https://www.texasnoncompetelaw.com/articles/noncompete-agree...

Idaho is cheaper than Texas. And no, Texas is not 3-10x cheaper than even California. In addition, you get paid less in TX than in CA.

TX doesn't have state income tax, but CA does. TX has close to the cheapest fuel prices in the country while the bay area has the most expensive fuel prices in the country. Food costs less in TX and there is no sales tax on retail food purchases in TX.

Yes, you get paid less in TX. For an average software developer you tend to get paid about 40-60% less. Since the cost of living is probably 3x more in CA getting paid a little less in TX still puts you at a huge financial advantage.

I am not guessing at this. I am looking at the numbers and performing very simple arithmetic.

Gas is more in CA (2.89) than in TX (2.03). Our property tax rate is 0.81%. Yours is 1.90%.

The #1 employer in TX is Walmart. In CA it's UC. Not that that really matters. [1]

You haven't shown that the COL is 3-10 times higher in CA than in TX. A reliable cite would help. More, yes. 3-10 time more? No, that's not even remotely true.

[1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-are-the-largest-emplo...

* I already linked to a site that does city by city comparisons, but there are so many online.

Payscale sure isn't saying 3-10x.

http://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator/Texas-Aust...

If you move from San Francisco to Austin TX, you can take a 45% pay cut and live the same, I don't think this accounts for income tax which comes out to probably brings it to a 50% pay cut.

So I would say 2x

1. Those 401K's and IRA's have a yearly cap, so anything above that cap doesn't apply. 2. Saving your "rainy day" account is a one time thing. Once you reach 4-6 months of income, you are done. 3. Like we agree, you can put it in a non-tax sheltered fund.

Also, not sure if you are going to get 8x return in 30 years. Maybe 50 years ago. When I was in college you could expect to double your money ever 7 years. I don't believe that's still the case.

Haha. Okay that's seriously ridiculous. I'd have a field day berating any org that tried to push that on me.

> ... and any created during employment regardless of whether or not it was written for the company or on company time.

I'd disagree with you on the non-company time. Depending on the nature of the work whether it happens on the clock or not isn't clear cut. Hence the default of the company owning everything while you're doing work for them as an employee.

The best defense for this as an employee is to get a written exemption for anything non-company related that you're working on, or a generic exemption as a matter of company policy for things like off-clock FOSS contributions.

Just about every large scale FOSS project requires contributors to attest to IP ownership and assign copyright of contributions. Most also explicitly ask if your employer has granted you permission to offer you contribution. There are many stories of projects that don't do this trying to track down individuals years after the fact to facilitate relicensing.

Now in a more specific work for hire (i.e. contracting / consulting) situation, it does need to be tightened to reflect the actual work at hand. Otherwise you can't work on anything else

> I'm surprised they didn't include any future IP as well.

Be even funnier if they did and also required to actually create some too. Instead of a golden parachute it'd be lead anchor.

That's the real issue. Spolsky wrote up something on that a few years ago. It went along the lines of if you were being paid to create and build apps for a company and after hours you developed your own killer app but kept it for yourself, that wouldn't be fair to the company employing you to make great apps for them.

That makes sense. I also think any company that expects 100% of your IP during employment should pay you more than what they would pay someone to work 40 hours a week.

It doesn't make sense for niche software companies trying to take your IP for completely unrelated ideas that they would never use in their product line, particularly when you are working on your stuff after hours.

maybe. it may just be people willing to sign one-sided agreements are in high demand.

Except for the non-compete clauses. Those are materially important and likely to affect a large proportion of total employment contracts (whereas IP clauses are rarely relevant).

If they go through all the trouble of recruiting you, interviewing you and deciding they want you, they'll be willing to consider revising it, especially since they probably didn't give it much thought in the first place.

Just raise your concerns in an intelligible way and don't be an asshole about it. I just did that for a contract. I said, "I can't give you all my inventions, I have a ton of them." They didn't even realize that was in the contract and they revised it. Poof. I got a fair agreement.

