[molbioguy]

Thanks for relating your situation. I hope I haven't come across as unreasonable. I don't think (nor have I advocated) that employees bear the full brunt of any transitional disruption. I just think that we often tell people to follow their dreams and quit their jobs without asking them to leave in an honorable way. And I define honorable as making reasonable efforts to minimize the disruption of losing a valuable employee, for example by giving more than two weeks notce. As @pasbesoin said, professionalism is to be expected on both sides of the relationship. In your situation it seems to be a worst case where your employer is using undue pressure and making the whole affair pretty one-sided (which sucks badly). In my opinion, you owe him the minimum your contract requires and no more. I'm not a lawyer, so the whole non-compete agreement is beyond where I feel like I can comment upon.

I think you and several posters have pointed out to me that not all employers are honorable nor care enough about their employees and thus it's not always possible to give them the consideration they might want. Fair enough. And it turns out to be harder to generalize than I thought it would be. Sorry, I can be naive.

For what it is worth, in my case, I didn't complain to the employee about the two weeks notice nor did I ask for anything beyond documenting procedures and critical code. We wished him well and sent him off to join a startup with a company-wide party. No strings attached.

[mcotton]

You have done a great job of stating your case and responding to comments from the employee side. I have no doubt that your next programmer will benefit from this.

Thank you for starting this discussion.

[molbioguy]

Thanks. I hope so, too. Good luck on your situation. I hope it turns out better than you fear.