The headline kind of has the valence of government activity backwards, though I agree with its policy proposal.
Other states don't restrict job-hopping, they just stand by and don't interfere as the free market ends up having the effect of restricting job-hopping. Employees end up signing restrictive employment contracts, and states don't prohibit them from doing so. California has made a conscious decision that the economy overall works better if some kinds of private-sector contracts are prohibited, so it's restricted what can go into an employment contract to a greater degree than other states have (every state has some restrictions, e.g. in the modern era you can't sell yourself into indentured servitude, but some states are more restrictive than others).
I think your lense of "free market" needs to be supplemented with a little game theory here. If you're an employer, what's your disincentive for tucking in a little non-compete in your contract? None at all[1], especially since many of your prospective employees won't read it or potentially (if you're a low-wage employee) understand it's implications. Then what's the disincentive for an entire industry to do this? None at all. And suddenly, there is no free market for job seekers anymore.
There's a reason why in the US, overwhelmingly contracts are read against the one who drafts them for example. There's an inherent power imbalance here. That's where laws and courts come into balance things out.
[1] To point, it's not uncommon for California-based tech companies to insert non-compete clauses into their contracts, even though they cannot possibly be enforced unless there is some special compensation.
Both parties have to understand a contract for it to agreed upon. For example those massive T&C that go with a website sign-up largely mean nothing if the company hasn't ensured you read and understood them.
This is an interesting, but completely incorrect view :)
"However, the awareness of a legal obligation is established, not through each party's subjective understanding of the terms, but on "objective indicators," based on what each party said and did"
Your T&C examples are adhesion contracts, subject to a different set of rules.
Here, you have an opportunity to bargain like any other party.
There is a disincentive, at least when employees recognize what they are signing and how it limits their options. Informed workers that think ahead would see it as a more restrictive job.
Of course, its usually slapped in front of them AFTER they've accepted a job. Having accepted a straightforward offer in good faith, the terms are then altered, slightly.
Perhaps it should be more clearly stated in a written offer that must be considered before accepting.
And perhaps that's why its better to not allow these. It makes it easier for employer and employees to deal with each other. And it makes companies compete more on merit, rather than manipulation.
It doesn't hurt the companies ability to compete with each other, as long as they all live under the same rules.
Having accepted me as an employee, the company also has invested some resources and is reluctant to lose me. As such, I never had problems removing any annoying clauses in contracts. (True, being from a former communist country my tolerance to restrictive clauses is much higher than that of US citizens, so maybe that accounts for the difference.)
Enforcement of contracts is always government intervention. It's a regulation of business, forcing people to stick to their word on certain issues, despite obvious economic reasons not to.
Not enforcing some contracts is less intervention, not more.
The free market solution to contract enforcement is something like credit ratings where businesses form a network to enforce penalties. Without government, assuming society would be able to reach those levels of sophistication, it seems probable that capital would still enjoy a strong balance of power over workers to force them into undesirable contracts.
It's fine if corporations can form syndicates to black list workers, workers can form unions to strike, take over factories, etc. If corporations can then buy its own mercenaries so can workers form their own militias to take on rent a cops. And so on. This stupid fantasy of corporate tyrants free to do as they wish ends the same way all tyrannies do, with a revolution.
Except that many states have now made laws making unionization very difficult. Also, I'm not sure if you intended, but everything you said describes the early 1900s. The Pinkertons were deployed on many occasions to break up unions, and they acted as a mercenary force against the working class. In the end rights were won, and then the 1980s came and Reaganism heralded the destruction of everything that had been fought for under the guise of being 'business friendly'.
I guess so, though there are a lot of examples in history where you ended up with stable feudal-like states. The idea that anarcho-capitalism would produce an optimal equilibrium seems ahistorical to me. I don't think humans have figured out an ideal system of governance, but a strong central government constrained by the rule of law and some democratic checks and balances seems to be the best we've got.
I'm sorry, I didn't meant to say that anarcho capitalism specifically has historically end up in a feudal state. What I meant is that a lot of historical societies, and modern ones for that matter, end up with strongmen oppressing the majority of people so it's something to be very wary about.
True, I agree that contract law's existence in the first place depends on government enforcement. The same could be said for property ownership, at least state-enforced legal forms of property rather than direct possession (e.g. absentee land ownership proved via deeds and land registries, and enforced via trespassing law).
