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.
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?