[andrewjf]

> be on the hook for continued compensation at some proportion of the employee's former wage to actually exercise the privilege to deny the employee work in a specific field

Yes. The proportion should be 100%, plus all benefits (401k, health, continued vesting of equity, etc). If you're being denied future employment then the employer can pay for it if it's that important to them. Possibly even more than 100% if they're preventing me from going to a company with a substantial increase in pay.

[Spivak]

Which is why I think companies should have to “buy you out” in the event you get another job. If you get an offer and they want to exercise the non-compete they have to pay you total comp for that offer otherwise you can work there.

I’m sure in a forum of devs you’ll will think of plenty obvious “hacks” which are just fraud and our courts are perfectly capable of sussing that out.

[mattkrause]

This seems unwieldy because people change jobs for reasons beyond their own immediate salary.

Maybe I want to make a lateral move because I'm unhappy with my boss or my commute. What if I'm moving because my partner found a new/better job elsewhere, or I want to be closer to my extended family?

You can try to put a monetary value on some of these (pay my commute?) but I don't think you could "buy me out" of moving for an ailing parent or sick kid.

[Spivak]

Huh? Why doesn’t this work? If you want to change jobs for any reason you can and if the employer wants to exercise the non-compete they have to pay you your best offer to not work, not to keep working for them.

[bee_rider]

Ehh, this seems like a hard deal to really get right, to the extent that it is sort of “fair” to the employee, the company could just offer that deal if they wanted.

Which is to say, nothing prevents a company from offering that deal as an alternative, rather than attempting to force it through with a non-compete. But, the employee would have to consider the cost to them of basically pausing their career development and letting their skills atrophy. That’s a pretty big cost! It seems unfair to force that cost on them through the contract (especially if we agree with the premise that non-competes are usually entered on a sort of unwilling basis).

Nothing prevents the company from offering this sort of deal currently. But I’d expect something higher than the offer, to take it. Companies don’t seem to offer this sort of deal currently, I guess because it seems like a pretty bad deal on their side too. Paying somebody to do nothing seems pretty expensive, I think you only do that for political favors.

[bobthepanda]

I think they are talking about doing it in place of a non-compete, so you’re either

* not working due to noncompete and not getting paid for the duration of time

* not working due to noncompete and getting paid for the duration of time

The point is to make noncompetes a hassle and only worth it if you’re actually trying to protect something. The status quo is pretty poor if Subway’s “sandwich artists” are getting told to sign noncompetes without compensation. Companies aren’t really offering the latter if they don’t have to, because they’re more expensive; with the notable exception of finance.

[bee_rider]

But what’s the status quo? My perception at least is that non-competes almost never get enforced or are struck down if they do get enforced, usually, outside of really specific situations. I guess my assumption is that the companies don’t offer the latter because they don’t actually care very much about individual engineers going to do similar jobs at the competition, and they just try to get their employees to sign as many contracts as possible because… “why not?” I guess.

[mattkrause]

My bad! I thought the buy-out would keep your working at your original job.

I still think there's something off about the power asymmetry though.

[cma]

Ultimately that is still very anticompetitive, it just asks for more compensation to the worker but is still paying them to do nothing and hurting competition, a sure sign of a broken system (paying people to do nothing is usually a charged leveled at very broken bureaucracies).

[andrewjf]

For sure - I would like to see non-competes banned outright, of course.

I was just replying to OP for implying that a worker should get a reduced (i.e. proportional) payout for being denied employment at a competitor. The "losing" employer should pay substantially for such a egregious act and the employee should benefit.

[bobthepanda]

This is already done at financial sectors in some countries, mostly to prevent immediate poaching of clients and transfers of strategies.

In six months everything will be out of date.