Hacker News Reader

Comment by frankc | Hacker News Reader

Of course the vast majority of them are no threat, but you should not assume every fast food employee is in it for the pay. If you are committed to opening a hamburger shop, you go and get a job at a hamburger shop for a few months to get some experience, see how they operate, maybe even pick up some ideas in terms of recipes, though usually its more learning the operations rather than stealing recipes. I know for a fact that this is a real thing because I know people who have done it in the taco truck business. If you are opening a hamburger shop without significant hamburger shop experience and you don't do this, you are a moron.

Doesn't mean blanket non-compete is fair, but to completely dismiss the OPs point it at best naive.

View on HN

Once again: this isn't an argument. Taco truck owners could also rationally want to demand that their employees work for Taco Bux instead of dollars. But they can't, because neither the law nor human decency recognizes the validity of that exchange. And so too it is with noncompetes. The relationship a Jimmy Johns retail employee has with their company will inevitably fail to satisfy the requirements for an enforceable noncompete. In particular: minimum- and near-minimum- wage employees by definition haven't been given consideration in exchange for agreeing not to compete, and have neither privileged access to a rolodex of customers nor access to trade secrets.

My opinion is that Jimmy Johns is in fact not concerned that their employes will start competing firms. Rather, they'd like to minimize employee turnover, which, unlike local sandwich business starts, is a metric they actually probably do track. And one vehicle they've found for minimizing turnover is in tricking their employees into believing they have fewer alternative jobs available than they actually do.

There are different issues being mixed up here: the fairness of the policy, the enforcibility of the policy and the motivation of the policy. I am only speaking to the motivation of the policy. Obviously we are just trying to read minds here since neither of us has any evidence of what went into their decision-making process. I am simply telling you from my first-hand knowledge in this industry, that 1) infiltration by potential competitors is common 2) it is a real concern 3) a non-compete provides some mitigation in terms discouraging the practice and providing a possible avenue of enforcement (though it might not actually be enforceable)

The blanket way OP has been dismissed really has to do with the rustled jimmies about the fairness of the policy and does not reflect well on the quality of the replies.

That's evasive. We have good reason to discount the idea that Jimmy Johns is seriously motivated by concerns about competing with sandwich chains started by their employees, and among them is the fact that they don't satisfy the requirements for enforcing those noncompetes, which their numerous attorneys have doubtlessly told them.

They have then doubtlessly been told that they are unenforceable again Joe Employee who wants to work at Subway, but you seem to think that they still do it to trick people from leaving to work at subway. Why don't you think it's useful to discourage people potential competitors from infiltrating their company? I'd bet you it's way more likely to be enforceable in the latter case, against someone looking to copy your operations, if it's enforceable at all.

Because the bogus non-compete will fool Joe Employee but not Joe Next-Captain-of-Industry.

You should familiarize yourself with the story of Homejoy. The founders did pretty much exactly what we are describing as a potential threat here in order to gain experience in the cleaning world.

The argument that asking employees to sign a non-compete is somehow unethical, yet getting a low-wage job to learn how to run a competing business is not unethical is moot and completely subjective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com