Hacker News Reader

Comment by _trackno5 | Hacker News Reader

The whole problem was due to the abuse towards “low skill” workers. Stuff like if you get a job at Subway, you can’t go and work at another deli shop within a certain radius of the former employer.

The point of this change is to protect these people, which is totally sensible

View on HN

Non-competes are also problematic for highly-compensated tech workers. The phenomenon of NCA'ing low-compenation workers is also horrible, of course, but not the whole problem.

Yeah most of the stuff that is ostensibly the purpose of classic non compete agreements is well handled by NDAs and explicit agreements not to poach clients/workers, if I understand things? It's still okay to block the use of secret information or professional contacts from your former company.

From a free market perspective, it's burdensome to make someone with experience in a sector stop working in that sector, even if that's what their career is about.

> It's still okay to block the use of secret information or professional contacts from your former company.

Indeed, and trade secrets are already protected federally by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act

Explicit agreements not to poach workers are also illegal in sane labor markets (California, for example).

Yep, had a non-compete working at an isp in Hawaii. It felt really scummy to sign that on my first day because I knew it would make it difficult to work in the tech sector when most other companies are within a very small radius and are all "competitors".

I did see one guy leave after 6 months and go directly back to his old job at a competitor and the CEO just grumbled about it and did nothing. It was kinda badass.

The reality was courts in NY generally would never enforce a non-compete for a Subway like case. Courts do weigh the "equivalent exchange" and what the non-compete is "protecting". They were more problematic in any other higher paying field.

The first proposed bill bans all non-competes while the second proposed bill basically codifies non-competes are legal only if there's "good-faith" aka equivalent exchange. Which usually means payoff or enormous salary.

This is what highly paid white collar workers on Hacker News like to parrot but it's sensationalist at best. Even in this article where the evidence points to low wage workers having the lowest percentage of NCA's runs with the click bait headline.

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/non-compete-cont...

Regardless, no Subway worker ever GAF about a NCA. They walked right across the street to Jimmy John's and were hired on the spot. And even if Subway had a NCA in place - which I doubt most of the major chains do - Subway doesn't GAF either. The only time anyone would care is maybe if a manager opened another deli across the street and took all the info from their suppliers with them.

Easier to keep the employees around with the threat of legally enforced unemployment without the safety net than changing the business or working conditions or pay to something worth sticking around for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com