
Send Noncompete Agreements Back to the Middle Ages - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-05/noncompete-agreements-are-bad-for-employees-and-the-economy
======
goatherders
I've had non competes at my last 3 jobs (all in web hosting)

The first, a darling "startup" adored by investors and customers alike sued me
twice, sent a process server to my door at 6am on a saturday and tried to call
me in for a deposition the afternoon of Christmas eve. They regularly win
company culture awards and receive undeserved praise for being a place people
can grow. I had a chance to grow from IC to VP and they did everything they
could legally do to stop me.

The second, a publicly traded hosting company that has battled negative public
perception for years had an EVP handle it wherein he basically said "sounds
like you are leaving for a great opportunity. We wish you and your family well
and you'll always be 'one of us.'"

The third company voluntarily and without my asking remover the non compete
from my separation paperwork.

Non competes are a disaster and always will be. But how companies enforce them
is the real culprit.

~~~
quickthrower2
What does the process server say? They are so glamorized in TV shows, lime
Suits where they deliver a Chinese takeaway!

~~~
goatherders
He said "I'm sorry, I know this is disruptive" as my two small children cried
behind me, unsure why someone had banged on the door so early in the morning.

------
chris_engel
Thank god the german law requires a NC clause to have a compensation directly
mentioned in the contract that is not allowed to be less than 60% the person
earned in the company in the last year she worked there. If the compensation
is missing or too low, the NC is against the law. In other words: if a company
wants me to not compete, they need to pay me for the time the NC is active.
Its also limited to a maximum of 1 year.

~~~
BonesJustice
60%? Forget that. Why should anyone give up their right to work for a little
over half of their market value?

There is no excuse for allowing less than 100% compensation, and that should
include not just salary, but projected bonuses.

~~~
chii
It's not like the specific job is the only thing you can do - there are other
jobs that don't break the NC. 100% is too high, and 50% is too low. But the
amount should be negotiable for each person.

~~~
BonesJustice
You are most valuable in a position that leverages your existing skills and
expertise. Those positions are the most likely to be covered by NCAs.

Not only is 100% _not_ too much, but it’s the _minimum_ that should be
required. The cost of requiring a NCA should be high; that ensures they are
only used when they are _really_ worth it to the employer.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> You are most valuable in a position that leverages your existing skills and
> expertise.

Exactly. So per the non-compete, you'd have to take a position where you are
only 40% as valuable as you could be—and the 60% noncompete makes up the
difference.

~~~
cialowicz
What about the opportunity loss that results from taking a less relevant job
with worse career prospects?

~~~
mcv
That sounds like a bad idea, but you could also take it as an opportunity to
develop in a new direction and build some experience there.

It's probably a bad deal for people who are extremely specialised and want to
stay that way, but it'd be a pretty good deal for people like me, who love an
excuse to learn something new.

------
grellas
Non-competes under U.S. law are neither all good nor all bad. They have their
legitimate uses but these are the narrow cases and not the norm.

For example, you sell a business to someone who pays you a big premium for
your goodwill value usually tied to the value of the customer base. It is
entirely fair that, having taken the money in exchange for the sale of your
goodwill interest, you not be able to turn around the day after the close and
effectively steal it back from your buyer by setting up a competing business
and conducting raids to get back your old customers. A reasonable restriction
on your ability to compete in that case makes eminent sense and is not in any
way unfair.

So too if you exit a professional practice and get bought out. Same principle.
You get paid for the goodwill value and you should not be able to capitalize
on the payment and simultaneously raid the goodwill of your former practice by
competing against it. Fair and reasonable even though it restricts you in your
livelihood.

Thus, even states like California, which basically ban the use of non-competes
in an employment context, will fully enforce them in the situations noted
above.

On the bad side, non-competes tend to operate unfairly and to burden ex-
employees by preventing them from engaging in their normal livelihood even
when they have been paid nothing for the privilege. Many jurisdictions do
enforce them in that context and the only way to challenge them is to argue
that they are unreasonably broad, which (if fought out) takes a tidy six-
figure sum to prove in court.

So, yeah, all jurisdictions _should_ adopt the California rule that largely
bans non-competes in an employment context. But I don't see this happening
anytime soon.

In the meantime, as an employee, you should try to avoid these if you can,
negotiate to be paid for any non-compete if you have the leverage, or, if you
have no choice, live with them as best you can until the law comes to a better
place. As long as the law enforces them, you are sometimes just stuck.

