I had an employer that forced many of us to sign a very restrictive NCA. At the time they did it for me, I had been there about 20 years (I was middle management).
I did sign it, as not doing so meant termination (I know one or two others that chose termination). I have no idea what the terms of their termination were (like if they got a pat or a kick in the butt).
I also had determined, by then, that I would be doing different stuff, afterwards (which I am).
It was a bad NCA. It explicitly stated that, if they laid me off, or fired me, I still couldn't go to another company that fell under their definition, and it was a very broad definition. If I had gotten a job as a clerk at a drug store, it could have been construed as a "competitor or customer," because of the photo-processing lab.
Probably unenforceable, but that's beside the point. It still would have required me to hire a lawyer, and would probably have poisoned me to potential employers.
yeah. i’m pretty sure stuff like this is completely unenforceable. this sounds like being forced to sign it so you can easily make the argument that you signed it because you had no other choice and you were threatened with termination.
Making the argument is the wrong phasing. Instead, what he should have said is "I can almost certainly get away with breaking the non-compete, and it is unlikely that anyone will notice".
Tech companies are not sending private detectives to follow every engineer that left the company.
This fantasy world, where major tech companies are preventing random engineers from leaving to work for other big tech companies, is just not true. It happens all of the time, and almost nobody gets sued.
Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like half of the engineers that I know, have job hopped, sometimes multiple times, between these top tech companies. They aren't being sued.
They go work at microsoft, and then leave for Facebook, or uber, or "insert rando prestigious tech company here", and I don't know of a single one, of all of my friend that I know, who has ever been sued for job hopping between top tech companies as an engineer.
It just does not happen, for the average tech employee, outside of weird, extreme, egregious cases.
Do companies enforce every single time? No. Can they try to enforce, and win, if your manager is upset, dislikes you, or is just a bad manager? Yes. Do they ever enforce? Sure do[0]. Do you have any data about this or could you find any article indicating it's safe to not worry about non-competes (if they are enforceable in your state)? I looked, and I couldn't find any such thing.
Most times the employee is just going to give up, and pursue other opportunities that the employer can't or won't enforce a non-compete against. There isn't always going to be a lawsuit.
Have you gone over the detailed career trajectory of all these engineers you know? Do you think they would volunteer, without prompting, that they couldn't take XZY job due to a non-compete?
Even if you have had detailed conversations with, say, two dozen people, if big companies enforce on 5% of people, it's not unheard of that you personally might not know someone it happened to. That's especially true if you happen to live in CA, where non-competes are unenforceable.
With how infrequent this stuff happens, and how often people jump between companies, I find it much more likely that the number is closer to 0.1% for a random software engineering job.
Or, in other words, it is nothing that anyone needs to worry about.
Your link is irrelevant because those examples were for VPs.
I am not talking about VPs. I am talking about a random software engineer at a top tech company. Those people don't have to worry.
all those people are VP level and above. If you’re a VP you can afford the lawyer. Hell even if you’re an unknown drone (maybe with the exception of fresh out of college people) you can probably afford the lawyer.
The point is it has a chilling effect[0], fast food restaurants aren't having employees sign noncompetes[1] because they think they have specialized knowledge, the purpose is to reduce churn and therefore training costs.
Ok, so, that just means that people need to be more informed.
The reality is that people move between top tech companies all the time. It is extremely common. And basically nobody is having those non competes enforced, for a random engineering job.
the comment i was answering to was about a job were they added the NCA after the person was employed there for 20 years!!!
as far as your comment goes:
nope. Amazon cannot afford a legal battle for each and every one of their employees. Also Amazon knows they’re going to look really stupid if they do go the route of suing you. Only case where I have seen NCAs trying to be enforced is in case of high profile executives where they are actually trying to send a message more than enforce the NCA. It’s a stupid posturing game that rarely works.
>as far as your comment goes: nope. Amazon cannot afford a legal battle for each and every one of their employees. Also Amazon knows they’re going to look really stupid if they do go the route of suing you. Only case where I have seen NCAs trying to be enforced is in case of high profile executives where they are actually trying to send a message more than enforce the NCA.
Do you have any source whatsoever for this? Companies enforce non-competes all the time. Wall Street Journal thinks it is rising 60% over the last decade (2013)[0]. I think your experience of what you "have seen" is wildly out of touch with reality.
I tried to find a source supporting your position, that companies don't enforce non-competes, but couldn't. The best I found was this[1] article about one lawyer willing to take on NCA cases for employees on extreme-contingency arrangements, since he apparently practices in a state where fee agreements must be reciprocal (i.e., if there is a fee agreement in your NCA, you get your fees paid if you win). If you live in such a state and can get that man to represent you, great. Otherwise, as he describes:
>There have been several cases where we have invested $100,000 worth of attorney time and $10,000+ of hard, out-of-pocket costs to defend a poor or working class person against a bogus non-compete agreement. And there have been a couple cases where it’s gone far past that: $200,000+ in attorney time, $20,000+ worth of case expenses. I’m sorry, but no other lawyer in America does that. I’m the only one.
>In many of these cases, you will need to execute perfectly or you will lose. You have to make 100 perfect moves and the other side only has to get 1 thing right. It’s absurd. It’s messed up. But that’s how it is.
Now, in reply to you saying: "It’s a stupid posturing game that rarely works."
This individual does agree that in many cases the companies are posturing and will lose. But unless you can afford the $XX,XXX-$XXX,XXX to pay a lawyer to get there (or find a unicorn, like him, who will work on contingency), you lose by default. Whether you think it's a "stupid" move to posture or not, the companies do it, routinely, and at an increasing pace.
> Wall Street Journal thinks it is rising 60% over the last decade (2013)
Rising from what number to what number? How does that compare to how many employees Amazon has?
If it’s up to 5 from 3, that’s a completely different proposition than up to 5000 from 3000.
One easy thought experiment is to look at how many people have left Amazon in the last couple of years vs how many were sued. My anecdotal evidence says it’s an extremely low number and it’s usually top level executives.
BTW I am not approving of or justifying the behavior big corporations have. Far from it.
I did sign it, as not doing so meant termination (I know one or two others that chose termination). I have no idea what the terms of their termination were (like if they got a pat or a kick in the butt).
I also had determined, by then, that I would be doing different stuff, afterwards (which I am).
It was a bad NCA. It explicitly stated that, if they laid me off, or fired me, I still couldn't go to another company that fell under their definition, and it was a very broad definition. If I had gotten a job as a clerk at a drug store, it could have been construed as a "competitor or customer," because of the photo-processing lab.
Probably unenforceable, but that's beside the point. It still would have required me to hire a lawyer, and would probably have poisoned me to potential employers.