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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

How do you sign something first and then complain when it gets enforced? Even if she wouldn't get fired from her next job, her getting another job in a field covered by non-compete already shows that she didn't pay attention to her obligations and easily violated them.

I have been in this situation myself: a company that wanted to hire me presented me with a non-compete agreement. I naively think that I should expect contracts and obligations that I sign to actually be upheld by all involved parties, including myself. If I signed it, nobody would fire me from another position — because I don't violate contracts that I sign, and I wouldn't apply for another position in the same field.

Instead, I declined to sign it in the current form, explained my problems with it to an HR, and one day later got an edited agreement that had a non-compete with a reduced scope (only companies making similar products).

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The problem happens when you accept a job offer, quit your previous job, then during new hire orientation you are given a stack of "standard HR forms" to sign. You are never told "Take these home and have your lawyer look them over" (how many of us even have a lawyer?), and are given the impression that everything is boilerplate.

On top of that, you always run the risk (however small) that the company's response to your red-lines will be "you're fired".

That's usually part of the employment contract, so it's not something you'll be shown after having gotten hired, and if it was, it would have even less standing than if the clause was included in the employment contract.

When I got hired by Microsoft, I was specifically told to get a lawyer to review the contract before I sign it. I did and my lawyer promptly told me the same at the person here, which is that the two non-compete clauses were so broad as to be unenforceable.

When a "partner company" to my MSFT division kept hiring our staff, Microsoft didn't try to enforce the non-competes, but instead threatened to sue the partner if they kept at it.

> That's usually part of the employment contract, so it's not something you'll be shown after having gotten hired, and if it was, it would have even less standing than if the clause was included in the employment contract.

It would, if we weren't living in a world where courts had consistently held that things like this changing the employment contract after it begins are just as valid, because continued employment is sufficient consideration for them to be valid (the exception would be if the original employment contract had, e.g., a set term, but that's unusual.)

People really need to learn that there's no such thing as a boilerplate contract, everything is up for negotiation, and when somebody tells you to sign something and not worry about it because "we never enforce that anyway" then they're either bullshitting you or they're complete idiots.

This sort of thing ought to be taught in high school, along with other basic adult concepts like how to get a bank account, how credit cards work, how to vote, and how to pay taxes.

It's bizarre how such important things are left to each person to learn on their own on an ad hoc basis.

I don't think I really gained a good understanding of contracts until my first employer out of university sent me on a 3 day course on contracts.

The fact that a contract is very much a legally binding document that you can't easily walk away from is not given nearly enough emphasis in the UK school system.

> How do you sign something first and then complain when it gets enforced?

Reminds me of the plot from "The Merchant of Venice".

Suppose you are in a desperate situation where you absolutely needs work: would you start to complaining about imoral demands on the contract or shut up and take the job?

That is why non-compete agreements for employees are not enforceable in most jurisdictions - Shylock can't take his pound of flesh.

What if the contract is illegal and unenforceable? Then they aren't really obligations are they?

I've certainly done this. Signed a contract, with provisions that I knew were 100% illegal, and then months later, after I left and they tried to enforce the contract, I told them to fuck off, because the contract was unenforceable and they knew it.

A court has to decide that. The employer likely has more resources than you and can tie you up wasting time and money in proceedings. That is the real issue behind this article. This company decided it was in their best interests to make an example of this person, and now she's unemployed.

What's a company going to do? Sue me? Chances are they won't even know if I'm working at another company, as I can just choose to not update my LinkedIn.

Companies can do stuff like this to a few, limited , number of people. But anybody can get under the radar extremely easily, if they so choose.

The problem is non-competes have become an almost universal part of the employment process, and if they were ever enforced at scale, would bring the U.S. economy to a screeching halt. And it is becoming increasingly difficult for employees to negotiate these agreements and remain employed.

The only thing keeping it from becoming a crisis already is selective enforcement. If every corporation suddenly decided to enforce all of their non-competes, the job market would collapse.

I agree with you; people need to take this stuff seriously!

Just after I started university in Ontario I turned down an internship in a R&D department of a company in Lichtenstein. I was so excited when I got the offer and then so disheartened by the non-compete and non-disclosure agreements.

There was definitely a little bit of meaning lost in translation and essentially was scoped to cover the industry material and didn't specify a termination date.

While I didn't think they'd be enforceable I knew they didn't need to be to become burdensome. What's interesting to me is clearly it took their employer time to find out about the prior agreements. Either this was something missed during the hiring process or something the candidate chose not to reveal.

Either way I fully understand why they were let go. If you're a business you don't want to invest in someone that a competitor can apply leverage on and has the legal grounds to do so, which would likely result in them quitting.

The way the non-compete is written could bar a Law360 employee from working at any news outlet that covers legal news, in any capacity. Getting a job in another field means switching careers.

What's the duration limit? It can't be perpetual, can it? That would be ludicrous.

one year

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