~~~
georgeecollins
There are many incentives available to prevent the seller of a company (and
the employees) to not run out and start a competitor. You can give them shares
that vest over time. You can offer them employment in the new company. You can
make various offers contingent on the performance of the sold company.

~~~
cornellwright
Given that these NCs are generally negotiated as part of the sale of the
company I don't really see a problem. If what you're being offered isn't worth
agreeing not to compete then keep negotiating or walk away.

------
munk-a
One of the most insidious portions of non-competes IMO is that they are often
non-enforceable. Depending on how wide or restricted the target of the non-
compete is it can be ruled invalid. A lot of the more questioning people have
probably discovered this but consider that there are probably janitors laid
off by amazon who read their non-competes as the word of law and end up
suffering hardships because of it.

Also, as an aside, a non-compete is not required to prevent corporate
espionage, it's just easier to prove violation of. A lot of the sales teams
worried about losing leads when team members departed could have pursued them
with law suits focusing on the theft of corporate resources, it's regrettable
non-competes have even gotten this far.

~~~
wpietri
From the perspective of any normal employee, "non-enforceable" doesn't matter.
That I can eventually win in court doesn't matter if I can't afford the time,
money, and stress to get that ruling.

Exactly the goal, I'm sure, of the people writing up these agreements.

~~~
paulie_a
From the perspective of the normal employee they should understand they pretty
much won't be enforced. The threat will be made. And then no follow up.

~~~
wpietri
Maybe. Or maybe they're willing to go to court, make you get a lawyer, drag
you through discovery, depose you, set a court date to force you to prep for
trial, and then offer to settle at the last minute.

For a large company, that's a small amount of money and a modest amount of
time. For the normal employee, it's a lot of unexpected expense, a great deal
of stress for months, and the risk of owing a shit-ton of money at the end of
it.

If you really think there's no risk to ignoring non-competes, presumably you
should be willing to guarantee the legal expenses for someone who wants to
try. But my guess is that you won't offer.

~~~
stale2002
Sure. But it a company wants to sue you just for the hell of it, then whether
or not you signed a non-compete is irrelevant. Maybe you negotiated this out
of your contract, but they decide to sue you anyway.

The better solution to all of this is not to "ignore" the non compete risk, it
is instead be to simply lie to your former employer.

What are they going to do? Hire a private investigator to track down all ex
employees, to see if they have another job? Probably not.

It is pretty easy to get away with this stuff if an employee really feels like
it.

~~~
wpietri
The notion is not that you get sued for the hell of it. It's that you get sued
for commercial advantage. You get sued to make an example of somebody, so that
all the employees know they'll ruin somebody if they find out they're working
for a competitor.

That somebody has decent odds of getting away with something is only relevant
if the punishment not terrible. But a 95% chance of not getting sued is not
great if when you are sued it's $100k in expenses and two years of incredible
stress.

Will some people do it anyhow? Sure. But most people won't, and that's what
bullshit noncompetes are after.

------
rrggrr
Q: I'm willing to pay you $100,000 to sign a non-compete to work on the
project with my company. If I don't pay, the non-compete isn't valid. Okay?

A: No.

Q: $500,000?

A: No.

Q: $1m?

A: No.

Q: $10m?

A: Yes.

The point being... the problem is _NOT_ non-competes. The problem is the
exchange of value. They serve a useful purpose in support of business risk-
taking and investment.

Make them fair, not unenforceable.

~~~
whatshisface
Terms become unenforceable when it's recognized by the courts that one party
has so much negotiating power that true negotiations are impossible. A
software engineer in the middle of SV might be able to demand $100k to sign a
noncompete, but who else?

~~~
dunpeal
A candidate demanding another $100k on top of a fair offer, whether to sign a
non-compete or for any other reason, is not going to get the offer.

There's a myth that SV engineers can demand whatever they want and get it. No,
they can't. If I get an offer for $200k, and that's actually my market value,
and I demand another $100k for any reason whatsoever - I won't get them,
period.

NCAs aren't legal in California, but if they were, and some smartass decided
to demand another $100k cash to sign them, I guarantee he'd just get a pass,
and someone less smartass would get the job instead.

~~~
sidlls
It's interesting that you use the pejorative "smartass" and imply the demand
is unreasonable. This couldn't be a clearer example of the low social status
engineers have.