Within the context of the U.S.'s current economic/legal system, I think it's more in accordance with common usage to think of the existence of private property and contract law as being the basic substrate on which everything else happens, including more specific government action. For example, to continue with the property analogy, we typically think of eminent domain as a state "taking" property, even in cases where a person's "ownership" of a property depends on the government in the first place (someone owns a deed to land they don't actively reside on or use, but since it's legally recognized as property, the government choosing to build something on it is legally recognized as a taking of property). But point taken that this whole contract/property system is itself created and enforced by the state, not some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon.
> Within the context of the U.S.'s current economic/legal system, I think it's more in accordance with common usage to think of the existence of private property and contract law as being the basic substrate on which everything else happens
This may have been common usage through the 1920s, and it may be common usage for people who wish the New Deal never happened. But even then it would be a stretch. This country's legal history is a lot more nuanced than that. What you articulate is probably best described as a minority vision today.
My reading of New Deal legal history (though I'm admittedly an amateur reader of it) is that it came closer to endorsing that view than rejecting it. There was a turn towards courts being open to social-democratic style regulation of businesses and contracts, whereas previously some had held that a strong "freedom of contract" prohibited interference with most contracts between private parties. But courts didn't challenge the default existence of property and contracts as the substrate over which regulation happened. They simply held that the state had the authority to regulate them in a number of cases. And it was described in those terms, as regulation, which tends to imply that it's restricting something that preexists the regulation.
An alternate, more radical view would be that, since the state had created contract law, property law, etc. in the first place, many New Deal laws weren't even regulations or restrictions on anything, merely the state choosing to withdraw some kinds of legal arrangements that it had previously created. But I don't think any New Deal courts were nearly that radical. They instead agreed that they were regulations or restrictions, but held that those regulations/restrictions were within the government's powers to enact, most often justifying them as within the power the Constitution gives Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
Right, and in most contracts you would sue for damages if the contract were broken. But with non-compete agreements, it's common to seek injunctive relief, which is a kind of terrifying and powerful tool that the court has. Liquidated damages seem like a more reasonable, free-market friendly alternative, although I'd rather see courts stay out of this even more.
Contract enforcement is a government activity, though. To enforce a contract, you ask the government (via the courts) to force the other party to give you assets, or not to work somewhere, etc.
By the same reasoning, if I sue you for defamation for calling me a lamebrained chucklehead, courts refuse to entertain the suit because the government won't restrict free speech. You're entitled to express your opinion, and the government won't assist me in suppressing your speech.
In many states, the government is happy to assist employers in restricting job-hopping.
I take your point that this government activity has its immediate catalyst in private actions in the free market, and that's different in important ways from other government activity. But still.
Consent under coercion which most work contracts are implicitly, else how are you going to pay for your living expenses, by necessity require government intervention.
You can not eliminate this source of coercion without for instance giving people free living wage. Eliminating such contracts would not eliminate the coercion but make it worse. Maybe not as bad a contract, because people can still walk away, but still could end badly.
The natural state of mammals on this planet is hunter gatherers. Hunter gatherers don't have any way of storing food, so they take only as much as they need. They are under constant coercion by their environment. So I guess the environment is coercing, whether that's nature or it's society. There is a way to get the basic resources for survival. For hunter gatherers they may go out at any time and if food is available they can hunt it. In society, there is no way to get that unless there is some form of contract or agreement for some resources in return for work.
I'm a free market guy, and I also agree with certain notions of contract law - like you cannot sign away your inalienable rights. You have those rights regardless.
Also, in order for a contract to be enforceable, there must be an exchange of value. I would agree with the validity of a non-compete clause if there was specific compensation tied to that. For example, "we'll give you $50,000 after you leave the company if you don't compete with us for a year." But tacking it onto an employment agreement, no.
The original inalienable rights -- life, liberty, and happiness -- aren't inalienable because their transfer is prohibited by law, but because they're impossible by fact.
You can be denied of your life, your liberty, and/or your happiness. They cannot however be transferred to another person.
Your material possessions -- real estate, chattel property, intellectual property -- can be.
Again: the nature of inalienable rights is intrinsic, not protected by law.
