, probably, or just read my profile. And they say &amp;quot;You cannot do anything that competes with anything we do&amp;quot;. Which is everything. Want to make a Sudoku app? That&amp;#x27;s a game, we do games. Want to do some open source ML library work? We do ML, you can&amp;#x27;t do ML outside of work (I asked legal that one). And that&amp;#x27;s ignoring the who-knows-how-many secret un-released projects that &lt;i&gt;might&lt;/i&gt; relate.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t even tell us &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; anymore. They just say &amp;quot;read the non-compete agreement and do what it says&amp;quot;. Basically &amp;quot;do what you like, but if we ever feel like it wasn&amp;#x27;t right, you&amp;#x27;re fired and maybe sued&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;And when I apply to other companies, they ask &amp;quot;do you have a github account?&amp;quot;. No, I&amp;#x27;ve been highly motivated not to.&lt;p&gt;Edit: eesh, this was a bit of a rant, wasn&amp;#x27;t it? Apologies for that. But maybe folks have ideas on what to do about it, apart from the obvious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wolverine876</author><text>&amp;gt; They implored me to trust that they had &amp;quot;never sued anyone&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;have no intentions to&amp;quot;, and I think they honestly believe that. But then why have the non-compete at all?&lt;p&gt;Exactly. &amp;#x27;That&amp;#x27;s great; we can resolve that issue easily. Let&amp;#x27;s just skip the non-compete - you&amp;#x27;re not using it anyway and I&amp;#x27;m not comfortable with it.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: A non-lawyer&amp;#x27;s suggestion (talk to a lawyer before you do this): Skip signing or edit documents (cross out and initial sections you don&amp;#x27;t like, add words - and initial each change) and then sign and send it back. Don&amp;#x27;t say a thing; leave it to them to bring it up - most people won&amp;#x27;t bother disputing it with you.</text></comment>