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Comment by yetihehe | Hacker News Reader

Noncompetes implemented smartly are good and not a power grab over employees. I signed noncompete, but employer is required by law to pay at least 25% of my salary if he wants to enforce it. That is minimum amount, I have negotiated 50%. If he doesn't want to pay this, he can't dictate where I can work, I could go to direct competitor then.

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You provide the thesis "Noncompetes implemented smartly are good and not a power grab over employees."

Then you utterly fail to support this thesis in any imaginable fashion. Most people can't survive on 25-50% of their current salary with current obligations.

Markets/relationships require information and agency to function efficiently.

It's damn near amazing that you presumably understand that consumer choice is essential for an efficient market for groceries and wrenches but you don't believe that contracts that interfere with employees choosing an optimal employer don't make for an inefficient labor market.

When you understand that ANY employer could maintain minimal turnover by paying a competitive wage/benefits just by the human nature of desiring stability it ought to be obvious that the only reason to desire a noncompete is so that you can offer less without losing employees.

Yes, I wouldn't want to survive on 25% of my salary, also I don't need to. I still can work as a programmer, just not for companies which are DIRECTLY competing. It's not like I can't work as a programmer whatsoever. Also if I had job offer from competitor, my current employer would need to pay me 50% of my pay, I could still find another job (even with better salary) AND still receive that 50%. It's non-compete, not "no work for you".

Software developers make up most of the labor force and your financial and job market position are atypical. Context of the conversation is expanding non competes to broader swaths of the working population.

There is no janitor anywhere who is in a position to negotiate a 50%-of-salary payment as a condition of signing a noncompete.

Historically, we (governments) have tended to write laws that constrain what employers can require, especially of low wage workers, because of the extreme power imbalance. Hence the existence of laws on minimum wage, overtime, mandatory breaks, paid leave, etc.

> There is no janitor anywhere who is in a position

If you count USA as anywhere then sure. My fiance is a janitor, if any company wanted to make non-compete clauses, she just wouldn't sign it. There is serious understaffing of janitors where I live, so if there was too much bullshit in her job, she would leave. And we see USA as pinnacle of freedom and job possibilities...

There are too many non-competes and many are over-broad but garden leave of probably at least 50% seems a reasonable compromise if a company feels strongly about having a non-compete for whatever reason. That should be enough that it forces a company to think about whether they really want to enforce this and, while perhaps not ideal for the employee, is likely not too onerous assuming the non-compete isn't draconian in other ways.

The majority of people can't live on 50% of wages further the person may actually be underpaid and looking for a job that pays what they are actually worth. Example the person is paid 25k at a present employer looking at getting 35k.

That person who can't choose to make 12.5k in the short run will accept 25k instead forever.

If companies can't legally implement no poaching agreements to keep employees wages down I don't see why they should be able to do so with non competes.

It isn't about making the company think about whether or not it is necessary, but making sure that when they do think it is necessary, the employee can survive. If a company feels that they truly need a non-compete from you, they should be ready to pay full wages for one year.

At a previous company I had to sign a fairly stringent non-compete, but attached to it was the constraint that if the firm chose to enforce the non-compete, they had to compensate 100% of the salary for the time that they chose to enforce it (up to one year).

This was still not perfect, since the non-salary compensation at finance firms is a non-trivial portion of total compensation, but in my mind should be the minimum required by law for a non-compete agreement.

“Good” in what way? They’re certainly good for your employer, but how are they good for employees?

I can think of exactly zero benefits to me, unless they’re paying at least 100% of my total expected income, including bonuses and other discretionary income.

Do you value your free time at $0?

So if these 50% will be less than a living wage (due to extreme inflation for example) you become slave? At least at Worryfree they were fed.

Perhaps the 50% makes it such that a lesser-paying job is financially feasible. I think that provides a nice buffer.

I could receive that 50% and work somewhere else (still as a programmer, but not for direct competitor). But when extreme inflation hits, I will probably have other problems than my noncompete.

Presumably they would still be allowed to work for a company that does not compete with the one they worked at previously, so they would get those 50% on top of the salary of their new job.

How is that good at all? They should be paying 5x your salary, for forcing you to not be able to provide for your family during that time.

"Direct competitor" is a rather limiting term. I can think of only one such company in my city, but there are several other with open jobs for programmers which I could consider working for (and I would not be competing so this noncompete would be inapplicable). It's not like I couldn't work as a programmer whatsoever.

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