| HN Mirror

> So no your complaint is not calibrated. Sorry.

Well, you are wrong.

I'll start with your last comment. Go read my post again and understand the degree of the example given. This was an extreme case. This individual required a little over a year of training and knew virtually nothing about the job coming in.

Everyone needs to learn something at every new job, of course. In many ways that's what makes it fun. There's a distinction between learning something and having to be trained for a year. And that distinction is huge both in terms of the time and money invested on that person.

> Spending time to train an employee is an expected cost for the employers.

Of course.

> It is not that they steal from you corporate secrets that the competitors would leverage against you.

Not sure where this comes from, I didn't say this.

> It is a minimal time risk that the employer takes, to make productive an employee for them.

The key word there is "minimal". Once again, in my case, we invested a year and a serious amount of money training the person. It was a mistake to hire him. Plain and simple.

That's the point that readers seem to miss. Let me try to do a better job spelling it out:

Without a contract that obligates an employee to stay for a specific length of time, there's a limit function on how much you can invest on that employee in the short term due to the risk of the employee leaving your company for a competitor.

Would you buy a used car that required constant work to fix it for a year and yet the engine isn't guaranteed to last more than a year? Likely not. Same thing.

Because of this, companies will generally avoid hiring "newbies" unless they have to or have a value proposition that's sexy enough that they will likely stay. For example, SpaceX is full of 25-ish year old engineers who are truly excited to work there. They come to the company with very little --if any-- experience. They need to learn everything. Some leave. The vast majority stay. Lots of them pull the ejection cord at the 5-year vesting point.

So, it is a training ground, yet, there's a reasonable assurance that perhaps 80% of the newbies will stay. There are only so many sexy companies like that. Most small to medium businesses do not carry that clout.

In that context, one can understand why an non-compete with a limited term can make sense in the eyes of an employer. Before I am verbally eviscerated, I have already said, multiple times, that I don't like them and do not advise anyone to accept one. I am simply saying that I understand at least one scenario under which they might make sense.

> Think about the risks that the employees take for the company (they are not just time risks). They have to relocate themselves, and even worse move their entire family and kids away from their friends & schools, sell their houses often at loss / break leases, and then join your venture with just at will employment contract, which means that at any-time you can just tell them to go f themselves.

Once again, these are things I did not say.

The employee I was referring to had to drive 30 minutes. In fact, our office was closer to him than his prior job, which was one hour away.

The vast majority of jobs do not require such extreme measures. In the case of most small to medium businesses, they cannot afford to trade in the relocation markets. That's an entirely different dynamic and one that I am very sensitive to.

I have someone right now who has to move his family from Arizona to join us. We are renting a house for him and his family for an entire year and covering all related expenses. I have insisted that they do not sell their home until they are sure this move will make sense to them long term. Being in CA, there is no non-compete, and I am perfectly fine with it because I am not hiring a newbie that will require a massive amount of training before they can add value to the organization.

There are degrees.

The point you and others missed is the idea that there are scenarios under which non-compete agreements could find some justification. I will generalize one to be an apprenticeship position. The end result of not having this as a legal tool is that there are entire classes of businesses who have to --out of self-preservation-- take the position of "let someone else train them". That's just reality, like it or not.

Next time you read job postings where you say "Damn! I know I can do that job, but they want 5 years of experience and I only have 2!" think about the possibility that they are thinking "We cannot spend the time or money to train someone". If, on the other hand, they had the legal ability to offer newbies the ability to learn on the job in exchange for committing to a minimum and reasonable term of employment, the job specification might change.