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from the do-they-want-you-more-than-you-need-them dept.
Sumit Khanna has a blog post with the title, Why I Don't Sign Non-Competes:
[...] Over the course of the next fifteen years, I would be asked to sign non-competes several more times, always prior to employment. I've always refused, and until recently, I've never been denied a position because of that refusal.
A non-compete is a type of contract issued by an employer, typically part of the standard work agreement, job offer or non-disclosure agreement, which states that the employee agrees not to start a business that competes with their current company or to work for their company's competitors, for a set length of time (typically one year) after leaving or being terminated. If that sounds like an illegal contract, in the state of California, it is.
What are soylentils' experience with non-compete clauses?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:23AM (7 children)
I was presented with a non-compete that basically excluded me from employment anywhere in my industry for a period of 5 years following termination, I refused to sign. I was told "everybody else signed it." I replied "maybe that's fine for everybody else, I'm going to need to work in this industry after this is over." They modified the agreement to remove the overly broad exclusion and I signed.
Learning more about it later, that agreement wasn't worth the paper it was written on in the first place, would have been thrown out as 'unconscionable,' which is apparently very common. However, even if it wouldn't hold up in court, I'd rather not be in court in the first place. As it turned out, the company relocated to a place I wasn't willing to go after about a year, and they found a new job for me with another company in town and arranged a transitional period of a few months where I worked for both while the new company's funding got up to speed - so, really cool handling of the transition on their part.
Even more absurd was another place that laid off the whole staff (30+ people) just before Christmas with basically zero notice, with partial potential callbacks in February. Around March they started circulating "you agree not to sue us, sign here, and by the way this agreement is confidential you are not allowed to tell anyone about it" letters. I asked what I got in exchange for signing, their answer "nothing." Needless to say, I never signed. Apparently their investors wanted to screen the staff and only re-hire the really stupid ones.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:28AM (6 children)
I was recently presented with a non-compete agreement.
My response: It involved angry Blacks. [soylentnews.org] Fuck y'all!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:48AM
It was an ordinary day in the city. The weather was nice, and everything was running smoothly. A perfectly ordinary day, you might say. But for one man, it was one of the worst days of his life.
Panicking. A man was panicking in the middle of the sidewalk. Wallet. He had lost his wallet, which contained several thousands dollars in cash! Someone would surely find it and pocket the money for themselves! The man just knew it. As the man continued to despair, a woman walked up to him with something in her hand. His wallet.
The man checked the contents of the wallet. Relief. Everything was there. His relief then turned into immense gratitude as he thought about how honest and kind the woman must be; she could have pocketed thousands of dollars for herself, after all. The man pondered about how he would repay her for her generosity, but nothing came to mind. Then, a lightbulb lit up in the man's mind; he knew how to repay her. A grin appeared on the man's face.
Slam! Slam! Slam! A man was seen punching a woman in the face on the sidewalk whilst violating her. That alone would be fine, but something was different about this man's movements. An astute observer would realize that the man's every punch and thrust exerted massive amounts of gratitude. His gratitude was enough to bring casual observers to tears. Even when the woman screamed, the man did not stop; it was the least he could do to repay her for her kindness. Yes, he had chosen to return the favor by forcibly turning her into what she was always meant to be: A breeding sow. 'What a lavish reward,' everyone watching thought.
Several years and several babies later, the woman finally broke. By that time, the man had already repaid her kindness. No, the reality was that the woman's kindness had been repaid the very moment the man laid his precious hands on that filthy sow. The man, thoroughly satisified with the whole ordeal, smiled and ventured forth into the great unknown. The endless unknown...
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:42AM (4 children)
No, you weren't. Just more fiction from Drunk Uncle.
You claim to be in California (San Diego) and you claim to work as a technician. No California employer is going to bother trying to get a junior employee to sign an contract with an unenforceable clause.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @04:49AM (2 children)
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/understanding-californias-ban-on-non-compete-agreements_us_58af1626e4b0e5fdf6196f04 [huffingtonpost.com]
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:38AM
Another lawyer disagrees:
http://noncompetehelp.com/california-non-compete-during-employment.html [noncompetehelp.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:43PM
Then there's severability - the standard clause that says "we're overreaching in several other parts of this contract, and we know it, but we're not telling you which ones. When the shit hits the fan and you start pointing out that pieces of this agreement were illegal, we reserve the right to ditch them and hold you to the rest."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:13AM
Yeah, good point. Guess we'd better leverage the fact that no juniors are gonna get hired anytime soon while Visa hires are going to steal American jobs. Americans don't like that.