Nothing about the definition of the word “contract” suggests they have to be negotiable.
Noncompetes are not inherently unethical and should absolutely not be outlawed. If a company wants to pay you $500k to not work and you are willing to be paid $500k to not work you should have the right to come to a mutual agreement with them on the matter.
It’s a free country, if you don’t like the noncompete, find some other place to work. No one is forcing you to sign it.
The fundamental notion of contracts is, as they said, a meeting of the minds. "You do what I tell you or else" is pretty far from that.
Whether or not they're "inherently" unethical is a matter for philosophers. But in practice, they're clearly used heavily as an anticompetitive measure and to exploit labor. Those are definitely unethical, and contrary to free markets.
Your last line is willfully blind to labor history. Quite a lot of employers have done their best to make sure other options are limited. Employers definitionally have a huge power advantage, and there's nothing wrong with leveling the playing field to prevent exploitation.
> "You do what I tell you or else" is pretty far from that.
The "or else" here is you walk away and seek out an agreement with someone else. You're not forced to sign a contract just because it's not negotiable.
> Those are definitely unethical, and contrary to free markets.
I don't think it's unethical or exploitative to pay someone $500k to sit on a beach and relax for a year. Many non-competes are also industry specific, so you can even double dip and get a job while collecting your gardening leave payout as long as it's not within the same subfield you used to work in.
You can argue that certain low-wage, low-skill employees need a paycheck every two weeks or starve, and these people have zero leverage or ability to walk away from a punitive contract, but highly paid tech workers don't fall into this category. There are plenty of options out there for you if you don't want to sign a noncompete. Some people like the idea of getting paid a bunch of money to not work, just because you don't like noncompetes doesn't mean you are entitled to force your personal preferences on other people against their will by outlawing such agreements.
Sometimes non-competes are so lucrative that employees sue their own employers to force them to uphold them even when the employers don't want to.
You're arguing against a straw man. The original poster was clear enough: negotiate the contract, if the company won't budge then don't sign. That is your leverage.
There is a question about whether or not the contract is ethical, but that's irrelevant to the original point. Which is simply this: contracts should be negotiable. If they're not, use your leverage.
ALL contracts are negotiable, it's just a matter of which parts. Your salary is part of the contract, and everyone should be negotiating that.
> You're arguing against a straw man. The original poster was clear enough: negotiate the contract, if the company won't budge then don't sign.
Where did I say that you're not entitled to refuse to deal with companies that won't negotiate with you? Of course you're free to walk away if you the company doesn't want to negotiate with you, but the company isn't doing anything wrong by not wanting to negotiate and there is no legal or moral requirement for them to negotiate.
> contracts should be negotiable
Disagree. Contracts can be whatever the entity who draws them up wants them to be. If you don't like it don't sign it.
Non-negotiable contacts are totally fine and legal. They are called adhesion contracts. Not everything that is enforceable in a negotiated contact is enforceable in a contract of adhesion.
You are taking a very small percentage of noncompetes, the ones where people get paid well for doing nothing, and acting like that's the common case. The sit-on-a-beach ones are negotiated by people with very high leverage. I've never heard of a friend in tech getting one; the only people I know personally who have gotten them are finance quants with PhDs and long track records.
You conveniently omit what I'm referring to above with "those", which is not the four-leaf-clover, sit-on-a-beach contracts. It's the rest, which involve no pay and foreclosed employment options. Those are indeed unethical (in that they exploit power to create negative-sum outcomes) and contrary to free markets (in that they reduce both supply and demand to advantage a powerful market player).
I don't think it's unethical or exploitative to pay someone $500k to sit on a beach and relax for a year.
Generally, that's not how non-competes work in the US. They are typically unpaid. WA just changed their laws. CA mostly outlaws them all together. Most other states allow them.
You're also possibly arguing for a position of higher power as an employee than is typical. Most employees don't have the luxury of forgoing offers based on contract language that HR promises won't be enforced (until it is).
> It’s a free country, if you don’t like the noncompete, find some other place to work.
There is actually a much better solution than this.
The better solution is to sign the contract, and then completely ignore it, afterwords.
The reality is, that in many top tech places it is extremely difficult to enforce non-competes. And it is perfectly possible, most of the time to get away with ignoring them completely.
But it is all about making you no compete without paying you.
Company could for example still keep you hired for that time, without requiring you to perform any work for them. I don't believe non-compete ban would apply for that time, since you are technically still their employee so you still have your responsibilities as long as you are being paid.
That law is about imposing it on employees without giving them any choice. If you can freely negotiate, it isn't stopping you from signing it[1].
Besides a company could still keep you employed without requiring you to work for them to prevent you from working for a competitor. The thing is that they would rather not pay and prevent you from finding a job at another place, and that's what the law protects from.
Noncompetes are not inherently unethical and should absolutely not be outlawed. If a company wants to pay you $500k to not work and you are willing to be paid $500k to not work you should have the right to come to a mutual agreement with them on the matter.
It’s a free country, if you don’t like the noncompete, find some other place to work. No one is forcing you to sign it.