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Comment by leeroyjenkins11 | Hacker News Reader

You mean when the employee voluntarily agrees to the terms of the contract? I have seen when employees take advantage of job training and then immediately bounce when their contract expires for that. They used 6months of code camp training while being paid, and as soon as they could they left. If those contracts were not allowed, there wouldn't be a company willing to pay for that.

When you sign a lease you usually can't break the lease without penalty.yes, if a company makes up the training costs for in house training, making it astronomical, then that seems like it'd be up for litigation.

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> They used 6months of code camp training while being paid, and as soon as they could they left.

Frankly, then be a better employer. Pay more, foster a better culture, provide better working circumstances. Plenty of people stay at economically shitty places because of a sense of duty, a love for their co workers, a 4 day work week or excellent benefits, etc. Welcome to a competitive market.

Otherwise you'll end up with people who only barely work to not get fined, training new people (and you have to get new people because people leave asap, fine or not, some people might even pay the fine to leave) who are immediately entering a workplace culture where no one wants to be there. Smart enough people to google the company beforehand and see the shitshow in glassdoor reviews et al. will avoid the company, potentially even years after whatever management gets its head out of its ass and rights the ship. A total disaster.

Employees voluntarily agreeing to contracts means very little without a lot of context. Generally speaking the power differential between companies and employees is too great for any meaningful "voluntary" action on the part of employees.

Let's all not forget the most "voluntary" contract of all: the "social contract" between the lowly individual and the all-powerful state. Apparently there wasn't a power differential there, right? Purely consensual and I had full choice in not signing it.

Okay, but the social contract defends you from the violence of everyone else starting a few months before you're actually born. Sure, it might not be a great contract even given that, and I agree it should be easier to shop around the social contract you want (or that there should be the option not to have one a la seasteading). But given how much it provides before someone is able to understand the terms of a contract like that, it makes sense for it to be opt-in.

Whatever. I signed an agreement to repay (prorated) before five years over twenty years ago when these things were also quite common, and happily did so. It was clearly an inducement to not cut and run, there’s no way the repayment balances out the terribly high cost of the turnover event for the company. All this was obvious back then too. But I was quite grateful for what I was getting because it helped move my career forward and was totally worth it.

>I have seen when employees take advantage of job training and then immediately bounce when their contract expires for that.

I've seen this as an excuse avoid training people, which seems absurd. It reminds me of the apocryphal discussion between two managers:

Manager 1: "But what if we train them and the leave!?"

Manager 2: "But what if we don't train them and they stay!?"

Training your people is just part of what a good manager does.

> They used 6months of code camp training while being paid, and as soon as they could they left.

I would ask what you're doing as an employer that creates an environment where the people you're paying literally can't wait to get away from you.

I'm assuming* they all bounced as soon as they could because with their newly acquired skills they could go get vastly more money. I'm also assuming the employer refused to up their pay to "market rates" because, hey they invested in them, they should stick around (for below market rate) because we're all a big family and we invest in our family.

* Assumption based on the exact scenario happening every fucking time

In the article, a lot is made about much of this training being "discovered on day 2", not "voluntarily agreed upon as part of the employment contract". Certainly that also happens, but there are problems with the first scenario.

A fundamental mistake people seem to make is to think that "voluntary" is a binary and not continuous variable.

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