You'll find that meaning supported in the definition you've provided.
(There's a whole 'nother discussion of rights-based arguments generally I won't get into, though I find the question somewhat problematic.)
You say "free market" but the only reason other states work that way is because the courts enforce non-compete agreements. The state has a monopoly on court judgments, after all. In the same way we can say that the 19th century US didn't "restrict" freedoms, it merely "allowed people to own slaves". I'm not saying the comparison is apt, but it's easy to flip around words and say that "California prevents companies from preventing you from working for competitors" instead of "California does not enforce private non-compete contracts".
Job hopping, or as normal people call it staying employed. Governments do need to legislate this because scummy corporations and their management have made it a necessity to do so.
This is absolutely an underappreciated feature of SV, and prior to this article I had also heard it held up as one of the reasons SV has a relatively more active and larger startup environment than Boston.
Given the nature of startups and the surprisingly high turnover I've seen of people coming and going at all sorts of companies, it seems impossible to me to create a vibrant, innovative economy with strong non-competes. This is particularly true because the most powerful non-competes are signed by the most senior management, so those with the most experience and best view of a sector are the least able to start something new after leaving their previous gig.
It's weird as well as in the early years of HN there were frequent questions about non-competes in contracts in ask HN (they might still, ask HN is less prominent now).
It just shows how much it affects our thinking both as entrepreneurs and employees.
Engineers often read this section much more broadly than it is.
Employees rarely win 2870 suits.
Basically: Engineers tend to think it matters what they do for the company, but 2870 instead says it matters what the company does, not what you do for the company.
Employers can claim stuff that "(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of
the invention to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably
anticipated research or development of the employer; or"
For large tech companies, this pretty much covers everything you might want to do.
Whenever I've gotten a job, I'd list on the employment contract all my outside projects and get buyoff from management that those were my projects, not the company's. Before I'd start a new outside project, I'd write it up and get management buyoff on it that it is not part of my job.
Additionally, I've found that at the point of employment projects don't need to be more than an idea; as long as you get them included with the contract, a simple abstract of what is covered is enough to give you something to play with whilst employed by said company.
Oh, and make sure to include projects even if you don't deem them to conflict with the company's area of core business. IME they'll be met with a chuckle and a 'not sure why these are here', but when the company is subsequently working out how to jump on the latest buzz bandwagon your side project may suddenly fall under some random wing of interest. Far easier to get it in there early.
"... (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of
the invention to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably
anticipated research or development of the employer; or ..."
If you work for a large company in the valley, how does it affect you?I'm curious if anyone has first hand experience with it.
Large employers will generally own whatever you do in your spare time. They will not mention this, and generally not care, but if you make a ton of money or do something really popular, they will start a fight.
Note:
"The employee bears the burden of establishing his invention comes within Labor Code section 2870. (Lab. Code, § 2872.)
"
See also cubic corp v. marty, which disassembles most typical arguments:
"Marty argues under the Labor Code provision "the employer is not entitled to the invention unless it 'resulted from' work performed by the employee, even if the invention, in general, relates to the 'business of the employer'....""
Marty has misconstrued the Labor Code provision.
<court proceeds to trash Marty's arguments>
etc
What connection does Cubic v Marty have to this? From Justicia:
> In mid-May 1977, Marty came up with an idea for an electronic warfare simulator (EWS), a device for training pilots in electronic warfare. He developed a block diagram in May 1977 and in June 1977 a manuscript describing his invention. He showed both the diagram and manuscript to Minton Kronkhite of Cubic, representing it might be a new product which Cubic could add to its product for training pilots, the ACMR (air combat maneuvering range). fn. 1 Cubic had had plans to add electronic warfare training to its ACMR but had not yet developed it at the time of Marty's invention. Kronkhite thought Marty's invention was a good idea and passed along the manuscript to Hubert Kohnen, another Cubic employee involved with the ACMR.
The guy gets a significant raise and Cubic works with the Navy on a program to study the idea, with the idea that Marty would be program manager.
