Screw non competes, they aren't even enforceable most of the time anyway.

My answer to why companies should train people if they can just leave for another company is twofold:

1: It evens out. Sometimes people will leave company A, which trained them, and come to your company, and other times they you will train them and they will leave. As long as the relative rates are about even, it should be ok.

2: Any general training that would apply to all similar companies can just as easily be acquired on the job at any given company. So train the employees, and if you really don't want to lose your 'investment' then perhaps treat them nicely?

Why are we always so quick to cry a river for huge organizations that hold a disproportionate amount of power over individuals?

1. Relative rates are fine in aggregate. But the economy doesn't consist of actors who are perfect representations of the median. Individual companies are going to be net beneficients or net losers. And it is always the net losers who are more vocal, complaining, and ultimately influential over the wider market. Actor confidence in large markets is naturally biased towards fear, not security. This is one of the reasons why regulation is sometimes welcomed by actors, if they can influence all actors equally.

2. "Treat people nicely" is about as effective a corporate policy as a law is forcing people to "be good and moral." A small company can effectively assert hiring control in hiring only people who "gel" with the people leading the company. A large company with a hiring quota of hundreds or thousands of people a quarter cannot. Ultimately, people are going to have personality conflicts with coworkers at large companies. You can either accept that as an inevitability and find a solution for it, or you can write off people finding (somewhat legitimate but still entirely foreseeable and unavoidable) excuses to move as BigCo management not treating their workers "nicely".

So the only alternative is to let corporations offload their training externalities onto higher education?

If that's what you're saying, it's a false dichotomy.

Cry me a river for the corporations, who cares what they want? It's always their agenda that wins these days anyway. That's the way the world is going.

No, what I'm saying is that we need to find some kind of way that balances protecting workers from exploitation with the kind of security that allows corporations to invest in workers' training.

Yes, one way, in theory, of doing that is by offloading training externalities to higher education. But that has its own tradeoffs, namely, the tendency of universities to adopt ivory-tower attitudes to education, the tendency of American higher education to inflate costs beyond any reasonable limit to afford facilities, services, and administration of dubious value to the education afforded the end consumer / student, and the tendency of universities to not educate with an eye to the skillsets which contemporary employers value.

Which is why the better way is to localize training efforts with the actors for whom it is most relevant. But corporate actors are not going to do "the right thing" in a vacuum, the law needs to empower them to do "the right thing", because typically "the right thing" will hurt any actor who does it in isolation but is bearable if all actors commit to doing it together. The easiest, safest, and most predictable way of making that happen is through law or regulation.

Regarding #1: From the point of view of the company, if other companies are educating their employees, then the company will likely stop spending the resources on their own employees while still taking advantage of the workers educated at the other companies. So, this point doesn't make sense without a very optimistic view on the cooperation that would take place between companies.

2. Treating 'nicely' is far from enough if another company is simply able to offer a better package. For example, are small/new tech companies not deserving of keeping their investments because they can't pay their devs as well as some large ones? Or if they can't match the prestige of other companies?

The problem with #2 is that if a company spends $30k of time and effort to get an employee trained up, the poaching company can offer a raise of 10k and still be in the black 3 years later. If the original company decided to match that offer, they're now spending 60k more over three years, and the poaching company can offer a 15k raise and STILL be in the black after 3 years. Any money you pay in training is a sunk cost that doesn't have to be paid by your competitors.

Sure but presumably, unless all employees start out only at your company, then the effect would also sometimes happen in your company's favour.

As I said in point #1, as long as the rate of defections/arrivals is about even, then your losses on one employee would be offset by your gains on others.

Having an even defection/arrival rate requires other companies to also train their employees, and not only hire previously trained persons.

What makes you think the poached employee is actually going to stick around for 3 years, instead of jumping ship when Company C comes along and poaches them for a $10k raise? Most people in Silicon Valley these days don't stay in jobs for 3 years, according to what I've read.

I agree and am against non competes, but feel weird about how that would be replaced. Obvious thought is to put a monitary value of the training and let that value "vest" over a year or two, so if the employee leaves early they have to pay back everything. That sounds good, but then you'll have situations where some company is just inflating the true costs of their training in order to make an employee stick around because they don't want to be on the hook for $X0,000. It would end up being like a reverse signing bonus.

So I have no clue what the solution is, all alternatives seem to be negative.

I think there's workable ways around this. One of my past employers required a retention contract if they pay for specific education.

Sure, I could still leave prior to the agreed upon term but I'd be required to pay back their investment. I thought that was fair.

Have you ever heard of a relocation bonus? Do you think the notion that an employer can give a new employee $10k+ for moving costs, and then allow them to walk out the door a week later to their competitor is laughable? You might, which is why relocation bonuses almost always have a retention clause: if the employee voluntarily quits before a certain amount of time, then the employee has to pay back all or part of that bonus.

I got a huge relo bonus once to move cross-country. But it had a 2-year clause attached to it, so if I had left after a year, for instance, I would have had to pay back 1/2 of it.

I don't see why the same couldn't be done for education paid by employers.

There's a difference between a relocation bonus paid to a mid-career professional for recouping relocation expenses and an educational debt owed by somebody entering an entry-level position. A mid-career professional can pay back a relocation bonus from savings if necessary, but an educational debt would generally result in debt bondage until the debt was cancelled.

Remember, a non-compete doesn't prevent people from leaving, it just prevents people from leaving and taking a job in the same field. Most people won't want to leave their field, which is why the non-compete is effective, but in the case of exploitation, people still have an out. An educational debt would follow somebody if they decided to leave, and that's therefore much more coercive and prone to exploitation.

I got my giant relocation bonus when I was only a couple years out of college.