<story><title>Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading</title><url>https://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20220901/NEWS06/912352002/Laws-barring-noncompete-clauses-spreading</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>Over the years so many different jurisdictions around the US and the world have stated their desire to be the &amp;quot;next Silicon Valley&amp;quot; and have poured an immense amount of money and effort to make it so, whether in the form of incentives for businesses, tax breaks, education, job training, or even just straight paying smart people to move there. Every such scheme has generally failed because they refused to emulate the one key piece of California law that is necessary for a startup ecosystem to exist – banning noncompetes.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But I&amp;#x27;ll spend money to train my employees and they&amp;#x27;ll just take those skills to go work for a competitor or start their own business!&amp;quot; Yes, that&amp;#x27;s a feature of the system, not a bug.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bdw5204</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m fine with allowing non-competes as long as the company pays the ex-employee their full salary for the length of the non-compete and can&amp;#x27;t rescind the non-compete without mutual consent. For example, an 18 month non-compete would mean 18 months of paid vacation after you leave a job.&lt;p&gt;I imagine this would be functionally equivalent to a ban on non-competes because it seems like it&amp;#x27;d be an insane waste of money but if a company wants to provide a paid vacation on the way out I see no reason to stop them. Unpaid non-competes should be illegal as somebody&amp;#x27;s right to earn a living trumps a corporation&amp;#x27;s right to impose an unconscionable contract on its employees.</text></comment>
<story><title>Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading</title><url>https://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20220901/NEWS06/912352002/Laws-barring-noncompete-clauses-spreading</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>Over the years so many different jurisdictions around the US and the world have stated their desire to be the &amp;quot;next Silicon Valley&amp;quot; and have poured an immense amount of money and effort to make it so, whether in the form of incentives for businesses, tax breaks, education, job training, or even just straight paying smart people to move there. Every such scheme has generally failed because they refused to emulate the one key piece of California law that is necessary for a startup ecosystem to exist – banning noncompetes.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But I&amp;#x27;ll spend money to train my employees and they&amp;#x27;ll just take those skills to go work for a competitor or start their own business!&amp;quot; Yes, that&amp;#x27;s a feature of the system, not a bug.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>harry8</author><text>Beyond banning them de-jure you&amp;#x27;ve also got to ban them de-facto.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We all know non-competes are unenforceable and illegal.&amp;quot; &amp;lt;- Absolutely useless if you can end up in court. Using unenforceable rights as a deterrant is common and potential future employers get spooked by it even if it is illegal. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t hire Jill, Mary is almost as good and has no non-compete. Don&amp;#x27;t want to go to court even if its unenforceable.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;There are no consequences for forcing someone to have the stress, expense, time and to secure the financing so that if everything works as it should (which it often doesn&amp;#x27;t in all the various legal systems) you get only some of that back. If it doesn&amp;#x27;t work as it should you&amp;#x27;re toast. Not a nice thing to be hit with when the law is clearly designed that you should not be hit with anything at all.&lt;p&gt;For an individual or a startup it matters. For a large revenue incumbant they have people employed to abuse the system like that and the business expense of doing it is trivial, more than worth it. The law may exist so that the strongest do not always get their way - but this is an ideal with many exceptions including this one.&lt;p&gt;Ban away, but with no consequences for abuse and all measurements for the abused being the magnitude of the downside alone, no upside possible you don&amp;#x27;t get the result you&amp;#x27;re looking for.&lt;p&gt;Summary dismissal with costs, compensation and the potential to be branded a vexatious litigant so it is more difficult to bring any court action against anyone would be a real consequence for abusing the rules. Is the best one? Is it fair? Dunno. What we have now in most countries sure isn&amp;#x27;t.</text></comment>