You have to ask yourself, is working for that company worth giving them explicit rights for all your prior work you've done for yourself? That's exactly what they are asking for in most cases. Let's say you make it big with something you wrote before you even started working there and they find out. They can take it right from under you if you sign that contract without exceptions. Just know what you are getting into and what they are really asking you to commit to.

I actually left a job because I wanted to start a new project and I had signed a similar document without an exception. I didn't want them to have any claim with the IP. Also know, any investors will probably shy away from you if you've signed away your IP rights like that.

I worked for one of those companies once. He apparently didn't read his bank statements either, hence I didn't get paid for a significant chunk of the work I did.

Nobody before or since has acted surprised about the contents of their own contract. I'd view it as a major red flag.

What if you worked for some huge conglomerate like GE. What industry does GE not compete in? Or Microsoft? Walmart? Amazon? Also, their duration is typically 2-4 years. So you can't work in any major industry that GE competes in for 4 years and you get zero compensation for it. How is that anywhere close fair or reasonable?

Non-competes also include no hiring. That further limits my potential employment. If me and my buddy quit because we're sick, or bored of a place, we can't hire either other or recommend hiring each other for 2-4 years.

Guess what? If you have people who can't find employment and a good chunk of their opportunity is blocked because of non-competes, guess who pays for it?

Also, here's the crux of the hypocrisy. Companies are all about free market, but only when it benefits them. In a free market, I should be free to work anywhere for anyone. The only restriction would be not to divulge IP or trade secrets. I'm perfectly fine with that, but chances are, that's not what you are signing.

I was young and naive. I am not that young anymore but I still think this needs to be a nationwide law. If you want me to not work (in an industry) for a particular length of time, you ought to pay me to not work about as much as what I would have made by working. Sure, put a ceiling at 50x minimum wage (so currently $725k a year https://www.google.com/search?q=7.25*2000*50 ) or something but this is just common sense that if you want to prevent me from working, you should pay me for the duration that I am not working.

Given the court and arbitrator's lack of expertise, we see companies arguing that any software work at all is competition. Especially for emrging high-demand fields like machine learning.

Yeah, that's the issue basically. These things (and a lot of the golden handcuffs companies, especially inexperienced startups, like to slap on new employees - as if they didn't know any better) go way farther than anything remotely reasonable.

The end result being to discourage genuine trust and collaboration, rather than to foster it.

But there is also a larger question of why we allow them at all. They seem unconscionable in any industry. They're roughly akin to suggesting that if you train someone you own rights to their training.

You will get no more of my time: http://gawker.com/378444/did-you-sign-googles-noncompete-goo...

You couldn't even say, "Please" or thank me for what I've offered you thus far. Is common decency not part of the cultural consensus where you're from?

I can't really figure out why you would. They only benefit very large organizations attempting to stifle competition and drive down skilled worker wages. Smaller companies can't really afford to consistently enforce them and lots of smaller companies use open moonlighting agreements and a lack of no-compete as a selling point.

But I also don't care. I am not obligated to convince you. Nor am I obligated to pay your little shufflepuck game that ultimately ends up with research behind a paywall you will refuse to follow.

This story: your tactic. It's not new. It's old. I've seen it done before, I've seen it executed better as well. There is nothing more telling than looking at an obvious example of abuse sourced off a reputable news site and saying, "But this is an anecdote and I wanted data."

I am sure you will post protestations about how unfair this is. And it is, somewhat. You bear the burden put upon all anonymous accounts before you. But to be honest, given your complete refusal to even google something and count the results makes me think you're actively defending this practice as opposed to genuinely curious.

In the artist metaphor, I also assume that it took a non-trivial amount of time, say a year.

This is pretty strong empirical evidence that although enforceable noncompetes may be better for existing companies, they are a drag on the regional economy.

(Taking your current employer's clients is not exactly the same thing -- IANAL, but I would think that would be covered by the trade secret protections.)

It's not "violent". It's the exact opposite of that, in fact.