If you ever see one of those contracts here, it's usually usually for a very reasonable situation and a well paid position.
It’s not at all a ridiculous ask, either. I’ve made a career out of going after high-impact roles in whatever is the fastest growing area of technology at the time. The non-compete isn’t just asking me to sacrifice the income from my next role, it’s asking me to sacrifice the experience as well. It also limits my ability to renegotiate comp while on the job, because they know your BATNA isn’t to just go get a better offer from a competitor.
If a company wants me to give all of that up, I’m sure as shit not doing it just for the privilege of working for them.
The free movement of workers is important to having an efficient economy. The US could do a lot better here; we have bad safety nets, non-competes, "trade-secrets".
When workers move freely and spread trade-secrets, this results in all companies performing better, on average. This is good for everyone except the lazy owners who would lose money to those who perform better.
While the US worries about limiting the free movement of workers, non-competes, and "trade-secrets", China is going to build approximately a billion homes and factories.
If we take the "free" out of "free market", then we're just a market, and far from the most efficient one.
https://www.newsweek.com/what-happened-china-ghost-cities-20...
Net present value of 50% of salary for the next 30 years is something like a million dollars for most HN commenters, I'd guess.
Plus it'd almost certainly end with zero notice. You'd get a email saying "you're free to go". Suddenly. After say 26 months.
So it's not like a "pension for life" - just a gap in your employment history.
Any employment gap can be easily explained by saying "I was under a non-compete and being paid garden leave while working on personal projects to keep my skills fresh". It's very common in e.g. the finance world, I believe.
The uncertainty means you're still out on the job market looking for a real job.
Uk law generally is that non compete clause is ok, if the length of time is reasonable. But you can't stop a person with a trade from applying that trade unreasonably.
Most tend to be 3-6 months.
Normally it's to stop a person leaving from stealing clients.
Downside for finance folks is that the usually make a decent chunk of their compensation through bonuses, not their base salary. So their gardening-leave pay ends up being quite a pay cut, and while they're "gardening", they're out of the game for a year and their skills/knowledge becomes a little out of date.
> reasonably common for it to be as long as a year
I have a lot more sympathy for "you may not take clients with you" clauses than for "you may not work in the same industry" clauses.
As the employee, it’s still clearly a bad position for me unless I can find a non-competing job that pays me at least 70% plus whatever pay bump I’d expect for career advancement.
This clearly depends on your role and industry. I can write code in a bunch of industries I've actually never had 2 jobs in the same industry. If I were an oil pipeline engineer it would be different.
30% of your total monthly income as it was, when you are likely leaving for more money at a competitor or to start your own company...
Unless the previous employer is slow and incompetent, if you've done good work, they'd probably be ahead and better funded. I'd take the money.
I mean I would probably take the money and temporarily switch fields too but I don't think it's quite that simple for a lot of people.
Hmm… in four different industries, though… Yeah okay there might be some issues.