Non-Compete Pacts Called Bad For Tech Innovation

carusoj writes in with NetworkWorld reporting from a panel at Harvard last week. It concluded that employee non-compete agreements have stifled tech startup development in Massachusetts, where the pacts are aggressively enforced, but failed to hold back the tech industry boom in states like California, where they are mostly unenforceable. We've discussed non-competes often here in the past; Techdirt made much the same point a year and a half back.

Comments

Re:Despicable

[CodeBuster]

Why would anyone want to live in Massachusetts anyway? High taxes, non-competes, mandatory purchase of health insurance from a state selected slate of "pre-approved" companies (i.e. they screw you because you have to choose one of them), did I mention the high taxes?

Re:apropos

[iq in binary]

Don't yourself be so arrogant as to equate your desperate situation to the rest of the workforce as a whole. You didn't need to take the job, you just felt you were compelled to because your financial planning didn't account for the chance that you might not have income for a couple months.

In the US, for the most part, you work for what you chose to work for. Employment isn't a law here. I don't believe that non-competes are moral either, but it's how some people chose to do business. I chose not to work for those people, or to alter their contracts to allow me what liberties I won't budge on. I think the arrogance that pervades the ilk of people who relate their financial obligations to compelling forces of nature is even worse than that of the employers who enforce non-competes. You chose to have a family, you chose to rent an apartment and bring bills unto yourself. Freedom of choice, free country and all. Your situation was brought upon you by none other than yourself. That you would state that you were forced to take a job that had contractual obligations that you didn't like is a farce.

We, the people with a little money, don't give a damn about you. That's right, I'll say it. We don't give a flying rats ass about you because we didn't put you in your situation, you did. I think the whole notion that the rest of us have to pay more taxes or change the way we do business so that nobody ever has to be in dire straights is bullshit. Socialism doesn't, hasn't, and will never work in a free country. Sure, Sweden is great, go live there. I want freedom, and dire straights is inherent to having freedom. You're only free when you're living for yourself the way you want to live for yourself, and being forced to support everyone else is not, I repeat NOT conducive to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Employers aren't forcing you to do anything, you're agreeing to all the terms they set down. It's your fault you signed the non-compete. Don't bitch at the people who don't have to live paycheck to paycheck simply because you felt you were compelled to do something when you really weren't.