
Interns’ Job Prospects Constrained by Noncompete Agreements - pgodzin
https://www.wsj.com/articles/interns-job-prospects-constrained-by-noncompete-agreements-11561800600?mod=rsswn
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lawrenceyan
Luckily noncompetes are illegal in California. The Bay Area/Silicon Valley
wouldn’t be what it is today without the freedom to move between different
companies and/or start your own company yourself.

Edit: _illegal_ should be replaced with _non-enforceable_ as mentioned below.
Initially I didn't see any difference between the two words, but I can
appreciate the nuance in meaning now based on hedora's provided example.

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hedora
Non-competes are unenforceable in California, not illegal.

By reading this message, you agree not to accept employment in technology-
related firms for the next 25 years.

(This comment doesn’t violate the law, it just isn’t worth the electrons it’s
written in in a court of law.)

~~~
staticautomatic
There are situations in which non-competes are enforceable in CA, just not for
regular employees. For instance, if you sell a company you own in part or
whole, a non-compete with the acquirer is enforceable.

~~~
staticautomatic
Idk why anyone is down voting me. I consult on lawsuits for a living and
recently worked on one where all the parties, lawyers, and the judge agreed
that the non-compete was both valid and enforceable in exactly this situation.

~~~
your-nanny
because voting on HN is broken.

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your-nanny
-2 I should be proud. hn's voting system is trash and they do their best to make everyone look the other way. kind of dystopian.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop this? It's strictly noise, and we're trying for better
signal/noise, not worse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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oezi
In Germany non-competes are legal but restricted by law as follows:

\- max 2 years

\- employer has to continue to pay at least 50% of the salary the employee
last earned for the duration of the non-compete.

\- cannot non-compete minors

\- must provide reasonable argument for the non-compete (hard for interns)

I think this is a good balance.

~~~
walshemj
Do you work in HR? not sure max of 2 years is a Good Balance.

Especially if you can stop some one after leaving there first low payed job to
not work for 2 years on 50% of their starting salary - do you not see the
potential to abuse young workers here

~~~
oezi
The 2 years is a good balance for highly skilled employees who carry
competitive information such as customer contacts or technology. After that
time the information is likely mostly worthless anyway.

I agree that for interns the situation is not good but believe the
"reasonable" provision is most likely to make a non-compete with an intern
worthless in court.

~~~
walshemj
You do know that non competes are not for protecting trade secrets right?

You wouldn't get a 2 year non compete for a FSTE 100 CEO in the UK to stand up
in court.

A

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threwawasy1228
It is really to the detriment of the states that allow it. I constantly feel
as though due to noncompetes I will be forced to make a move to California in
order to further my career on any reasonable timeline. I can't actually know
that I will want to stay at a company many years until after I sign the
noncompete, but then it is much too late and the noncompete is in effect. If I
don't want to be chained to a specific company possibly killing my career
progression, I have to be extremely careful.

It is things like this that are severely slowing tech growth outside of the
bay. Since there are no noncompetes, the chains have to be crafted with
positive incentives instead of negative incentives, causing developer salaries
and benefits to go up rapidly.

~~~
Nasrudith
It really is a tragedy of selfishness. The economy would be better overall but
the vested interests want non-competes. The best thing federally that would
draw heavy backlash would be to abolish non-competes federally.

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hluska
I wish that someone would put up a website where interns can share what
company they slave for, how much/if they get paid, and whether stuff like this
goes on. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would prefer not giving money to
companies that do things like this.

~~~
aripickar
The cscq intern salary sharing thread is pretty good for that

~~~
dentemple
you mean the _Brag About My FAANG TC_ threads?

~~~
lawrenceyan
The values are generally accurate at least.

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Palomides
a summer internship I did had a 1 year noncompete and we own your IP contract;
when I asked about it, they basically said it would be too inconvenient for
them to change it at all, and it was fine, all the other interns were fine
with it, just sign...

I did, of course, since it was too late for me to have any leverage and I
really needed it for my resume.

~~~
garmaine
Cross out the terms you disagree with, initial the changes, and then sign.

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jammygit
In Canada, I had to sign a noncompete for my internship. Also couldn't have
side projects. Made me pretty uncomfortable.

~~~
lixtra
Did you challenge that, before you signed?

Edit: When my employer tried to retrospectively claim ownership of side
projects through a change of policy I got the wording changed to concern work
projects or projects during work time. I doubt the original wording would have
been enforceable in my jurisdiction, though.

~~~
saagarjha
Where do you live, and what was your employer?

~~~
hedora
A non-CA startup once tried to get me to sign a non compete for an internship.
It would have forced me to resign a position at the university that was the
reason they wanted to hire me in the first place. I pointed that out, and they
immediately escalated to the founder, and replaced the internship contract.
The old one was boilerplate that they cut and pasted from some other document.

They were pretty apologetic, actually.

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droithomme
Wow I had no idea interns were being forced to sign noncompetes.

That is exceptionally unreasonable and unconscionable.

~~~
antoineMoPa
I'm in QC/Canada and I signed a non-compete for my 4 (paid) internships. This
is pretty normal here.

~~~
closeparen
So your internships were all with the same company? Or you violated them in
taking subsequent internships?

~~~
antoineMoPa
The non-competes were limited to a specific industry.

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jonathankoren
From a practical standpoint, does anyone actually enforce the noncompetes
against regular employees? It never struck me as worth the money and bad press
to enforce something like this against an intern or regular line engineer or
manager.

~~~
cwbrandsma
For small tech companies it is a nuclear option. Unless everyone hates the
employee it will only go badly.

For instance: a tech company I used to work for, a well liked employee left to
go work for a company he used to consult for. The owner threatened hard to
sue. It made the papers, the lawsuit alone would have ended us, but now local
companies didn’t want to sign either because our reputation tanked, and many
of the employees threatened to quit.

~~~
jonathankoren
That’s kind of my point. It seems like it will on backfire, thus leaving it at
a lot of bluster, but no one actually enforcing it, which then just encourages
everyone else to leave as well, and then the threat is revealed to be a paper
tiger.

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walshemj
Tek mountains hr seem incompetent. You don't stop disclosure of trade secrets
with a non compete agreement.

~~~
human20190310
And now they're famous as well.

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chronic7382
> Ms. Dunne said she was given the agreement on her first day. “I had no idea
> what I signed, they didn’t explain it to me.”

Found the problem.

~~~
geofft
Absolutely agreed - contracts you're asked to sign without the opportunity for
a lawyer to review should be considered invalid/under duress. They're
basically like EULAs you only see after you've opened the package and
forfeited the right to return the software.

~~~
pgodzin
I don't think having to retain a lawyer just to sign an internship offer is
ideal either. There should be some guardrails that some things are simply
unenforceable and you don't need to get a lawyer involved.

~~~
geofft
If there are millions of college kids who all need contract review within the
span of a few days in the spring, I would expect the market to adapt in some
way. The most likely, I think, is that employers (at least employers within an
industry) would settle on some boilerplate contract, and law firms would let
you upload a contract to their website, have a script run a diff, and come
back "Yes, this is in fact the boilerplate contract, here is our plain-English
summary" or "No, here's how it differs, you can retain us at normal rates to
explain the diff or you can push back on your employer." (They could charge
you a few bucks, or they could just have the cost of reviewing this year's
boilerplate contract be paid by the employers, who are incentivized to
successfully and legally hire interns.)

The more interesting question is whether if everyone knows there's a non-
compete and it's the industry standard, there will be any more effective
pushback... now that I think of it, I worry there may be _less_ if contracts
get mechanically standardized.