The guy goes on to get a patent on the idea on his own without telling anyone. Approaches Cubic offering to sell the rights. Cubic demands the patent and fires him and she's for ownership. He tries to defend himself by saying that his job responsibility is not to invent:
> Further, Marty presented his invention to Cubic as a new product for Cubic, something which could be added to their ACMR. Marty was made program manager on the government contract to study (and refine the design of) his invention. While Marty may not have been a "design" engineer at Cubic, the scope of his employment did not preclude design work and in fact, Marty perceived it as encompassing design work since he presented his invention to Cubic as a design for Cubic without expressing any reservations of rights or indications that the invention was not a part of his Cubic employment
Sounds like the guy did some sketchy shit and was called on it. This is nothing like the scenarios we are talking about where an employee invents something on their own time with no connection to their company or their work. The court tore up his argument because the basis for the argument was that he was a non-inventing employee and somehow the agreement he signed didn't apply.
"What connection does Cubic v Marty have to this?"
It's the leading case and, as i said, quoted to this day in pretty much every other case.
Please ignore the facts of this case, what matters here is the courts view on what it means to be related to the business, who bears the burden of proof, etc.
"This is nothing like the scenarios we are talking about where an employee invents something on their own time with no connection to their company or their work. "
Define "no connection". In the hundreds of times i've had employees claim this, i can count on one hand the nubmer of times they were right factually (IE they often don't know enough about a large company to know everything that is going on, etc), and can think of only one case i think a court might agree with them.
Again, feel free to find a case that supports the general view that stuff you do on your own time is yours, and employers are going to have to fight to get it.
Because Cubic says the opposite - the burden is on you to prove it is something that isn't owned by your employer.
The guy showed his thing to his employer and they started pursuing it. How could it not be clearer the employer owned it?
I'm trying to understand how you can claim this shows Cubic shows anything other than if you give your ideas to your employer they become the employer's. That's pretty normal. Every day as an employee I have ideas I put into the products I create. Those ideas I get paid a salary for. I might have had those ideas while showering. They still go into my work and become the employer's.
Outside projects can have conflicts but Cubic is not related to that case.
As for companies owning everything, first off you might want to look up "duty of loyalty". Just because you thought of a solution at lunch (off hours) doesn't mean that therefore it doesn't belong to your employer. At the same time, in California at least, the has to be related to their work. Of course courts decide what's related and what's not and there's a broad spectrum. Selling coffee at night while building websites at a job seems pretty black and white. Making a mobile game at home while working on a console game at work is clearly in some kind of gray area. Back to "duty of loyalty" you have a duty not to compete with your employer. Putting out another game is arguably competing.
The right thing to do as pointed out by others is it to get a signed letter from your employer. Google offers these. So does Microsoft. I'm sure other companies do as well. If your's doesn't consider that a reason to look for a better employer.
I'm not saying that I have a case showing that "what you do on your own time is yours". That won't be the case, especially if you've signed an agreement to the contrary as a salaried employee.
I am simply pointing out that Cubic v Marty does not in any way disprove that idea that "what you do on your own time is you own" either, because that's not what happened in that case. Instead, the employee had an idea directly relevant to their employer's business, showed it to them, got a raise, pursued it as an actual work project, and then after all that went off to patent it privately. That is not really a situation that has to do with someone inventing something on their own in their private time having nothing to do with work, where the question is whether the employer should own it.
The decision in Cubic v Marty should not be surprising or remarkable from what I have read. As an employee, you obviously cannot take home technology ideas that you were pursuing at work, as an official work project, and expect to patent them and get away with it. If you think there is something specifically interesting and relevant about it, then please point that out since I'm not sure what I'm missing. I am not saying that I have a more relevant case, just that I don't follow the relevance of that one.
If you are a salaried employee, and you use company resources on the project, or review it with other employees, or the project is in your employer's field of business, or if you pursue the project as an official work project, and it's in the line of work you do for your employer, and if you have signed an agreement agreeing to do so, and these are all signs that the employer owns the result. The case where none of those things are true is the case that I think will be interesting.
I just read a summary of that case, and it doesn't even seem to me (who would generally be biased toward the inventor) that Marty had a case. He himself described his invention as potentially useful in a Cubic product.
I guess the cases that wind up in litigation tend to be the ones that aren't clear-cut, and I can believe the employer usually wins those. That doesn't mean that section 2870 makes no difference. If you can show me a case where the requirements were pretty clearly met, and the court still ruled against the inventor, that will be more convincing.
