[stale2002]

Making the argument is the wrong phasing. Instead, what he should have said is "I can almost certainly get away with breaking the non-compete, and it is unlikely that anyone will notice".

Tech companies are not sending private detectives to follow every engineer that left the company.

This fantasy world, where major tech companies are preventing random engineers from leaving to work for other big tech companies, is just not true. It happens all of the time, and almost nobody gets sued.

Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like half of the engineers that I know, have job hopped, sometimes multiple times, between these top tech companies. They aren't being sued.

They go work at microsoft, and then leave for Facebook, or uber, or "insert rando prestigious tech company here", and I don't know of a single one, of all of my friend that I know, who has ever been sued for job hopping between top tech companies as an engineer.

It just does not happen, for the average tech employee, outside of weird, extreme, egregious cases.

[mamurphy]

Do companies enforce every single time? No. Can they try to enforce, and win, if your manager is upset, dislikes you, or is just a bad manager? Yes. Do they ever enforce? Sure do[0]. Do you have any data about this or could you find any article indicating it's safe to not worry about non-competes (if they are enforceable in your state)? I looked, and I couldn't find any such thing.

Most times the employee is just going to give up, and pursue other opportunities that the employer can't or won't enforce a non-compete against. There isn't always going to be a lawsuit.

Have you gone over the detailed career trajectory of all these engineers you know? Do you think they would volunteer, without prompting, that they couldn't take XZY job due to a non-compete?

Even if you have had detailed conversations with, say, two dozen people, if big companies enforce on 5% of people, it's not unheard of that you personally might not know someone it happened to. That's especially true if you happen to live in CA, where non-competes are unenforceable.

[0]https://www.geekwire.com/2017/business-personal-amazon-web-s...

[stale2002]

You have zero evidence for your 5% comment.

With how infrequent this stuff happens, and how often people jump between companies, I find it much more likely that the number is closer to 0.1% for a random software engineering job.

Or, in other words, it is nothing that anyone needs to worry about.

Your link is irrelevant because those examples were for VPs.

I am not talking about VPs. I am talking about a random software engineer at a top tech company. Those people don't have to worry.

[rantwasp]

all those people are VP level and above. If you’re a VP you can afford the lawyer. Hell even if you’re an unknown drone (maybe with the exception of fresh out of college people) you can probably afford the lawyer.

[willcipriano]

The point is it has a chilling effect[0], fast food restaurants aren't having employees sign noncompetes[1] because they think they have specialized knowledge, the purpose is to reduce churn and therefore training costs.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

[1]https://www.foodandwine.com/news/fast-food-non-compete-agree...

[stale2002]

Ok, so, that just means that people need to be more informed.

The reality is that people move between top tech companies all the time. It is extremely common. And basically nobody is having those non competes enforced, for a random engineering job.