Put differently, my employer pays me to write code, not to review the validity of terms in their contract. If their legal department is incompetent then that's their problem not mine.
If they expect me to perform (or not perform) actions on their behalf when I am not at work, and especially once my employment ends, then they are free to offer a consideration in exchange.
1. Society defines having a job as an optional luxury.
2. The employer is willing to strike out that clause, and the candidate employee can reasonably know this.
3. Other employers are offering better terms.
Were any of those true in this case?
There are always things in contracts which can't be struck out. You can always ask to strike it out, and declare your intention to find future employees at their company.
From their point of view, you'd be saying that when you left you'd potentially take millions of $s of other employees with you and disrupt their operations. Why would they employ you?
Not poaching your employer's employees within a certain timeframe is a perfectly normal and reasonable clause.
You've got confidential information on their employees, namely which ones are good, which work well with you, etc., things you'd normally spend a lot of time + money finding out. And they spent a lot of money advertising, vetting, hiring, training and integrating those employees.
Indeed, and many employees have found themselves assigned duties that were not at all what they expected, and damaging to their health or otherwise harmful, but hey, they "agreed" to perform assigned duties, right?
Looks like my position isn't a popular one here. So be it but, if you live in a developed country, have you ever wondered why, for the last few decades, almost everyone has been getting poorer and more miserable every time the GDP goes up? Sometimes, astonishingly enough, beliefs do actually have real-world consequences.
They aren't slaves. They can quit any time. No employer can force you to do anything - but they don't have to pay you if you don't do the assigned duties. Sounds fair to me.
If they start adding odious duties, in the UK we do have laws against that, you can refuse and if dismissed can argue "constructive dismissal". So if your employer asks you to start cleaning loos with a toothbrush...
The guy was a highly paid executive. I don't understand how he could have been under duress. (Is Elon Musk really hiring desperate people who have no options?)
What if the employer hired a person under duress, like they were in desperate need of some particular skill. Does that mean they can decide not pay the person?
I've had employers strike clauses that I didn't agree with. Contracts are hardly written in stone tablets. If contracts were non-negotiable and were employees' only option, everyone would be working for minimum wage.
That in combination with the claim that he asked other employees to come with him while they were his subordinates at Tesla, is the strongest argument the company has in this case, and maybe that combination has some merit. I'm arguing against the general claim that an "agreement" in an employment contract that the employee had no meaningful choice about signing, is morally binding.
> What if the employer hired a person under duress, like they were in desperate need of some particular skill. Does that mean they can decide not pay the person?
There is a classical thought experiment in ethics, on that very topic. Suppose you're stuck on a high window ledge with no way down, likely to lose your footing and fall in the next few minutes, and you see a man passing with a ladder. He offers to get you down for a million dollars. How binding is your agreement? Me, I figure since it was made under duress, you're entitled to renegotiate a more reasonable figure once on the ground. Some thinkers have given much stronger answers than that! What's your answer?
I'll offer him much less. If I fall, he gets nothing.
It's not a realistic question anyway. If you were fired from your job tomorrow, are you really going to drop dead? I doubt it. Is the job you have the one and only job you could ever have? That somehow, when you were born, you were destined by fate to have only this job and there is nothing you can do about it?
I don't buy that people have "no meaningful choice" in employment, not even close. I've heard all kinds of justifications for stealing from others, cheating on exams, etc. Even justifications by well paid office workers for stealing office supplies. I'm not buying it.
1. You are a man of principle, to a degree that is highly unusual.
2. Your intuition, from a position of safety and comfort, about what you would do in dire straits, is inaccurate, to a degree that is highly usual.
The difference in prior probability of these two scenarios is equally obvious.
> If you were fired from your job tomorrow, are you really going to drop dead? I doubt it.
I already pointed out that much depends on whether other employers are offering better terms. But as for your question, actually there are many people for whom being fired is a life-threatening crisis. For many people, the expected timescale to find another job is somewhere between several months and never. If you've been unemployed more than six months, your perceived employability drops sharply. Many countries have an inadequate social safety net, such that long-term unemployment is likely to lead to homelessness, which is a life-threatening condition from which it is very difficult to escape. I remember one person who spent some time homeless and barely escaped from it, saying if it happened again he'd just commit suicide on day one and be done. That is the reality for a large percentage of humanity today, and in most developed countries it's getting worse not better.
You can believe what you wish. My father told me that what separated men from animals is men have honor. People have a choice - but nobody said it was an easy one.
Anyway, your father sounds like a wise man. It is dishonorable to break an agreement, certainly. It is also dishonorable to exploit someone's desperate circumstances to coerce them into signing an extremely one-sided and unreasonable contract. We are all bound by a set of implicit agreements regarding basic standards of civilized behavior; that's a prerequisite for civilization itself.
If you don't intend to abide by the terms of a contract, then don't agree to it. Nobody is making you work for Tesla. Besides, all contracts can be negotiated. Negotiate for the contract you want.