~~~
dunpeal
I'm actually an engineer :-)

I used "smartass" because it's a move that superficially seems clever, but is
actually completely futile when you look at the broad picture - as my comment
shows.

I don't know if us engineers have "low social status", but we certainly don't
have as much negotiating power as some of us may fancy, certainly not against
a huge mega-corporation.

~~~
logfromblammo
All other things being equal, businesses will hire the candidate that they can
potentially abuse before the one that may righteously push back. So if you are
one who _would_ negotiate the terms of a non-compete, you will not even get
the opportunity until all those who will just blindly sign it have been given
the chance to do so.

The smart-ass part is signaling that you're less-abusable before the decision
is made on hiring you.

The devious move would be to play dumb in the domain of HR paperwork, and
delay signing anything. Just say you need to review it in private and make a
copy, pocket the paper, and never give it back, or even bring it up again. Or
mark up the document to completely pull its teeth, sign that, and turn it in
with a stack of other paperwork. HR will probably just file it and tick their
checkbox for it, without even flagging it for review by legal.

~~~
mehrdadn
How do you do this when the signature happens online rather than on paper?

~~~
whatshisface
Try sending them physical documents? Maybe they have a fax machine.

~~~
logfromblammo
If they don't have a fax, they still have a mailing address. If you can print
out the document, you can alter it before sending it back. But going outside
the normal workflow invites human scrutiny, so anything you do there has to be
above-board.

You could always add some words to your digital signature, like "this is not a
contract", or "I refuse these terms", if that's the only way you could
otherwise edit the document. If it's an automated system, it's likely that
there is no human review until the documents are actually needed for some
legal reason. By that time, you'll already have your money.

You could also try hacking the document system. The worst that could happen is
that you don't get to work there. Second worst is that months or years into
your new job, some HR person notices a discrepancy, and wants you to sign a
fresh copy, or you're fired immediately. Try sending back a document that has
_lorem ipsum_ generated text or Markov chain text with the appropriate
paragraph lengths? They're probably counting on you just clicking the buttons,
maybe typing out your full legal name, and automatically filling the
checkboxes with green checkmarks. Putting all of it into an automated system
is already a means of cutting corners on legal paperwork. You can easily
outsmart the computer, if there's no human helping it.

------
tristor
In 2016, there was a White House initiative to ban non-compete agreements. The
comment thread there from my parent is still the most active comment thread
I've participated in on HN. It may be worth reading for a re-hashing of all
the various sides of the debate.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12795119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12795119)

------
hellbanner
Hah. I interviewed for a [growing in popularity and market share] top 20
cryptocoin. They had some curious choice of words in their "freelance"
contract, notably that it would use German copyright law to transfer rights of
all inventions I ever made.

I pointed out that a couple of the phrases in the contract, when combined,
indicated they would have IP rights to EVERYTHING I did not just work they
paid me for.

They moved on to another candidate.

~~~
masklinn
> Hah. I interviewed for a [growing in popularity and market share] top 20
> cryptocoin. They had some curious choice of words in their "freelance"
> contract, notably that it would use German copyright law to transfer rights
> of all inventions I ever made.

IANAL but I _really_ doubt that would be legal under german IR/IP laws.

------
samstave
I would love to see a spoof where a middle age serf is going to move to a new
farm, but his current lord forces him to sign a contract which precludes the
serf from using his wheat farming skills for the new lord who is the current
lords political competition.

~~~
nraynaud
nice try but serves were attached to the land by nature.

~~~
samstave
Well, tying your labor force to the land should be no basis for a free
economy!

Imagine, just shackling your primary economic labor force to an arbitrary plot
of land and demanding taxes and work of them?! How ghastly.

Next thing you know, you'll be claiming right to their innovations in the
advancement of farming technology. Ill have you know that I shall not be
sharing MY designs for soil improvement through the addition of various rock
powders and animal droppings for a greater yield in the annual barley
production with this stingy, short-sighted lord. That's for sure.

And don't get me started on Johnson's idea about switching out the types of
crops grown between plots. There is no way I am going to share ___THAT_ __idea
with a lord who limits __ _MY_ __ability to migrate between estates!

~~~
nraynaud
Who cares, the lord will be gone at the next reversal of alliance.

~~~
samstave
If you haven't already watched it, I would expect you would like the spoof on
"Vikings" called "Norsemen" on Netflix.

------
deogeo
Odd that Right to Work laws don't ban non-competes. </sarcasm>

Edit: Added tags, just in case.

