[WingForward]

Outlawing non-competes would make employers less likely to hire because they're not just about trade secrets.

They're about encouraging employers to make the investment in a new employee, knowing the time and effort put into that person isn't going to be easily transferred to a competitor.

That said, you can negotiate a non-compete, either doing away with it completely, or changing the terms.

Non-competes generally have at least three limiting features: industry, time, and region.

You can negotiate on the industry side: from "same industry" to "company's direct competitors".

You can negotiate on the region:"the Northeast" to "New England" to "metro Boston".

And you can negotiate on the time: twelve months, to six, to three.

I've just thought of this, but I think it would be fair it limit the non-competes based on the time worked in a position in a company. Less than one month and more than five years in a position, the non-compete clause goes away. Or the terms change.

[danssig]

wtf? Are you posting from the 70's or something? Companies of today are not remotely loyal. Why should employees be? Years ago companies had to actually pay to train employees in whatever programming language they use. Now they get us to pay for that ourselves in college (this is why so many universities switched to Java).

In my whole career I've always gotten my best salary increases by moving. If companies want to keep me around the way to do it is not with a modern form of slavery but rather by keeping me happy. If they have some stupid rule that says the max raise per year is 3% and I can get 8% somewhere else then fuck them.

[WingForward]

Oh, you know how to program? Ok, great, that's the minimum you need to get a job. I hope you can read too.

But what do you know about the clients? Who at Company B needs to be handled with kid gloves? Who likes it when you're pushy? How much can you negotiate with Company C on the timeline? What are the strengths of the other developers both in house and at other firms?

That's the stuff you can only learn by working in the industry. That's what makes an employee valuable. That's the real skills, the stuff you won't learn in school.

[wanorris]

Sort of. Programming is justifiably considered a profession, like engineering, medicine, and the law -- as distinguished from other careers like sales and customer support. The distinction is a large body of background knowledge and skills that have to be acquired as a baseline for doing a job.

In a profession, learning things like clients' preferences can be vital to performing a job effectively, but it's overly reductionist to call them "the real skills", even if that might be true in, say, a sales position.

[danssig]

>That's the stuff you can only learn by working in the industry. That's what makes an employee valuable. That's the real skills, the stuff you won't learn in school.

So what? I learned some stuff from the company I worked for and they get the financial benefit for my creations long after I'm gone (at least potentially). I call that even (actually I already consider this advantage: company. I'd like to be getting residuals like people other industries do). If you don't want me to leave then make it attractive enough for me that I can't do so rationally.