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?
- California won't enforce noncompetes, except for a very limited set of circumstances (i.e. selling your business and then starting a competing business).[1]
- If you live and work in California, then you get the benefits of California law (including the noncompete law above), no matter what your employment agreement says. UNLESS you were represented by a lawyer during negotiations and you agreed to a different state's laws. NOTE: This section only applies to employment agreements entered into AFTER Jan 1, 2017.[2]
If your employer tries to pull a fast one and says you are subject to another state's laws, then you can invalidate that clause, and you can get your attorney's fees paid by the employer if you have to litigate it. [2]
[1] CA Business & Professions Code Section 16600-16602.5 Link here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio.... Note: once you get to get to Section 16603, there are some super weird laws prohibiting bundling horror comic books. Aren't laws fun?
[2] CA Labor Code Section 925. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
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_.
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...
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.
But, yes, the chilling effect is much broader.
No, a thousandth of a percent = 1/100,000, which is more likely than the meteor or murder scenarios presented.
Also, if "some company" turns out to be Amazon or EMC, then it's not only higher than that, but certainty in some cases.
If (the venue was california in the contract)
Else if (the contract was based on laws that were similar enough to what the california legislature expressely legislated against or califonias judiciary addressed in prior case law)
Your employer may have standing in another states court and that court may find a way to establish jursidiction and sanction you according to the contract and its law
But a satellite office would almost certainly be considered a California-business and be actionable against.