~~~
cperciva
I don't see the connection. Right to Work laws say that workers can't be
_forced_ to join a union. They don't say that workers can't _voluntarily_ join
a union; so why should they say that workers can't voluntarily sign a non-
compete?

~~~
deogeo
Why should laws say employers can't voluntarily sign a union security
agreement [0]?

There's no force involved in either case - workers can _choose_ not to work at
a union shop, just like they can choose* not to work under a non-compete.

*Until it becomes impossible to find a place without a non-compete.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-
work_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

~~~
cperciva
_Why should laws say employers can 't voluntarily sign a union security
agreement?_

Because (at least pre-Hobby-Lobby) laws have historically prioritized the
rights of individuals over the rights of corporations. An employer which
compels their employees to join a union is signing away the rights of those
employees, while an employee who signs a non-compete is only signing away
their _own_ rights.

~~~
deogeo
The compulsion in both cases is _exactly_ the same - pay union dues/sign non-
compete, or find a new job.

~~~
cperciva
You can negotiate with an employer over the terms of the non-compete you sign.

If the employer has a mandatory unionization agreement, you can't negotiate
with them to change the terms of that.

~~~
deogeo
Sure you can - just invite the union to the negotiating table. Any contract
can be changed if all parties agree. Or even simpler - ask for a pay raise in
the exact amount of the union dues.

~~~
cperciva
Asking for a pay raise to cover the union dues is a red herring -- unions do
far more than merely collect dues from their members.

~~~
deogeo
As do employers, so I fail to see your point.

------
ryandrake
While we are at it, let’s also send anti-moonlighting clauses into the abyss
and drastically scale back IP-assignment clauses too! One’s employer should
have no control over what you do on your own time using your own brain and
equipment at home. All large companies I’ve worked for include such garbage
and they are never open to negotiate them out. These clauses stifle innovation
and actively deter entrepreneurship.

------
neilwilson
The UK approach is as ever very reasonable.

“To rely on a restrictive covenant in a contract of employment an employer
needs to be able to show that it is designed to protect a legitimate business
interest (e.g. goodwill or confidential information); and goes no further than
is reasonably necessary to protect that interest.”

Any more than that and it is unenforceable.

Enforcement is in Employment Tribunals not courts where the burden of proof is
largely on the employer.

------
dhbradshaw
Have a friend who makes crowns etc. for dentists. He took a job here in town
working for two dentists. They hired some junior folk and had him train them
and then fired him.

He tried to start his own business so they sued him with a noncompete. They
claimed thousands of dentists as their territory and the judge became angry
with them but in the end the noncompete crippled his ability to make a living
for years.

~~~
dhbradshaw
On the flip side, I have another friend who was brought into a small town for
a small branch of a medical-related practice. After awhile, he joined with the
other guys in town and they started their own thing.

They actually did buy the business from the group who had brought them out,
but it was a bit of a forced sale because there was no legal way for the group
to stop them.

------
dawhizkid
If I work for an employer based outside of CA but work out of a CA-satellite
office, am I still subject to any non-compete?

~~~
munk-a
Also, if complying with the non-compete would introduce a hardship there is
usually a way to just ignore it entirely.

So, let's say you're a database specialist picked up to tune someone's DB,
part of the contract you sign (probably unwisely) states that you can't work
tuning DBs for the next 6 months after signing. If, after two weeks at the
job, layoffs happen and you're let go then it's likely that a judge would
dismiss any enforcement of the non-compete.

But here's why this _is terrible_ either you need to secure a waiver of the
non-compete from the company based on goodwill in advance (which the company
has very little motivation of doing) or you could consult with a legal expert
about the validity of the non-compete (for the cash monies) or you find a new
job and hope no enforcement is attempted with the onus on you to defend your
new employment if the company decides to pursue you (which they very rarely
do)

So it's basically like pirating music in the 90s, there's a thousandth of a
percent chance that some company is going to try to ruin your life over it,
and if they try there's another thousandth of a percent chance they'll
succeed. But if they do, it is _terrible_.

~~~
dmurray
> there's a thousandth of a percent chance that some company is going to try
> to ruin your life over it, and if they try there's another thousandth of a
> percent chance they'll succeed. But if they do, it is _terrible_.

