Kudos to you pale_pony!!!

See boys and girls, this is how it's done!!

Stop fucking pissing, moaning and whining, and start your own business. It's easy!!

Non competes are gay and violate anti trust law. It's even in the damn name.

Yea man I'm gonna keep speaking the truth even if it offends boomers.

Starting your own business is incredibly easy. Getting customers and turning a profit?  Yeah, that’s the hard part.

Wife started her own business when she retired. Business income zero. Customers zero. Profit. Zero.

assuming I don't count as being in a "policy setting" position, I'm looking forward to jumping ship to a major competitor with only 2 weeks of notice. I hate the leadership of my current employer.

If some modern employees weren’t so shifty and untrustworthy……non-competes wouldn’t be a thing.  But some are and it has ruined it for the rest.  I have 30 employees and have seen it all.  You can thank the govt for their entitled attitudes.  

lol

If some modern employers weren't so shifty and abusive, banning non-competes wouldn't be a thing. But some are and it has ruined it for the rest. I've worked for 22 years and I've seen it all. You can thank HR cat ladies and shitty managers for their entitled attitudes.

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This

Oh boy another Boomer hate thread.  

I'm a boomer and I started working 35 years ago and signed a no compete with my first company that was run by um, what were the guys who fought in WWII? oh yea! the Greatest generation [sarcasm] those guys really fucked this country up after they returned from the war [/sarcasm]

I bailed and they tried to enforce a no compete, and even back then they knew they could do nothing to enforce it and they would lose if they took it to court.

You know what I did? It wasn't whine and bitch about the previous generation back then making life hard for a young guy like me trying to make it in the IT world. I moved on, they moved on, I got a better job signed no competes at all of them and it never prevented me from finding a better job.

I certainly didn't sit around whining and bitching about the corporate assholes keeping me down.

The current crop of managers and VPs running allot of the most successful companies are not boomers and they still lose people all the time.

Quite frankly, most boomers have aged out of the work force, especially the educated or successful ones. Sure there are still some left but there are a hell of a lot more Gen X'ers then boomers running the show.

lol if being pro free market is “boomer hate”, then what does that say about you?

It's my body, I do what I want!

Seems lame that they can stop you from working in your industry.

The anesthesiologist was a good example. WTF else is he going to do?

I don't buy that the 3M marketing person couldn't go somewhere else. Sure, maybe not to a direct competitor marketing the same electrical tape but...

Every job I've had has had people go directly to competition and hired directly from competition. We've had offices and factories in very weird parts of the US simply because the competition was there which made hiring easier.

You guys don’t get it. Non compete has zero bearing. It’s just a tool employer uses to squeeze you.

Best words “I’m going to quit, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Our agreement is severed”

Even the FTC doesn’t see that way. They have a two step test for application that still holds.

Guess it depends where you work.
Over the last 30 years, it's been GenX & Millennials moving up into mid and upper management (& HR) and I guarantee you that they don't give a rat's ass about your ideas about anything even if it benefits them or the company. They know it all. It's in part of what they're teaching them in college in "management" a new and better way.

Non-compete contracts have been limited under common law to relatively short duration, to a limited geographic area, and to the specific business, rgardless of extra restrictive terms actually in the contracts.

The FTC has no actual authority to prohibit private employer/employee contracts. This is pure government overreach in search of a problem.

Non-competes are very common in medicine (again, state specific). Here's the thinking.

It costs roughly $125K (family doc, peds) to $250K (specialists) to bring a physician on board. You start paying them on day one, but it's weeks to months before their collections start to come in and cover costs. Our clinic estimates it takes 1-3 years to get back what was invested to bring on a physician.

So if you spend that $125-250K on bringing in a doc and they bail in 6 months and set up shop across the street, you've really got no recourse. The money is gone and can't be recouped unless they're generating fees. So you put a 1 year and reasonable geographic non-compete on them. Our clinic's non-compete is 1 year AND 5 miles from your primary office. So, you can set up shop 5.1 miles away (as the crow flies) tomorrow and you're good. Or you can wait a year and set up across the street. Or, you can buy out of the non-compete.

We've had physicians leave and choose each of these options. And while I realize that this will cause hate on this board, that's how it works right now. If non-competes are eliminated globally in the US, all the companies will adjust and figure it out.

But for those who are very confidently saying that non-competes are never enforceable, you clearly have never dealt with a professional or executive level non-compete. I'm not talking the "sandwich artist" at Jimmy Johns who can't go to Subway here. In my state, these non-competes are very enforceable if they meet the state rules (1 year only and geographically reasonable). You can't really hide your practice if it's in the area. Your old clinic WILL find out and will sue you and you will probably lose and get to pay attorney's fees too. We still have a few former physicians who decided to test this. They're still paying us their judgement and our attorney fees. Would've been much cheaper to buy out of the non-compete that they voluntarily signed upon hire. The amount is specified in their contract. A court judgement and attorney fees aren't, and they're always more.

Practically, if a physician is working for another group with a non-compete, part of the recruiting package might involve paying the buy-out on the non-compete. We've done that, and other groups have done that when someone left us for them.

Also, we expire our non-competes at 5 years from your hire date, so you can leave scot-free and set up across the street at 5 years and 1 day if you want.

