Gives you an idea how important these non-competes are to them.

I should mention these were big, powerful employers. You might be able to negotiate them with small employers who suffer from lack of candidates.

Even now, with the great shortage of tech talent - while is repeatedly used as a justification to import an unlimited number of foreign workers - these very same large employers who complain about this shortage, do not hesitate to reject a qualified candidate who will not sign away their right to work with a "non compete".

You have the leverage not to work there. They have the leverage not to hire you. If enough people choose to work there despite things they don’t like, your leverage is not lost because of the company being large, it’s lost because people choose to work there despite things you don’t like.

Companies compete for employees.

In many areas where non-competes are legal, all employers slap them on their contracts.

So your choice is to sign one, or remain unemployed.

Also, most employees aren't fully aware of what these non-competes mean anyway.

Yes.

> In many areas where non-competes are legal, all employers slap them on their contracts.

As others have pointed out, it's not uncommon to get them (and other clauses) struck out of employment agreements during hiring. I've struck that one from all places I've worked, I've struck all patent and IP claims out that were broad enough to cover things I do outside of work, I've gotten copyrights assigned to me instead of the employer, and so on, even very early in my career.

>So your choice is to sign one, or remain unemployed.

If it's that onerous, sign one to get a job, and while getting paid, immediately look for a new job that doesn't violate it without one. Not a single state has one so broad as to prevent you from any reasonable work. Problem solved.

Employment is always a negotiation. If you enter thinking you have zero leverage and are unable or unwilling to find other work, then you do have zero leverage.

I'll be polite and not accuse you of fabricating. Your experience is extremely, curiously atypical. I know from experience that these clauses are mandatory for several large employers. They are not waived for anyone. If you google, you'll find examples of senior vice presidents being sued for them.

The only way you can have them waived is if you negotiate with small employers who are starved for talent, and even then it won't be easy to do as a junior.

In fact I'm skeptical you even knew what a non-compete was as a recent grad.

> If it's that onerous, sign one to get a job, and while getting paid, immediately look for a new job that doesn't violate it without one.

So your solution is to act unethically, accept a permanent position just to get a paycheck while looking for a new job?

My impression of this comment is sinking by the sentence.

Reality check: if everyone in your area requires a non-compete, and you couldn't get a NC-free offer months, why would you get one now, when you're looking to leave a job you literally just accepted?

To potential employers, you now look worse than before.

> Employment is always a negotiation. If you enter thinking you have zero leverage and are unable or unwilling to find other work, then you do have zero leverage.

Translation:

"I like to make boastful absolutist claims because I have very little actual experience in the job market."

First time was as a new grad. The non-compete literally prevented me from working within 200 miles of my home in the same industry. I noped out. Even when they removed it I wasn't interested because that's shady.

Second time was at a different company. I just let them know I wasn't comfortable giving up my 1st amendment rights just to work somewhere and they considered it and let me take it out. My HR person was awesome and the company treated it's employees well.

Not disputing your other points, just want people to know they should at the very least make sure to ask. It may end up with a no, but it could end up turning out alright.

Then why mention it? So you can say you mentioned it? You can look up my name - I've written a decent amount of material for pay, some of which is also on my website, precisely because I requested the copyrights. You can look over my employment and side project history to see I have gotten the ability to both work on commercial stuff at work and off work.

Instead of implying someone is lying with passive aggressive nonsense, simply do some legwork.

>In fact I'm skeptical you even knew what a non-compete was as a recent grad.

You seem to make a lot of claims about me. Maybe your experience is not what everyone has seen? I learned well before leaving undergrad that you can edit legal documents before signing them, and if they countersign, then they agreed to your document. If they don't like it, then you negotiate.

This I thought was common knowledge.

>Your experience is extremely, curiously atypical.

There's a lot of similar claims on this page.

>for several large employers

I've stayed away from them for the most part, since they're more inflexible, and for good reason: dealing with lots of employees is much easier with uniform rules.

>So your solution is to act unethically This was opposed to simply breaking contracts or go unemployed. And a job is a business agreement - you work there as long as it suits you, they employ you as long as it suits them. If they're doing something you find so onerous, it's not unreasonable to find a new job.

>"I like to make boastful absolutist claims because I have very little actual experience in the job market."

You may want to look up my name. It's astounding you make so many claims about me without knowing me. What this shows, more than anything, is that you believe your own views, correct or not, over simply looking to check if something is true.