Perhaps you're exaggerating for effect, or perhaps you really don't understand
the probabilities involved. But this is many orders of magnitude less likely
than you getting killed by a meteor strike. E.g. something like [0] estimates
a 10km meteor strike every 10 million years. That has (optimistically) a 50%
survival rate for humans and you will live 50 more years, so 1 in 400,000
chance it gets you.

If you don't like the meteor calculation, you can look at the odds of, say, a
murder in your area and both the judge and all the members of the jury are
convinced you did it despite your alibi to the contrary. Maybe a million to
one. Or, you know, something a thousand times more likely, like you get
diagnosed with a rare untreatable form of cancer and have a year to live.
Maybe 1000 to 1.

Either way, if that's what you think of your non-compete it's not worth
worrying about.

[0]
[http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.ht...](http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm)

~~~
munk-a
I was indeed being hyperbolic but hey, I just learned about meteor strikes.

My intention was poorly portrayed but to try again, in all my years I've never
known anyone who has been sued over a non-compete, a good chunk of those
people have been software developers and most software developers sign non-
competes these days, usually in overly broad topics (and I do know a bunch of
people who have continued to work within the same relatively narrow industry).

Non-competes are nearly never enforced but their presence has a chilling
effect, those of us aware of their unenforceablity and lack of attempts at
enforcement generally waive off the consequences of signing them. People who
are less familiar take them more seriously and they can have a real chilling
effect, so their mere existence creates an imbalance in seeking future work.

~~~
ghaff
I am aware of sufficient enforcements (admittedly second hand) to assume that
at least certain firms are quite serious about pursuing them up to and
including people basically looking to have a similar role at either another
firm or independently.

But, yes, the chilling effect is much broader.

------
AtlasBarfed
These aren't the free markets the ultrarich are interested in.

Actually, America doesn't care much for free markets at all, which is why
virtually all industries are monopolies or cartels.

------
drawkbox
Non-competes, the most anti-innovation, anti-skilled worker, anti-free market,
anti-business and anti-American thing in working today.

Non-competes are protectionism for larger businesses over small/medium
businesses and try to own employees skills that they may have brought to the
company or client themselves.

As a freelancer, contractor and self-employed business owner/worker, please
make these illegal, tired of these.

The worst part about non-competes is they are blanket protectionism usually
and up to 2+ years of non-compete, this sometimes happens on a job that is
only 1-3 months. You have to laugh at those types of situations. Usually the
client will push them aside or lower the time to the job plus some time, but
both non-competes and arbitration agreements are horrible for workers in
today's economy where people change jobs frequently and many are self-
employed/freelancing/contracting. NDAs are plenty enough to protect companies
from clients and work done specifically for the projects.

After SCOTUS upheld arbitration agreements [1] I am worried if non-competes
become fully legal which they are not in extreme cases except in California
[2]. We need to move the way of California and make them null and illegal, it
hasn't stopped innovation in CA and may be a big reason why so much innovation
goes on in Cali.

The non-compete should not exist. At the core, removing competition from
skilled workers in our economy is bad all around, unless you are one of the
current big fish.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-
up...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds-
workplace-arbitration-contracts.html)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/noncompete-
claus...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/noncompete-clauses.html)

------
tanbog
"In Great Britain, courts generally endorsed NCAs so long as they remained
“reasonable” -- a quality that was very much in the eye of the beholder."

Legally speaking, reasonable refers to "The man on the Clapham omnibus" and is
a standard test in many jurisdictions. It is NOT the same thing as the general
use of the term in the English language. AT least in Great Britain and most
Commonwealth countries.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person)

------
londons_explore
> They also determined that patenting rates -- a useful proxy for innovation
> -- dropped after the change.

In a place where non-compete agreements are not allowed, patenting ideas is a
neat way to prevent your employees leaving and then doing the exact same thing
for a competitor.

