Enforcing Non-Competes That You Didn't Sign?

Kyaphas writes "Looks like even if you don't sign a non-compete agreement, you might still be barred from working somewhere similar. " Yet another example of tech companies being jerks because things aren't as pretty as they were a year ago. Screwing over your customers is one thing, but it sucks that they would jerk around employees too.

Comments

is there a register somewhere

[joss]

It seems like an independent register to keep track of which companies are being assholes about this kind of thing would be useful.

Then just avoid working for those companies.

Perhaps a disgruntled former employee of somewhere particuarly nasty could set it up. Once the word got out, it would be a popular site.

Most "secrets" really aren't all that secret

[sjbe]

This article is somewhat frightening to me. While most companies I've worked at attempt to keep quiet about information that could potentially benefit the competition (and rightfully so), most of the time what is regarded as "secret", really isn't very secret.

In most industries and with most products, it is not very hard for anyone with sufficient expertise in the field to understand what a competitor is doing. Heck, if you want to sell a product, you have to tell someone about it. After that your business model and products are pretty open to analysis.

My company makes car parts. There is really very little we have that our competitors don't also. We often pretend like what we are doing is something secret that will give us an advantage, but in reality our competitors are doing the same things. We know what they are doing (generally) and they know what we are doing (generally) so this veneer of secrecy is really just that. Our engineers aren't significantly more (or less) capable and our manufacturing capabilities are comperable. The only real differences are in how we handle our finances, and what intellectual property we happen to own.

The industry of competitive intelligence really isn't so much about finding "secret documents" and industrial spying. (though certainly some of that occurs) Most of it is simply doing a thorough analysis based on publicly available information. You'd be amazed how little really is secret if you are interested enough and willing to spend the time with the info to put the pieces together.

The only time I think a company might have a case for "inevitable disclosure" would be for very high up employees with access to strategic plans or for engineering personel working on not yet released projects (where an attempt at secrecy was maintained) going straight to a direct competitor in a position where that information would be a significant competitive advantage. Other than that, it's none of the company's business. Ever.

Moral: NEVER take a job at Microsoft.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

A number of companies have tried to reduce consultants to employees and employees to serfs.

EDS was one. It hired people out of high-school, trained them in an "information tech boot camp", and charged them something like $5K (a couple decades ago) for that "training" if they left within six months. They paid them peanuts and no stock options, but picked up their medical expenses. Result: They'd be unemployable and at risk to life and limb if they left. Then EDS cut an exclusive - and finally merged with - GM, throwing thousands of contract programmers out of work there (unless they signed on with EDS, of course). Serfdom.

Ross Perot (EDS' founder) lobbied until the "safe harbor" provision of the tax code was changed, with the net result that if consultants (or their families) owned controlling interest in firm they worked through - even if it was incorporated - it would be treated as a front for direct employment. That combined with a tax court ruling treating their clients as "employers", making them liable for the consultants' income tax if the consultant screwed up on paying quarterlies. The result was that consultants HAD to be employees of corporations they didn't have significant control over to be employable in the auto industry. Near serfdom - you get to change farms and lords, but can't run your own show.

(I understand some of this has changes since then.)

Now we have Microsoft. If you are granted access to their internal code while working with their partners you have to sign a non-compete that takes you out of most of the software business for years afterward. If you work directly for them you get little or no experience with non-Microsoft software and if you leave they'll enforce non-competes - even terms you didn't agree to - to keep you from working anywhere in their space.

Who in their right mind, knowing this, will ever sign on with them?

I know there's a stereotype around here of Bill Gates as devil. But this makes it look like their employment papers grant them your soul.