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California Lawsuit Wants To Weaken Noncompetes (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: California already prohibits companies from enforcing noncompetes within the state, but a Bay Area life sciences company is asking a state court to go even further. Veeva Systems is suing three of its East Coast-based competitors and asking a California Superior Court judge to declare that it has the right to hire employees who have signed such agreements. Veeva also wants a court to limit the use of non-disparagement and confidentiality agreements. "Non-compete agreements are bad," the company said in its suit. "These agreements limit employment opportunities. They suppress wages. They keep employees trapped in jobs they do not want, and they keep employees from fairly competing with their former employers. These agreements restrict fair and robust competition for employees."
Take this a step further, require them to report your last day of employment as the last day of the non-compete. Ie: no employment gaps on your resume.
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Actually, that's (not quite) the reason why non-competes are invalid in CA. The court ruled that a company wouldn't just have to pay you your full salary, but in fact would have to pay you more than your full salary during the non-compete period. The justification was that during this period you would not be keeping up with the latest technologies, and your skills would bit-rot. You'd become inherently less employable, and the company must compensate you for that.
One of the basis of contract law is that they are void if they require you do something illegal. IE if I sign a contract that makes me your slave it cannot be enforced.
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I work for a major corporation which has this provision in its non-compete, no doubt as a bone for the "unconscionable" provisions of the law.
The mechanism goes like this: if you want to take a job with a competing firm, first you must notify corporate legal who must review the potential move and either release you from non-compete obligations, or enforce the non-compete clause by offering you continued employment at a compensation rate matching the bona-fide offer you presented to legal for evaluation, whether or not you are actually working for the company.
First problem: what does submitting your offer to legal and waiting for a response do to your chances of landing the outside job? what does it do to your continued career development if you end up not leaving?
Second problem: how often does it all go as advertised, without lengthy delays, stonewalling, etc?
Final problem: even if the company does pay you for non-compete, that's very temporary while you look for other work, basically little better than unemployment compensation - and you'll be trying to get it out of a legal department for a company that you're cutting ties with - what could possibly go wrong?
That and most people in the software industry (and I imagine many other fields) switch jobs for a pay raise. Even that alone is enough to justify asking for more than your previous salary. The fairest way to do it would do a non-compete would be for the previous company to have an option to pay whatever your next employer is offering (or something close to 100% of that amount) to not work for them for some period of time.
I think that alone makes it a fair compensation and there's nothing stopping a person from updating their skill set while they wait for the non-compete clause to expire. If you want to stay sharp, there're are plenty of open source projects to get involved in and there are plenty that are using new languages, technology, etc.