Where non-competes are allowed, patenting things is far less important, since
employees won't be able to jump ship with your ideas easily.

~~~
swish_bob
This really isn't true. Generally patents are used to prevent your competitors
deliberately reverse engineering your innovation and selling it (which isn't
_generally_ all that hard), and (by very large companies) to have something to
negotiate with when you inevitably discover you're violating a patent you were
unaware of, since at this point you dig for the patent your competitor is
accidentally violating and come to an agreement to license them back to each
other in exchange for not suing.

------
Nasrudith
Really the problem is the laws themselves are basically embezzling. The
government is paying to make society worse for the benefit of wealthy actors.
In no world does that make sense - it is corruption plain and simple.

Like other such laws the beneficiaries should be told to go fuck themselves as
a matter of good management alone.

------
tareqak
I think you could sort of argue that non-compete agreements are a sort of
price-control in favor of companies that write add them into their employment
contracts. These companies are effectively trying to both lower the costs of
their hiring, and make it cheaper for themselves to compete against their
competitors.

------
StillBored
What surprised me most about a recent job offer I got from one of the big SV
companies, was just how restrictive and limiting they were.

Sure, they didn't have a traditional non-compete as such, but they had layers
of code of conducts and the like which basically made it a firing offense to
do anything that wasn't effectively invisible. I turned them down for a number
of reasons. But the general "your our slave, and you will suffer and regret
doing anything outside of work" sure didn't help much. The idea that I might
have to take down my github account, or fill out piles of paperwork to
continue helping a non-profit I am involved in was just too much (combined
with the fact that basically nothing was negotiable other than RSU's).

------
mongodude
NCs are a legacy management technique that needs to be replaced with
continuous innovation, better work culture and a mentality to innovate or die!

------
tamersalama
Anyone know what the state of NC in Canada is?

------
yellowapple
I feel like the proliferation of non-compete agreements is counterproductive
even from a practical standpoint. Sure, you get to prevent your employees from
jumping ship to your competitors, but your competitors are doing the same
thing. Better to be against them even for short-term gains, let alone long-
term.

------
vivaamerica
This is ironic for Bloomberg as it has a clause in its contract banning
"influencing current employees to work for competitors" for a period of 3
years after an employee leaves the firm.

Source: I am ex-Bloomberg employee.

------
xtat
The idea this this is a silicon valley thing is funny to me since I didn't get
asked to sign one until I came out here, and then when I refused the other
party freaked out.

------
earn
There's a new tactic non-supervisory coworkers can use to escape their non-
compete BEFORE leaving their job, at noncompetes.org.

------
kryogen1c
> But the history of these covenants suggests that there’s a strong economic
> case for banning them entirely

This is an example of starting to make a good point and carrying to an extreme
that makes it unreasonable. Non-competes exist for a reason, and saying they
need to be deleted is a silly argument. "This common business practice could
use modification" generates less clicks, I suppose. <Insert rant about
journalism>

~~~
LanguageGamer
What, to your mind, are good reasons for non-competes? To me it just looks
like rent-seeking.

Do you see any negative consequences in states that have banned them almost
entirely, such as California?

~~~
TallGuyShort
In some cases an employee might be able to build up a base of loyal customers
more easily with a larger firm than they could alone, leave and take much of
that business with them, and enjoy the continued productivity with much higher
margins. The resources of the larger firm then become a stepping stone to the
loss of their own business.

I know of one case (in which I am actually mostly sympathetic to the
individual bound by the non-compete) in which that's actually exactly what
happened.

~~~
lordnacho
If the customers prefer a new business, that suggests non-competes are
damaging, just like the article says.

We can all see why the company wants the clause, but it's equally clear that
it's in society's interest to not allow it.

~~~
TallGuyShort
There's an actual cost the company is trying to avoid though, and that actual
cost will have to go somewhere eventually. Either it will actually result in
companies having higher overhead to maintain their business, or the employees
who used to have non-competes having to pay for some of the firm's business
generation one way or another.

Reminder that the question was "what are good reasons...", which suggests that
not everyone knows why the company wants them, unless you assume all companies
are inherently evil which is not reasonable. They invest in their brand.
Employees get the benefit of that to help establish their own brand. And then
they can take that brand elsewhere to the detriment of the original investor.

------
your-nanny
non competes are incompatible with free Enterprise, and incompatible with
social democracy. yeah send them back

~~~
maxxxxx
A lot of people seem to think that "free enterprise" means that companies can
do whatever they want and that that's somehow always good for employees. Same
for "Right to Work".

~~~
cryptonector
So? Free enterprise is still a term of art.

------
baron816
I’m not convinced NCs are always bad for workers. There are lots of junior
SWEs out there who can’t get jobs because no company wants to hire them and
pay to train them just to watch them leave for more money once they become
productive.

There was once a time when I would have happily signed an NC since the
alternative was unemployment.

~~~
perfunctory
There was once a time when I would have happily become a slave, since the
alternative was starvation.