You missed the point, which was, the court basically put all the burden and problems of proving things around 2870 on Marty. They also took a very broad view of what it means to be related to the business.
You will have the same trouble. Cubic is quoted to this day for all the propositions i pointed out.
As for "show me a case", i'll ask the opposite: Find me a case that supports any view of this provision that people like to have (IE that most stuff they do in their spare time is going to be owned by them).
(to help: I'm not aware of any such cases, and i skimmed the headnotes for all 109 cases that cite Cubic)
> the court basically put all the burden and problems of proving things around 2870 on Marty
Well, yes. As you quoted, the statue itself directs the court to do that.
> They also took a very broad view of what it means to be related to the business.
Okay, I've now read the whole opinion and nothing in it surprises me.
If your point is that people tend to read secs. 2870-2 less carefully than they should, I am in no position to dispute that. I certainly agree that someone hoping to avail themselves of sec. 2870 would be well advised to be extremely careful -- even as to their choice of employer.
But I think there must be employers that don't make a habit of suing former employees when it appears that there's a reasonable chance that the 2870 requirements have been more-or-less met. Lots of Google engineers leave to start startups, I have heard, and I'm sure in plenty of those cases, they had their idea while they were still Google employees. If Google started litigating such cases regularly, they would destroy their reputation as a great place to work, I would think. (I have never worked for Google, so this is just my guess.)
There are probably cases where the company does not sue though. I do remember a case where a long time employee of sears designed and patented a novel and useful ratchet wrench. Hazy memory but he tried to sell it to sears. Sears instead claimed they owned it, and the court said nope.
I've worked in SV my entire career and had never even envisioned other states allowed no-compete contracts in this day and age. Everybody I know and have worked with has had multiple jobs and wouldn't have it any other way. Yet one more way CA is far in front of every other state in basic worker rights.
The company I used to work for bullied most of the employees into signing a 5 year non-competes. And that was after they'd already been in business for 5 years. My department collectively said no, but it was a huge showdown, and they immediately started trying to figure out how to make the company less reliant on us. Every other person in the company except for us signed it.
The lawyer we consulted said it was the most draconian thing he'd ever seen and that we should all quit on the spot.
Totally ridiculous. If you want me to non-compete for 5 years, you better compensate me full salary for those 5 years that I spend sitting around not working for your competition.
> He was thrilled when he got an offer for an $18-per-hour cleaning job in the Seattle area — a big step up from the $15-per-hour job he had taken a few months earlier
> After Almeida switched jobs, a lawyer from his old employer, ServiceMaster, sent him a letter threatening a lawsuit
> The company told the Seattle Times that the noncompete agreement was necessary because ServiceMaster had provided Almeida with valuable training
So require that the employee stay with the company until they recoup the investment. If the employee leaves before the term is up, charge the employee the cost of training.
What California used have was worse than non-competes. They had secret covenants between manor tech companies not to hire each others employees. I don't know if that has been completely eliminated.
As for other states, you could ask why they have lots of stupid laws. As for California, you could ask why they have that stupid Proposition 13.
The Apple/Google/Adobe/et al. non-hire collusion is probably on hold for now due to the govt. investigations.
The only good thing I can say about that era was that Google had their ass handed to them by Facebook, which was one of the few non-participants in the collusion. Google employees had few options but to go to Facebook in droves.
Proposition 13 has nothing to do with tech employment directly. It was created because politicians just couldn't help themselves from raising real estate taxes voluntarily.
Those covenants, by Google, Apple, Intel, Cisco, and others, were manifestly illegal. The settlement terms were rejected by the court, as I understand.
I also must credit Facebook for breaking the deal -- one of the few times I can support the company's stance.
Non-competes, whether formal and legal, or shady and illegal like Google-Apple, are restraint of trade, suppression of competition. They drive wages down. Nothing to back that up, but why else would sandwich makers be subject to these?
> The best argument against noncompetes is about freedom
> [...] there should be a presumption in favor of preserving people's freedom to join a new company or start one of their own.
Alas, as nice as it is to cloth an issue we care about in the language of moral superiority, banning noncompete agreements does in fact impact the freedom of contract. (In the same way, but to a lesser extent, than the ban on being able to sell yourself into slavery.)
Pragmatically this is the right thing to do. But there's no Freedom argument for it.
