Blanket non-competes undermine the creative destruction process in modern economies. They will end up hurting the companies using them by making it harder for successful firms to expand quickly and keeping less successful firms afloat longer. The problem is individual companies lose little in the short run by putting them on their own employees.
The answer is to make non-competes unenforceable across the US in the way they are in California, which makes them generally unforceable but adds reasonable exceptions for situations like selling a company to an acquirer.
I have been asked to sign non-compete agreements by a couple of employers.
One of them was just a legally worded agreement to not poach customers or go to work for a customer within 18 months of ending employment. That made sense to me and I agreed to it.
I wouldn't sign a non-compete that forbade me from going to work for a competitor.
Same here. Unfortunately most people either don't take the time to think through the consequences or do not have a choice about work that allows them to push back.
I have similar feelings about binding arbitration, another area where corporate lawyers have gone crazy in recent years.
In one case, I needed the job and a non compete was a condition of employment.
Instead of signing, I wrote in cursive "Won't Agree" on the signature line.
It may not hold up in court but it was enough to satisfy my personal ethics. If I decided to do something that was contrary to the agreement, I wouldn't be violating my own code of honor.
> 1942, age 30. [Alan] Turing joined the Home Guard so he could learn to shoot. “[Turing] had to complete a form, and one of the questions on this form was: ‘Do you understand that by enrolling in the Home Guard you place yourself liable to military law?’ Well, Turing, absolutely characteristically, said: There can be no conceivable advantage in answering this question ‘Yes’ and therefore he answered it ‘No.’ … And … he was duly enrolled, because people only look to see that these things are signed at the bottom.” He learned to shoot, but he refused to attend parades, and the apoplectic chief officer confronted him, and Turing said, “You know, I rather thought this sort of situation could arise…If you look at my form you will see that I protected myself against this situation.” He’d decided on the “optimal strategy if you had to complete a form of this kind. So much like the man all the way through.”
The answer is to make non-competes unenforceable across the US in the way they are in California, which makes them generally unforceable but adds reasonable exceptions for situations like selling a company to an acquirer.