[adewinter]

You're right, instead of treating them(secretaries) like a trusted confidant and rewarding them well financially - thus ensuring their loyalty (even after their employment!) and compensating them for their truly valuable contribution - we should instead create a law that hamstrings an entire industry and continue to bend the knee to the rich and whatever is convenient for them.

[tekacs]

I’m no fan of noncompetes — and I would also rather generate (and have previously generated) loyalty through compensation, goodwill and camaraderie, but this entire argument strikes me as disingenuous.

- The almost conspiracy-esque malice of bending ‘to the rich’ that the grandparent poster was talking about is much more easily explained by ‘these people also have unusually privileged information’.

- I think the thinking (perhaps unfairly) went like this: Whilst there is such a thing as domain skill, a noncompete should affect a secretary or assistant minimally in practice, as they generally have a broad, non-domain-specific skillset, unlike the executive they report to.

[JohnTHaller]

> Whilst there is such a thing as domain skill, a noncompete should affect a secretary or assistant minimally in practice, as they generally have a broad, non-domain-specific skillset, unlike the executive they report to.

These aren't what people think of as 'secretaries'. These are highly skilled executive assistants with WAY more domain-specific skills than you're giving them credit for. I have friends that do this for C level executives. Including at $100bn+ companies. A non-compete within a given industry would severely hamstring their future career.

[tekacs]

Ugh, I think this is the curse of Internet comments, where you can never include enough disclaimers.

I knew this (correct) case would be made as I was writing my comment, but thought I could avoid including a sub-clause to deal with this topic.

So yes — I know folks like this too and fully acknowledge the skillset involved. Some of those folks have a deep skillset and yet don’t have any particular knowledge such that a noncompete would make sense to keep them from spreading it.

Per my comment I don’t like noncompetes — but I do think that this is the thinking that was used to define policy around this.

I also do think that there is an exclusion zone, whereby folks are either:

- Non-specific and not affected by this materially.

- Highly skilled and /would/ take material privileged information with them.

- High skilled and /would not/.

I suspect the last category is just elided in the thinking that led to this coming to be.

[ineptech]

At the risk of deflating this highly-charged discussion, I think the reason for the "executive staff" carve-out might be a little more ho-hum: they are often employed via the same contract as the executive they support.

[tekacs]

Yup -- I actually am inclined to agree with my sibling commenter all the way up top.

I don't think the answer here is necessarily all that clever -- charged conversation notwithstanding, I just wanted to get at the fact that it's likely /not a conspiracy/.

I would love to deflate this mess of a subthread. :)

[anamax]

> At the risk of deflating this highly-charged discussion, I think the reason for the "executive staff" carve-out might be a little more ho-hum: they are often employed via the same contract as the executive they support.

Huh? The VP of Engineering has a hefty stock plan, a guaranteed bonus, and a three-year contract. Do you really think that her secretary has anything comparable? Heck, her secretary doesn't even have a three-year contract.

[JohnTHaller]

Among my friends I have talked to about this previously, they do not.

[filmgirlcw]

It depends on the executive contract. Some of them will offer a guaranteed number of support staff of the executive’s choice (now whether the admin has to negotiate a separate contract with the exec, I don’t know) and you’ll often see admins move along with the exec from job to job.

But I don’t know if that is why the carve-out is there or not. I doubt it, but some exec contracts absolutely allow for a guaranteed support staff of the exec’s choosing.

[ineptech]

I said "employed via the same contract," not "a comparable contract." Meaning, the VP's hiring contract says "you get $X/yr to hire some staff".

[faeriechangling]

I don’t see it as the governments job to ensure the loyalty of those with privileged information through legal force, that should be ensured through higher salaries. It’s an example of a law which exists purely to facilitate inequality and to ensure that people paid so little they will never become homeowners can be threatened with joblessness and poverty if they get a competitor to increase their salaries because of the value of the information they know. These non-competes make it companies can expense enforcing loyalty through legal force to the public purse, instead of actually having to pay for loyalty.

Most laws revolving around protecting corporate secrets are enablers of inequality that the public pays for. It’s one of these services the government provides to business that it really shouldn’t.

[tekacs]

As per line one of my comment — I also don’t much like non-competes.

The only reason I commented was to dispel and push back on the conspiracy-esque style that the parent commenter used to characterise /how/ the law got written this way.

[denton-scratch]

I don't really understand what noncompete clauses are for. I would have thought that the law already provides for suing an "unfaithful servant". Surely when you take paid employment, there's an implied obligation to take due care of trade secrets.

The last contract I signed (1 sheet of A4) bound me not to take work with a "competitor" for 6 months after quitting. Since the employer's clients were all local, I took that as meaning I was not to take a job with a web-shop in the same town. And I thought 6 months seemed reasonable - after all, we weren't developing patentable inventions, we were just making websites.

[Edit] I think the purpose of the clause was mainly to stop me taking customer lists to the competitor. I'd have thought that fell squarely into the "unfaithful servant" bag - it's a scummy way for an employee to carry on.

[brtkdotse]

> I would also rather generate (and have previously generated) loyalty through compensation, goodwill and camaraderie

You’re absolutely right. I’d happy sign any non-compete contract as long as _I’m paid my salary throughout the non-compete cool-down period”