>Alas, as nice as it is to cloth an issue we care about in the language of moral superiority, banning noncompete agreements does in fact impact the freedom of contract. (In the same way, but to a lesser extent, than the ban on being able to sell yourself into slavery.)
Not allowing consensual slavery agreements, consensual beating people to death, etc, also limits "freedom of contract".
That's because we value other things more.
There's nothing sacred about "freedom of contract".
And in most pragmatic cases when an enterprise makes a contract with an employee, there's not much freedom for the side of the employee either.
People always think of star programmers etc who are courted to go to work somewhere and have tons of choices, which are a tiny minority, instead of thinking of the hundreds of millions who need a job to pay the bills, healthcare, etc.
Even when a sector (like IT) does well compared to others, let's see how it goes if there's a bubble bust.
"consensual slavery" is a tautology more ridiculous than anything the Soviet Union ever wrote in their propaganda. Nobody would sell themselves into slavery if they had a choice.
Which kind of brings up an interesting angle - if every company is asking for an NCA, can't you argue that you signed it under duress, i.e. you didn't have a choice in the matter, and therefore that part of the contract is invalid?
>"consensual slavery" is a tautology more ridiculous than anything the Soviet Union ever wrote in their propaganda. Nobody would sell themselves into slavery if they had a choice.
It might seem contradictory but the world is not always nice and tidy.
Consensual here just means "the other person agreed/signed to it".
But what forces pressured them to do so are seldom examined -- and lots of people assume as long as it's not a "gun to the head" it's OK.
Of course from:
a) "total freedom to evaluate and pick among many options -- or even ignore them completely" to
b) "tons of factors pressuring enormously for a quick decision, and very limited options"
there's a huge scale of "consent" before we get to "gun to the head" non-consent -- but it's seldom acknowledged. In other words, consent is seldom black and white.
If we want to make the term less ridiculous, consent should only be used when there's actual and considerable choice on the matter. Not when it's "that or immediate hunger/homelessness/etc."
Of course long term everybody could be homeless/hungry without a job, but there's a difference between a person choosing to work for company X after evaluating what they do, the salary, etc, and a person in some Asian town that has to go work to the nearby factory or else, or a non-college educated single mom in Alabama a week away from eviction, that latch-on to whatever they can get to survive.
>Nobody would sell themselves into slavery if they had a choice.
It actually used to be common in the Roman empire. It was effectively how you declared bankruptcy.
This is something to bear in mind any time anybody advocates strengthening creditors' rights (e.g. removing bankruptcy protections or making them more onerous). The logical end point of this process is actual, literal slavery.
Of course there is a freedom argument to it. The freedom to contract line of reasoning is faulty because it ignores relative bargaining power or desparation.
When you are worried you won't be able to pay the rent you are not likely to care much about non-competes and you will get yourself into a bad situation.
To use your extreme example, people that did give themselves into slavery (and yes this used to happen during roman times), usually did it because of hunger and desparation. And because living in a country that has widespread slavery it was impossible to get paid for most labor. Certainly they would have preferred if Rome had banned slavery and even had a minimum wage. Then they would be able to do similar work but be paid for it. I doubt they would have worried much that banning slavery limited their freedom to contract. In fact they would practically have much more freedom in a world that banned slavery, as they would be ordinary employees that would be free to do as they wished in their free time.
Well thought out worker protection laws do improve freedom for ordinary workers despite the technical reduction to the freedom to contract. The "freedom to contract" argument tends to get peddled by people and entities that have all the bargaining power.
Nonsense. "Freedom of contract" isn't some freedom that supersedes all other forms of freedom.
In fact, freedom from economic coercion due to highly asymmetric power relationships rates quite a bit higher than some silly "freedom of contract" which is way the hell down the list after freedom of personal safety, etc.
People should perhaps be free to create whatever informal contracts they want between themselves, but there is no "freedom" that entitles them to have their arbitrary contract enforced by the state.
When enforcing those contracts through coercion, the state denies the infringing party some freedom.
If non-competes are invalid by law, you're still free to sign one. Your freedom is uninhibited. What's inhibited is contract enforcement, i.e. the use of force to coerce people against their will. Calling contract enforcement a "freedom" is simply wrong.
