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Comment by transactional | Hacker News Reader

...but are they enforceable?

IANAL and I don't know about other countries, but in EU (definitely the country I live in and am pretty sure it goes for the rest as well) any non-compete agreement after two years is void by law.

You are required to hold confidential stuff for life, like business contracts, but you can use your know-how, if it does not violate any patents, in a competing company as you see fit. This knowledge is a part of you and cannot hold you against employment. Even if you do decide within those two years to employ yourself in competing company, this can be held back by your original company only if they give you X% of your pay at them (X can be 80, or as low as 50, as my friends inform me).

I've actually dealt with this in third-party IP cases I've consulted on. Of course a lot of "bench advice" best practices (use a debugger as a silly example) shouldn't cause a problem--or maybe even some various specific experiences about practices that worked. A file dump of corporate strategy and business plan presentations or code--even if they probably get pretty stale after a few years--probably not.

To riff Keynes,

Enforcement can maintain litigation longer than you can maintain solvency.

And that’s our judicial system: whoever has more ability to sustain prolonged cash flow wins.

So far it seems maybe?, but according to the article some courts and agencies are pushing back. Well the FTC was at least in 2023.

California bans anything that is effectively a non compete.

I didn't see any references in the article you linked to any cases where it had been enforced. I see a lot of commentary that validates the concern, and a listing of half a dozen states where they are being struck down.

So the callout to be wary of them is totally legit... but it doesn't look like they are going to be enforceable when such things go through the courts.

Yeah the warning is: you may, like me, find a litigious paranoid former employer who freaks out at everything :-/

I’d rather not carry the cost of learning it’s not enforceable.

Well since OP's giving that warning he might've been impacted and could tell us more.

Technically, maybe, but effectively, nobody is going to be able to withstand BigCorp's 100 lawyers whose mission is to bury you in legal fees if you push back. By the time that you confirm these things are unenforceable, you've spent your life savings on $millions in legal fees, and possibly gone into crippling debt. In the legal system, might (wealth + lawyer quantity) makes right.

As I recall from John Akula's Corporate Law class, judges in the US tend to be sympathetic to the following argument:

"Defendant has never worked in any other industry. He has three kids. He's gotta work."

(That's for regular employees--it's a different issue with founders who may have significant equity stake and such.)

The "bury in litigation" is overstated. Since it's the _company_ that is going to sue you, there's a limited amount of shenanigans they can do.

The worst is that they can delay the case for years, leaving you in a legal limbo. Or go after your employer, involving them in the discovery process.

It sounds like moving to California for a year would be way cheaper.

You'll probably still end up in court even if the plaintiff will likely lose. Maybe cheaper, maybe not.

They tried: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/... (see top note)

Not sure how that's going.

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