One of the key factors to Silicon Valley's success has been a lack of non-competes.
It's about time to unlock that innovation in the rest of the country.
It's about time to unlock that innovation in the rest of the country.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
People have been known to write them. In fact it got so bad that the California AG had to issue a press release a couple of years ago as a "reminder" that they weren't enforceable. But they have never had any effect other than to intimidate the stupid.
I do not care for that characterization. Most people are not familiar with the intricacies of employment law. It is unfair to expect the average person to know that this magical spell in their employment contract is invalid, unlike the other magical spells in that thick document, because a magical spell at the state capital says otherwise.
The 1990s Web kids had a certain ideology that led them to believe that no law could possibly say what California law has said since 1872. But it has always said that.
There's a recognized carveout for business sales, and I think a couple of other things that don't implicate the ability to ply your trade. You might be able to stretch some of those to some restrictions on employees in some rare case. And I think that at some points the intimidation got bad enough that even some lawyers had lost track of reality, so I wouldn't be surprised if some people had settled some cases they shouldn't have settled, or even gone to court and failed to raise arguments they should have raised.
But the basic thrust of the law is refreshingly clear, and it's statute, not just customary law.
I forgot to mention that people also get noncompete mixed up with nonsolicitation. You can't hire me as a framing carpenter in California and try to demand an agreement that I not work as a framing carpenter for another contractor, or even that I not start my own company. But you can require that I not use relationships I built with your customers when I was your employee to convert them into my customers. And obviously there can be grey areas there.
For "Valley" purposes, that usually only affected people in sales, though.
... and you can NDA me and say I can't use your secret hammer grip. You just can't completely stop me from competing with you if that meaningfully restricts my ability to do the kind of work I know how to do.
There was definitely a trade secret exception to California noncompetes; maybe it was broadly (over)applied?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/calif-supreme-court-...
All I'm saying is that you get well past the Google IPO before it becomes broadly accepted that noncompetes are invalid in California, which certainly rebuts the idea that Silicon Valley succeeded due to a lack of noncompetes. (Noncompetes are mostly very bad.)
When people say "Silicon Valley succeeded," they're talking about Silicon Valley, the mythologized founding of the semiconductor industry in the 50's and 60's, beginning with the so-called Traitorous Eight. I think Apple's origins are also believed to have been enabled by the non-compete-less environment. It doesn't as much play into the success from the Dotcom era onwards.
I do agree that the NLRB should go on an advertising campaign to inform employers that previous employers threatening legal action basically have no basis in law and you should just send them a reply saying 'No thanks'. Because that's what you should do in virtually all circumstances.
It's more complex when you work at a megatech company and there's barely anything you can do that could not be consider competition, but at a smaller company, it's not too restrictive.
Yes and I think that was a big factor when tech was made by "hackers" who had an open disdain for the rules. I think that lately even an unenforceable noncompete is enough to scare people away from competing directly with a former employer. And let's not forget the infamous Meta/Oculus fiasco (trade secrets issue, but close enough).