I made three assertions:

1. You will not be able to negotiate away non-compete clauses with large, powerful employers.

2. You may be able to negotiate them as a senior candidate for smaller companies.

3. Junior candidates will find it hard to negotiate their offers, including waiver of non-competes.

You agreed with my 1st assertion.

Your resume shows you to be a perfect example of the 2nd assertion. You are a senior engineer, an expert in his field, who worked in very senior technical roles in a series of small and very small companies. As such, you were in the best possible position to negotiate.

You seemed to dispute my 3rd assertion with your claim that you were able to negotiate non-competes away "early in your career", but your resume shows you took a Lead Programmer position in your very first year of full-time work. So you were never really a junior - you were a senior engineer working for small operations since the earliest stage of your career.

This is great for you, congratulations. It doesn't change the fact that your situation is unique, and doesn't generally apply. Not to most engineers, and certainly not to fast-food and similar unskilled workers mentioned in the article. These are people who don't have much money, really need the job, and often have limited choices in their area. They don't have the money to relocate, nor do they have leverage to negotiate.

So while I applaud you for being in the favorable position to negotiate away clauses since your first year of employment, I still caution against concluding that this is how it works for everyone else as well.

The majority of programmers don't work for large companies. Many of the biggest employers employ in California, further skewing the data towards programmers not having to worry. About half of all states don't even have non-compete laws for programmers.

As such, I suspect your losing jobs by refusing to sign them is the atypical experience, not mine.

>Your resume shows you to be a perfect example of the 2nd assertion. You are a senior engineer....

I was once junior, with the same results...

>but your resume shows you took a Lead Programmer position in your very first year of full-time work.

Yep, negotiation, not experience, which is exactly my point. And I didn't take any job thrown at me, I worked carefully to move to a situation I wanted to be in. One can move themselves up career ranks much faster by learning how to sell themselves and to take risks, than by trying to follow the company playbook.

If you do what most people do, you will get the outcome most people get. To do differently, make consistent, concentrated effort to do things differently in the proper manner and time.

I've found more developers over my career are not advancing to where they want or getting what they want through lack of learning how to deal with negotiation. They too often think the rules are fixed and rewards a solely a function of their technical skill, both of which are false.

I've taught many interns at companies I've been at how to negotiate better, and many of them were able to get significant contract changes made on their very first job.

I've also have many developers ask how to move up/over, and when I recommend they take on new or harder projects as they're presented, those programmers shy away from the unknown to do what they know. Those types, fear of risk, don't move as fast or as far. I don't begrudge them, they prefer safety, but when they complain later in their career that they didn't go as far as someone that did do scary, out of comfort things, it's mostly their own choices.

>I still caution against concluding that this is how it works for everyone else as well.

I never thought it works this way for everyone, but in many cases, it's not the systems fault; it's the employees fault for not working the process smarter, and for not developing skills useful for dealing with people as much as they develop their technical skills.

Interviews are a sales process. Learning to sell is a very useful skill, at every level. I find few developers that have learned this and do it well.

As a contractor it's not that uncommon to be presented contracts with clauses that fail disguised employment regulations. Usually with some negotiation I can get these changed, but on one occasion I recieved a lucrative offer from an intermediary that refused to change the offer. I ended up working for the same client (bank) via another intermediary.

Personally, I refuse to sign bullshit clauses, but many of these companies do refuse to budge, and I imagine it's much harder for junior people to leave the money on the table.

That's an odd attitude. You've also wasted your own time, yes?

I can see how it's problematic to bring it up ahead of time. "By the way, I won't sign a non-compete." Immediately the company is on alert: you plan to quit after learning their secrets and go to a competitor? It's like drug testing: obviously a violation of your rights, but why would I hire this one guy who refuses to take it?

The only real solution is legislative. For you to die on that hill repeatedly means the companies are still just as profitable, and you're unemployed.

Am I the only one who finds this asymmetry bizarre? Shell I ask the hiring manger to take a drug test? And why would I work for him if he refuses?

Yes, he wasted his own time, but also got XP out of it. And now the company invested already resources on him and may probably think it’s the worth the risk.

That's an odd attitude. You've also wasted your own time, yes?

Wait, there's another approach.

Sign the non-compete, and let them sue you, if they even notice that is, after you're in the new place. I had a boss that did this (which I saw happen live) nonchalantly. And managers are worth going after more than individual contributors in many cases. In the most recent case they went after him and New Company's lawyers came to the rescue. For those readers not in the US, those of us commenting from within the US have different laws in different states. In New York State, the judges typically respect non-competes for one year (even if it says 1000 years in the contract).