That's absolutely not to say that contract enforcement isn't useful or desirable, but it clearly must be limited. If contract enforcement is unlimited then some people will end up singing contracts that put themselves into literal slavery and we prohibit that for a reason.
Agreed, these laws are more like anti-trust laws. Free market economics, according to its primary academic proponents (academic economists) is not the same as, nor is it even consistent with, the government enforcing arbitrary contracts.
I've observed that said economists don't fight to unchain their institutions for the overbearing tenure arrangements that restrict the free trade of professorships.
After all, wouldn't the university operate more efficiently with underpaid adjuncts?
Tenure if a contract between the employee and the university. It says nothing about the university's or the employee's relation to a third party. You're just going for a cheap shot by bringing up an unrelated gripe.
Since it's a contract, it's often unenforceable unless there is some kind of consideration. I believe in most states, if an employer asks you to sign a non-complete after you start work, it's unenforceable.
It's not a valid contract if they offer no consideration (they're demanding something of you but offering nothing in return). But they are a wealthy corporation with a powerful legal team and you are now unemployed, so they can count on you not being able to fight it. It's more like a threat than a contract - that they might be able to convince a court that it's a 'legal' agreement even if it's not a valid contract.
Noncompetes should be allowed only if the company offers to pay a minimum of market-rate salary for the duration (either what they were paying you or the best offer you've received, whichever is higher, to keep up with changes in market rates after you leave). That would then at least make it a valid contract.
But no company would want to do that, because then they'd have to pay everyone who quit or got fired for years afterward. And since the legal system is mostly controlled by corporations, that's unlikely.
The doctrine of "consideration" means that both sides have to be getting something out of a contract, or else it is not a contract at all. Lots of people have argued for or against it, and the main rationale is probably just the fact that it is traditionally defined that way. This is why you often see people selling things for nominal values like $1 or whatever.
Repugnant policies like this are an ongoing evolution of the profit motive. It's such a simple mechanism: profit motive -> investment in policy support -> weakened economic standing for the weaker players.
Vote for whom exactly? Obama has done very little for labor. Do you content Romney would of done a better job? Or that a 3rd party candidate is viable? That trend trickles down to the local level in my experience. The US is not a democracy anymore[0] more drastic action is required.
Politicians naturally drift to the issues that people will vote over. If the electorate cares about an issue, you'll see political action. In this sense, your parent comment is correct. Obama and hypothetical Romney aren't doing anything about this because it isn't a voting issue.
This is quite an interesting argument because except funding nothing prevents us from eliminating crime and poverty. The government is simply not interested in doing these things. They'd rather cater to the needs of their 'sponsors'.
I think it's kind of funny that politicans are not interested in their own country.
Why? I'm not interested in my country either, I'm interested in my own household. Why would politicians be any different, given that it's not their country, they're just temporary CEOs? (We know how well the CEO situation works for large companies.)
An absolute monarch might be interested in his country, because it's actually his property.
What would happen if an employer in Massachusetts offered me a job and asked me to sign a non-compete clause, and I said I wouldn't take the job if I had to sign a non-compete? Do you think they would back down? Or do you think they would say "too bad" and withdraw the offer?
My gut says that most of the time, they'll back down and take that off the table. But I guess it depends on whether you have a huge legal team backing you up...
Personally, I'm not in the habit of signing my rights away in return for a paycheck. I'll look around for another job, thankyouverymuch.
I've found companies to be very reasonable if you want to negotiate the terms up front, treating it like any other business deal (i.e. calmly and professionally).
That's the evil of these sorts of unconscionable contracts. As a potential employee, it's easy to be in a predicament that would force you to suck it up and accept ridiculous terms of employment.
Here's an honest question. Knowing that non-competes are bogus and unenforceable in California - why do most employers (including mine) feel the need to tack them onto offer letters?
Pretty much. They are hoping you don't know the law. They are also hoping that by encumbering you with one that a future poacher would know that they might have to spend money on lawyers to fight for you in case you get sued, even though they know you will win.
At the last few places I've worked I've found that all I had to do was smile as they handed me the non-compete and tell them that I would take it home, read it and return it signed. Then I'd take it home and trash it. The next time someone asks about it (usually every few months) I say "I'm sorry, I think I lost it, could you email it to me again?" and start the process over. I honestly hate to be that passive aggressive about it but I'm not 'rockstar' enough to just say no and expect to keep my job, and I also don't want to limit my future options.
