Not only is 100% not too much, but it’s the minimum that should be required. The cost of requiring a NCA should be high; that ensures they are only used when they are really worth it to the employer.
Exactly. So per the non-compete, you'd have to take a position where you are only 40% as valuable as you could be—and the 60% noncompete makes up the difference.
It's probably a bad deal for people who are extremely specialised and want to stay that way, but it'd be a pretty good deal for people like me, who love an excuse to learn something new.
If an honest engineer sees a problem which is exactly the same as one she solved at a previous company, and it is still the best solution, she will solve it in the same way. This has nothing to do with company secrets, it’s basic tradecraft. But it’s covered in many of these agreements. They’ve got to go, plain and simple.
(I was of course being a bit facetious with the 40% metric—real life isn't quite so simple—but saying the noncompete should have 100% compensation is silly. That would only make sense if your ability to work was being completely taken away)
For me the key word here is "most". I interpreted the previous comment as implying that previous employers should pay for the opportunity cost of you not maximizing your value.
Unless you are prevented from getting job that leverages _any_ of your previous experience...such as requiring a new career shift. In that case 100% compensation could be merited. Otherwise 100% is not likely to equal the opportunity cost to the employee.
If you don't choose to retire a year later, the year you sit out is costing you what you would have been making in the last year of your career.
To explain in more detail, starting with the year you return to a career job, your pay may be reduced by a differential representing one year less experience, for every year until the end of your career. You miss out on the pay for the year you didn't work, plus all the raises between years, and the one raise you never got, because your career was one year shorter. All that adds up to the pay you would have otherwise received in the last year of your career.
The problem is that 60% is not about making you whole. It’s about discouraging NCs in general.
You can sue but it's so expensive you probably won't and the company knows it.
That's funny, I've never had a job that was exactly like any of the other jobs I've had. Depending on how picky you are, I've never had a job that was even particularly similar to any of my previous ones.
I'm surprised to see such a narrow view about this issue on this forum.
The company was acquired, (and that in turn), when the new parent tried rolling out new contracts per employee, with a short turnaround to sign. Among other things, the new version basically would have prevented me from working in my field for a year.
I told them I needed time to have it reviewed by my lawyer, and I did too. Sure, the backlash had them rolling back the demand forthwith, but it convinced me that the ideal time to leave was immediately, under my old contract.
This forum oddly has some anti-labor sentiment. It is seen in this thread and also in threads related to unions, where the tone is quite obviously anti-union.
Me, I'm very anti-union in that I never want to be part of one, but OTOH, I fully support their right to exist as simply the collective extension to the individual members' right to bargain.