One employer of mine tied stock options to the non-compete, in a totally separate document from the offer letter. There has to be something material, otherwise, what are they going to do, beat you up? A restraining order so you can't go to New Company?

To begin at the end, the standard legal remedy for violating a non compete is to enjoin you from working for your new employer. So then you are out of a job.

Yes, you can tell your new employer (in the hiring negotiation) that you have a noncompete, and tell them to clean up the mess for you. They’ll often do it, if you are valuable enough. For large employers, the common strategy is to negotiate down the time, and then stash you in an unrelated part of the business until that time is up. In the worst case, you go on “garden leave”, meaning you get paid to go home and work in your garden. You get the picture that they are not going to do this for a junior coder, it’s going to be for a senior leader or principal engineer.

Simply don’t sign such a contract.

You wouldn't find out until I found a new job someplace else, right? And at that point, why would I lose sleep over how incensed you supposedly would be, here, hypothetically?

Worked great for my ex boss. What do you recommend, a person stays unemployed forever because they refuse to sign these unprincipled agreements? Did you read the Bloomberg article?

We're not all Richard Stallman. Some of us have mortgages and obligations. Let's hope more states follow California.

You don't need to be that dramatic about the non-compete. What you do is you ask HR via e-mail whether the non-compete is negotiable or a mandatory requirement for employment. If it is mandatory, then you have written proof that the non-compete is a contract of adhesion, so you simply need to budget for a lawyer to sue to nullify it on termination. If it is negotiable, then you don't sign the non-compete, or sign a non-compete clause that actually compensates you at full or partial salary for the time spent not competing.

I'm not incensed; I'm pointing out this attitude and commentary is likely a negative to your getting hired if employers discover it.

>You wouldn't find out until I found a new job someplace else, right?

Unless some previous employer mentioned it, or a google or background found it (or this comment).

It's pretty common to run all potential hires through a background check service, especially as the value of the hire increases. I know places I've done hiring has not hired people based on their past discoverable behavior.

This is largely irrelevant for employees in California, due to its commerce and tort law rendering non-compete clauses unenforceable for employment. In the past few years, however, we have seen companies suing past employees for alleged theft of trade secrets. This chilling effect could end up having the same outcome as an enforceable non-compete.

I haven't seen this yet in NY, although I have been contracting for several years.

In the case of my ex-boss, he told New Company right away as he was being hired, and they had already the legal setup to watch his back. Lawyers came after New Company, and then eventually it went quiet.

Dodging a bullet is not wasting time. In fact, not signing a noncompete implies that the employee will not be forced to wait out an unspecified period before he is authorized to accept a job offer. Thus, refusing to sign a noncompete not only saves time but also improves their chances to have access to better job opportunities.

Even with a smaller employer, you will need some bargaining power.

Non-competes prevent you from working for your employer's commercial competitors. I.E. if you leave Uber, you can't go work for Lyft.

Also, it's naive to assume you can just "sell" an employer on a contractual change that goes against their goals.

Saying "I'm a software engineer, and I plan to continue being a software engineer after we part ways, instead of waiting tables" also sounds like a strong "sell", but it does not work based on my experience.

It's not about convincing anyone, it's about power and who has it.

Otherwise your comment explains it well.

Yes, you have to be good at your job and hard to replace before you make demands. That part should be obvious. At any rate, I've had plenty of success striking all non-compete agreements before starting my own business permanently. Just be good enough and hard to replace.

> Yes, you have to be good at your job and hard to replace before you make demands.

You are required to sign a non-compete before accepting the job. You cannot be "hard to replace" because you haven't started that job yet.

They won't even "replace" you - they just won't hire you!

> At any rate, I've had plenty of success striking all non-compete agreements

As I mentioned elsewhere, this is possible if you are a very strong senior candidate negotiating with relatively small employers who are desperate to hire you and don't have many alternative candidates.

At larger corporations, I've been told straight up that the non-competes are policy and won't be waived for anyone.

If you check the history of non-compete lawsuits, you'll find some very senior employees being sued, so this statements seem true.

That's somewhat reasonable, unlike the "we'll fire you, good luck finding any new employment to pay your bills" kind of non-compete.

https://penguindreams.org/blog/tech-culture-shock-from-ameri...

I am not sure if there are fewer great engineers in Chicago; I have certainly met lots of people who were as good as anyone I've met in SV and that I've learned a lot from. I think it might be that (Midwestern sensibility and all) they aren't chasing the latest shiny thing as much, and often work in some more boring business domain, getting things done rather than "changing the world".