This advice works in a surprisingly wide variety of situations. It's good to stick to principles and say "hell no!", but sometimes it's not worth a fight. It doesn't work with taxes, but certain problems just go away if you ignore it.
In situations like this, I put it on my long-term to-do list to get it off my mind. In a remarkable number of cases, I get to cross it off my list months later without having had any arguments.
That might not hold up in court. By showing up to work (and getting paid in return), there's an implicit contract.
I don't know enough about law (and neither do I know your jurisdiction), to say whether that implicit contract would include the non-compete they obviously wanted you to sign.
I'm sure you're right, but I think it would also be difficult for them to enforce if they couldn't produce a signed contract. If I were planning on, say, using trade secrets from my current employer to start a direct competitor stealing their biggest customers, then yeah I'm sure it wouldn't hold up in court - but I'm not going to do that. It's more a way for me to be able to honestly tell my next employer - who might be in the same ballpark industry, but probably not a direct competitor of my current employer - 'no, I did not sign a non-compete contract with them.'
> you can simply NOT tell your old employer that you got a new job.
You also have to avoid:
1) Telling your old co-workers
2) Mentioning or updating anything on social media. Even if you're not "friends" with old co-workers on e.g. Facebook, that information could still be leaked.
3) Giving any sort of talk where your employment might be leaked
4) Being at an industry event where your employment might be leaked
5) Being named on the company site, and thus your name showing up on a simple google search.
If your old employer is vindictive (which could be one reason you left), there are lots and lots of ways for them to find out where their former employee went to.
Being subtle will probably only keep your employment status hidden with the sorts of employers who aren't really making broad non-compete clauses to begin with (i.e. employers who don't care).
Whenever anyone at all asks you where you work, you just be evasive.
It doesn't matter about any of those, if just as a policy, whenever anyone at all asks where you work, you don't tell them.
Or you just talk in broad strokes/industry without specifically mentioning the name, and if your old employer "finds out" that you have another job, they still can't do anything because they don't know the specific employer.
> Whenever anyone at all asks you where you work, you just be evasive.
That's a pretty mentally taxing adjustment for most people to make.
It's also incredibly awkward when engaging in small talk with new people. Being evasive about answering where you work will lead to many presumptions (e.g. that you work for a 3 letter agency), few of which are very conducive to continuing a conversation.
Similarly I could just lie about where I work, but I think you can probably see how that's similarly taxing to do continuously.
The strongest enforcement might actually come from the new employer. The new employer will ask the job candidate what documents he's signed or restrictions he's under. If the candidate admits he's subject to a non-compete, he won't get hired.
Your discretion and/or fearlessness of lawsuits won't matter. The new employer isn't willing to risk it.
I've always wondered why Boston doesn't have a larger tech scene, seeing as we're home to MIT and Harvard (and more great colleges). Seems like many of the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc) have been opening offices here lately which is a good start.
Errm, anyone who thinks the Massachusetts hub didn't work hasn't been to Boston in the last three years. Wander round Kendall and Cambridge and look at the vast Biotech labs.
In an era of outsourcing and globalization, gig-economy and minimum wages that don't guarantee a living above the poverty line, it is stunning what politicians will do for support from rich lobby groups ( read corporations). About time the federal government intervened and banned what amounts to a non-free market for job seekers.
It wasn't about the PC vs the minicomputer. Ok Intel is based in Santa Clara, but the PC story was really about Microsoft.
It was the internet. Sun among others were pushing open standards, TCP/IP, and the internet while DEC tried to go proprietary with DECNet. It might not have paid off for Sun in the long term, but the industry in Bay Area was definitely pointed in the right direction.
Other states don't restrict job-hopping, they just stand by and don't interfere as the free market ends up having the effect of restricting job-hopping. Employees end up signing restrictive employment contracts, and states don't prohibit them from doing so. California has made a conscious decision that the economy overall works better if some kinds of private-sector contracts are prohibited, so it's restricted what can go into an employment contract to a greater degree than other states have (every state has some restrictions, e.g. in the modern era you can't sell yourself into indentured servitude, but some states are more restrictive than others).