It's interesting how many US people think that non-compete agreements are fair. In the EU and UK, the general rule is that you employment contract ends as soon as the company stops paying you. Once you have left the company, you cannot be bound by the old employment contract. Some companies choose to pay gardening leave, but in practice you cannot be forced to accept it for any longer than your agreed notice period, and while there might be grounds to sue for breach of contract if you just walked away completely, in general a company can't force anyone to work somewhere if they don't want to.
The protections that the non-compete are intended to provide are already provided through other means that will almost certainly apply - things like NDAs or IP theft (which would include knowingly transferring proprietary secrets or processes). Sure, it'd take more time in discovery to prove such an issue, but in general employee protections are considered more important to society than commercial concerns. On the other hand, someone found guilty of IP theft or breaking an NDA will probably find getting a similar level job very hard in the future, because their reputation would be ruined.
I live in a "right to work" state.
As a young corporate go getter, I signed a few non-compete contracts. In two cases, I was lured away by a competitor. In both cases, I tried (unsuccessfully) to hide where I was going. My old companies found out and tried to enforce the non-compete as punishment.
Both times, my attorney filed the necessary paperwork, we showed up in the first case and my boss was threatening me outside in the lobby before we went in, telling me I'll never work in this city again. We go in and judge basically laughed at the company and tossed the case immediately.
I don't remember the slew of cases he listed, but the message was clear. You cannot keep someone from working in their chosen field simply because you don't like your competitor. Since no laws were broken and I left with literally nothing but the suit I wore in on my first day - they didn't have any reason to keep me from working in my field.
The other case went the same way a five or six years later.
Note that the ruling was ostensibly about whether the FTC had the authority to ban noncompete agreements across the board, it was not per se a ruling on whether noncompetes are good, bad, scary, awesome, legal, or illegal.
The only way a noncompetent should be legal is if full compensation is given during that time period.
> A federal judge in Texas
Surprise, surprise
This is Texas so I am inclined to think the judge is a political hack installed by someone to issue judgements that are paid for. As much as I don’t want to, after seeing the recent Supreme Court and other rulings, this is the first thought that came to mind.
Another hypocrisy of people who advocate liberal and free economy. Many of them criticize the state because it is a monopoly and claim that the state prevents competition. However, they try to do the same thing themselves.
Dupe of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41304691 Prior discussion of context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40136010
I personally believe the FTC noncompete rule is not strong enough, rather than too strong, because it doesn’t protect the public from customer noncompete clauses like those of closed AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and even Mistral’s platform side. They learn from us and then prohibit customers from using output to improve our own models. This creates big safety issues as near misses cannot be used to instruct future models.
IMO negative of negative is a less efficient comm strategy. For example, I'd word this as US Judge allows workers to compete with ex-employers or something similar.
Congress should pass a law. Easy win.
> "Today's decision does not prevent the FTC from addressing noncompetes through case-by-base enforcement actions," Graham said in a statement.
Oh yeah, any time you have to deal with a non-compete, just ring up the FTC. Because everyone has the resources to litigate. Ridiculous.
Well, that ought to reduce tech worker pay another 10% or so.
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Unpopular opinion, but this is great. FTC has been overreaching the past 4 years and it needed proper checks and balances from the court. As the Judge mentioned, there are specific cases where Non Compete doesnt make sense and there are cases where it does especially if you are paid highly for the specific reason that you are long term investment for that company.
Else trade secrets can easily be hired away from competition
You lose again @sama!
The noose is closing.
what does the FTC have to do with non competes? correct ruling
> "The Commission’s lack of evidence as to why they chose to impose such a sweeping prohibition ... instead of targeting specific, harmful non-competes, renders the Rule arbitrary and capricious," wrote Brown
All non-competes are harmful, end of story.
Link to the ruling: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rj8_52.B... (…though this PDF is kinda horrible, since it seems to somehow not be searchable at all, but it's the only one I've found in like 7 different news sites, all but one of which can't cite their sources…)