What would be an example of a “non-harmful” non-compete? In the game of employer vs employee, any non-compete is undesirable for the former and desirable for the latter.
A good example might be the practice of “garden leave” in finance where employees are paid to not work between jobs to reduce the risk of bringing active strategy information to a competitor.
Seems pretty low harm to the employee (it’s paid vacation) and it prevents some pretty ugly kinds of poaching.
To my understanding "garden leave" wasn't disallowed, you can _pay_ people to not work for a competitor, but you can't enforce limitations on their employment if you aren't paying them.
I hear this quite frequently and I’d have to disagree. While it’s certainly hard to complain about getting paid to ride the bench (I’ve been there myself), garden leave inhibits one’s freedom to work on what they find interesting. Not to mention missing out on bonus.
That might be fine if you are getting 100% salary + benefits, but some of these agreements can be too broad. It could say that the amount of salary can be an arbitrary amount determined at the end of employment. What if they decide they only want to pay something like 50 or 75% base salary? Also once you are on a family plan, paying COBRA can be a substantial expense. My plan is nearly $1,600 a month if I had to pay the full amount.
How is this different than them being an employee (and the employer deciding that they don't have to work on anything)?
Also, I thought this was a British-ism, because over there employers can't fire at will and instead once the employee (or employer) has given notice then the employer must keep paying them until the end of the notice period.
Possibly a niche, highly compensated job that requires specific abilities and very detailed domain knowledge imparted by the employer at considerable expense.
At the other end of the spectrum were the stories of fast-food workers being held to non-competes, which is just bullshit. If you can learn the job in a few weeks and basically anyone can do it, a non-compete agreement is absurd.
Perhaps, but the kitchen employees don't know. All they know is "dump the frozen fries in the basket, put the basket in the fryer, and hit the button to start the timer."
