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Aren’t non-competes basically unenforceable anyway? At least for individual contributors. You can’t contractually ban an individual from making money from their literal profession.
Senior execs and company founders with privileged information are a different story.
Not American, but in my country non-compete clauses are routinely put into employment contracts even though they have been demonstrated to be illegal in most cases.
When I was at the worker’s council in a company a couple decades ago, we insisted that the company update the contracts to remove illegal clauses. The companies’ position was that since they were illegal and therefore unenforceable that they did not matter. We argued that employees are less likely to know which particular laws impact which clause of their contracts than, say, full-time HR staff. And that not knowing they might assume that they are legal.
I’m happy to have moved to a country with worker councils in the law to protect workers in this way.
Aren’t non-competes basically unenforceable anyway? At least for individual contributors. You can’t contractually ban an individual from making money from their literal profession.
Senior execs and company founders with privileged information are a different story.
Not American, but in my country non-compete clauses are routinely put into employment contracts even though they have been demonstrated to be illegal in most cases.
It’s simply used to intimidate the ignorant.
Intimidating the ignorant is bad though.
When I was at the worker’s council in a company a couple decades ago, we insisted that the company update the contracts to remove illegal clauses. The companies’ position was that since they were illegal and therefore unenforceable that they did not matter. We argued that employees are less likely to know which particular laws impact which clause of their contracts than, say, full-time HR staff. And that not knowing they might assume that they are legal.
I’m happy to have moved to a country with worker councils in the law to protect workers in this way.
Depends on how bad you want to go to court, and how big of an asshole your former company is.