10-years is very unreasonable. I can see maybe 1 year or 2 years working for a direct competitor, but 10! Especially contracting. How can you expect to make a living at all?
> I can see maybe 1 year or 2 years working for a direct competitor, but 10!
But even that can easily be unreasonable on its own. For example, think of people working at places like Google, Unilever or some other large entity with its hands it every industry you can imagine because just about everyone is their direct competitor in some industry or another.
Any amount of time is unreasonable. We already have laws against corporate espionage and sharing corporate secrets. Competitors offering better compensation to workers is fifty percent of the basis of capitalism.
"unreasonable" here actually has some legal meaning, and some states have previously established some pretty relevant case law as to what is a reasonable amount of time. I remember running one by a lawyer many years ago, and they said that the state I was in would not enforce a non-compete more than one year in duration. So just because a non-compete is written in your contract, and they're legal in your state, doesn't mean that the specific non-compete you have is legal in your state.
In that case, why would you sign it in the first place? Maybe you're too careless to read the contract? Or too desperate to plan for your future working life? But how did you become such a specialist with those behaviors?
I once has an employer try to get me to agree to a broad noncompete clause for an unskilled laboring job. When I questioned it, he just deleted it. If he hadn't, I'd have turned down the job because it sounded terrible.
> In that case, why would you sign it in the first place?
Most people wouldn't, then the whole "job search" process begins again for both parties.
Sounds like a huge waste of time for all involved, which could have been avoided by no having unreasonable crap in the contract and no willingness to remove it. ;)
Any restriction or control on how a worker can make a living post-employment in a supposed free-market economy is indeed completely unreasonable. But hey, we're completely accepting of "free market" business executives, investors, owners, etc openly enjoying numerous market restrictions. And we use health care to drastically reduce competition in the employment market by both making it more risky if not outright dangerous to your health and financial well-being to quit your job (even a minor medical injury or accident could bankrupt you) and this also makes it nearly impossible to directly compare compensation between different employers, soooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In many countries if you want to have an employee bound by a non-compete, you have to compensate the employee for that restriction ('garden pay', I believe?), because by restricting who they can work for, you're by that very nature restricting their ability to seek the most competitive pay. Not to mention, if going to work for a competitor would cost you, say, $1M - then surely you can afford to pay them $50k; that's the deal of the century, in fact! Allowing corporations to foist the cost of a non-compete onto the employee is a pretty American concept.
"But but otherwise it would be really expensive!", I hear the Entreprebros screech. "I couldn't possibly be in business! Muh Burn Rate!"
My response is, "...but I thought you said the employee going to work for a competitor is such a huge financial/competitive threat to your business that you should be allowed to restrict how they can make a living to be able to afford food, housing, transportation, to care for their family members, and so on? Which is it?"...and then I point to all their European competitors who seem to be doing just fine with these supposedly infeasible prohibitions on uncompensated non-competes (and requirements around greater benefits, lower work hours, greater workplace rights, etc.)
Technically non-competes should be illegal simply because the contract bears no benefit or compensation to the employee in exchange for the restrictions imposed that wildly benefit their employer. There's zero benefit to working for an employer who requires one versus ones who do not, but the employer gains (by the very nature of the claim of how necessary the noncompete is!) a great deal.
The situation is absurd. Imagine McDonalds requiring their burger-flippers to not work for any competitors because those competitors might benefit from proprietary McDonalds business practices, training, etc. We'd laugh them right out of the building and point out how stupid it is because all other things aside, where the fuck else is a McDonalds burger-flipper supposed to work, except a place that is likely a competitor to McDonalds?
But Google, MS, Amazon, et al do it to tech workers - even ones who work positions that are compensated an order of magnitude less than engineering talent - datacenter technicians, and it's okay?
Oh I totally agree. Ive just never encountered 10 years. My jaw dropped a little. Ive definitely seen 1-2 years but also have never seen it enforced. Most people either left on good terms, or were let go not because of performance, but just re-org, etc.... and as long as you were not bringing trade secrets the former employer was really just happy you were working again.
As a contractor, I find my definition of reasonable depends entirely on how specific the ask is.
If someone asks me to not work for anyone making widgets that measure the sun's IR emissions at 2222nm with a semiconductor, they can make that 10 years sure.
If they want me to not work for anyone that is competitive with General Electric, 10 seconds is too long because I'll be in breach as soon as I sign it...
