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The US Federal Trade Commission wants to ban non-compete agreements:
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently proposed a regulation banning employers from imposing non-compete "agreements" on their workers.
[...] The FTC summed up my feeling about non-compete clauses.
It called them "a widespread and often exploitative practice that suppresses wages, hampers innovation, and blocks entrepreneurs from starting new businesses." Thus, the Commission concluded, "By stopping this practice, the agency estimates that the new proposed rule could increase wages by nearly $300 billion per year and expand career opportunities for about 30 million Americans."
That, by the FTC's count, is one in five Americans. So it's not just tech or highly skilled jobs getting hit.
As the New York Times pointed out, it also includes sandwich makers, hair stylists, and summer camp counselors. So yes. Seriously, there are non-competes for teenagers working as counselors.
[...] Sure, there are reasonable exceptions. For example, if I leave your company, I have no problem agreeing that I won't reveal your secret sauce to a competitor or use it in my own business.
But the FTC isn't talking about getting rid of non-disclosure agreements (NDA)s — unless these NDAs are written so broadly that they act as de facto non-competes. That's a different and uglier story.
[...] While proprietary business information and technology secrets are what people often think about protecting with non-competes, that's often not the case.
Instead, it's all about making sure your workers can't leave. For example, the US fast food chain Jimmy John's used to forbid its sandwich makers from joining similar businesses within two miles of its stores for two years. The courts finally forced the company to drop that non-compete clause.
Ridiculous demands like that underline the real purpose of most non-compete agreements: keeping workers by hook or by crook for the least amount of pay.
[...] If you want happier, more productive staffers, don't handcuff them to your company with non-compete agreements. It never ends up well for anybody.
Have any of you been asked to sign an outrageous non-compete?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday February 17, @04:31PM (3 children)
That's a problem. We need the "skilled artisans" that the master craftsmen were, but we don't want the period of bondage that the apprentices were forced to endure. What we've got is "everyone's a journeyman". (Even if you're under a non-compete, the one holding you in bondage isn't a master of the craft.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday February 18, @01:18AM (2 children)
More to the point, employers refuse to hire anyone who needs to grow in to the job. In programming, people who did well on a general aptitude test were hired as a junior programmer where they would learn from the senior programmers until they were ready for promotion.
Today those with aptitude are expected to go into debt to pay for 4 years of education just to be considered for employment.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday February 18, @01:25PM (1 child)
A university degree does not make you a competent coder or Software Engineer. It should give you a good grounding in all the important concepts to start you off on your career. Becoming competent and proficient takes many years of practise under the watchful eye of experts.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday February 18, @05:56PM
I agree, it does not. It doesn't even assure that you will ever be any good. But for some reason, HR has enshrined it as the holy requirement even above actual experience.
And without the internal structure for mentoring and learning, many never get all that good. That's why there's so much crap software out there and why there are so many software shops that can't seem to produce hello world without a flavor of the month framework and 3 or 4 libraries.