Philosophically, I don't like non-competes. But as a private practice clinic owner, I very much understood why we had them. Hate on!

This is what I mean. Are you a lawyer? Have you brought these cases or defended them? Our corporate attorneys have, and we win. If you have a signed contract that was voluntarily entered into, not under duress, you can't just say ,"I'm going to quit, and there's nothing you can do about it. Our agreement is severed". Well, you can, and the court will laugh at you.

ETA: Our clinic is privately owned, by the physicians. We have around 100 shareholder/owners. We very much want the clinic structure and administration to make the company and the work environment to be as good as it can be, both for each physician and for the company at large. We want physicians to want to work here and to buy in as a partner.

Many will complain or grouse about non-competes when they come on. As soon as they buy in as a partner, they realize very quickly why we have non-competes. So it's not a matter of a bunch of Gen X and Millennials getting into upper management and not giving a crap about the newer employees. Quite the opposite.

Non-competes are dumb and you're dumb if you sign one.
But yay government overreach, amiright.

@Sartorius

Are you saying your clinic bring on new physicians with 100% of existing physician salary, benefits, etc?

NCAs make it easier to make NDAs enforceable.   It's hard to use proprietary info if you are not working with a competing employer.

What is a "non-compete"?  Is this relative to union workers or hourly workers or...?

Only time I’ve actually seen it fully pursued in court was during a bid process for a major project.

A business development manager from the preferred company left in the middle of the process, and with his intimate knowledge of his previous employer’s bid was able to adjust his new employer’s bid just right so they ended up winning the bid.

The previous employer sued and won.

Though, as you said, the NDAs probably had more to do with the win than the non compete. But from what I understand the non compete was used to sue the guy personally.

As people like you filter out of the workforce, it just gets better and better.

As someone of Irish decent I am OK if another Irishman never comes to America again.

Same, fuckin leprechaun lovers

Mis spell your name when you sign it, or sign X

Zuckerberg's a boomer?

The classes where written by boomers, to give to the kids who are going to school who were told to go to college by... well.... boomers.

I see way more boomers in VP and above levels then you are saying. Yes Millennials are in management and mid tier management but not upper yet because the boomers refuse to retire even tho they have been useless for a decade or more now... We use computers and stuff now...

Yea cuz zuckerberg is the only employee in the US.. So yea your statement seems relevant.

This 100%.

I know of cases that were successfully prosecuted to the tune of thousands of dollars in damages.  Probably hinges heavily on the state where it takes place.

lol thousands of dollars?  Here’s a check. Now kindly fuck off

Our clinic got one for over $300K. Yeah, it's a thing. And they could've bought out for $100K.

Who the fuck honored non-competes before this, lol?

@Steamedliver

Mostly yes. We start them on a guaranteed salary for the first year. After that, they typically go on production. Occasionally takes two years for their collections to fully support the expenses of their clinic, including their own pay. 401k match, insurance, disability, everything from day 1.

For a PCP, this might mean paying $220K/year from day 1. For some specialists, it might be $350-450K from day 1. Minimum of 60-90 days before the majority of their billings from day 1 come in to accounts receivable. And they're now going to be very busy the first days or weeks, although that usually ramps up pretty quickly. Once they're clearly covering their expenses and they go on to production, then they're likely making more money. But a new resident just coming out can't easily float along for several months making no money.

And a hospital will pay them a bit higher salary when they start. But they'll never be an owner and they'll have limited opportunities to get bonuses. If you're in private practice and on an eat-what-you-kill model, it motivates those who wanna work and wanna crank. We have a few making seven figures.

So yes, it's a big expense to bring them on. If they bail, we're out a large chunk of the money we've put into them.

Does that answer it?

What, what? Fast food workers?

"Corporate secret protection" is just the sales pitch rationalization for pulling a legal noose around the necks of workers to control them & reduce employment competition. The private sector hates competition. Hates it. Shocking that the Chamber of Commerce is behind the lawsuits. Shocking.

I wonder why this is from the FTC and not the Dept of Labor.

Those would be covered under an NDA. As far as "taking customers", if they are following the person they weren't the companies customers in the first place. I was on a phone conference on Friday where we let a several million dollar a year customer know they were getting a new account manager.  They didn't really care.  

Indeed.  Wages have been stagnant with a decrease in purchasing power since the '60s when women entered the workforce.  The labor supply was doubled without an increase in demand.  Now that women are all, essentially, in the workforce, big corporations need another way to increase labor supply and immigrants are clearly their strategy.

I'm an engineer so that won't really help me much.  

That being said, I am OK with "brain drain". We can always use more smart and industrious people.  With them, it isn't a zero sum game. While I am on this topic, which was the bigger "brain drain" catch, Einstein, Carnegie, Musk or someone else?

It's applied more broadly than just preventing client solicitation & you (should) know it. It's a method of control, & it's utterly abused.

That sounds like an antitrust violation.  "We are going to agree not to compete for clients", sounds problematic from an antitrust point of view.  IIRC we paid out 300 million Euro for doing that.

Being self employed is the best way to find out what your work is really worth.

Company secrets is all bullshit, everybody already knows what you are doing. So unless you have some patent protection they have shit. They do not want you leaving and going to the competition and take their pissed off overcharged clients away.