the comment i was answering to was about a job were they added the NCA after the person was employed there for 20 years!!!
as far as your comment goes:
nope. Amazon cannot afford a legal battle for each and every one of their employees. Also Amazon knows they’re going to look really stupid if they do go the route of suing you. Only case where I have seen NCAs trying to be enforced is in case of high profile executives where they are actually trying to send a message more than enforce the NCA. It’s a stupid posturing game that rarely works.
>as far as your comment goes: nope. Amazon cannot afford a legal battle for each and every one of their employees. Also Amazon knows they’re going to look really stupid if they do go the route of suing you. Only case where I have seen NCAs trying to be enforced is in case of high profile executives where they are actually trying to send a message more than enforce the NCA.
Do you have any source whatsoever for this? Companies enforce non-competes all the time. Wall Street Journal thinks it is rising 60% over the last decade (2013)[0]. I think your experience of what you "have seen" is wildly out of touch with reality.
I tried to find a source supporting your position, that companies don't enforce non-competes, but couldn't. The best I found was this[1] article about one lawyer willing to take on NCA cases for employees on extreme-contingency arrangements, since he apparently practices in a state where fee agreements must be reciprocal (i.e., if there is a fee agreement in your NCA, you get your fees paid if you win). If you live in such a state and can get that man to represent you, great. Otherwise, as he describes:
>There have been several cases where we have invested $100,000 worth of attorney time and $10,000+ of hard, out-of-pocket costs to defend a poor or working class person against a bogus non-compete agreement. And there have been a couple cases where it’s gone far past that: $200,000+ in attorney time, $20,000+ worth of case expenses. I’m sorry, but no other lawyer in America does that. I’m the only one.
>In many of these cases, you will need to execute perfectly or you will lose. You have to make 100 perfect moves and the other side only has to get 1 thing right. It’s absurd. It’s messed up. But that’s how it is.
Now, in reply to you saying: "It’s a stupid posturing game that rarely works."
This individual does agree that in many cases the companies are posturing and will lose. But unless you can afford the $XX,XXX-$XXX,XXX to pay a lawyer to get there (or find a unicorn, like him, who will work on contingency), you lose by default. Whether you think it's a "stupid" move to posture or not, the companies do it, routinely, and at an increasing pace.
> Wall Street Journal thinks it is rising 60% over the last decade (2013)
Rising from what number to what number? How does that compare to how many employees Amazon has?
If it’s up to 5 from 3, that’s a completely different proposition than up to 5000 from 3000.
One easy thought experiment is to look at how many people have left Amazon in the last couple of years vs how many were sued. My anecdotal evidence says it’s an extremely low number and it’s usually top level executives.
BTW I am not approving of or justifying the behavior big corporations have. Far from it.
as far as your comment goes: nope. Amazon cannot afford a legal battle for each and every one of their employees. Also Amazon knows they’re going to look really stupid if they do go the route of suing you. Only case where I have seen NCAs trying to be enforced is in case of high profile executives where they are actually trying to send a message more than enforce the NCA. It’s a stupid posturing game that rarely works.