Honestly, I have yet to see a non-compete at any tech company I've worked for. I think it's not common in the culture today. Tech workers are in high-demand, especially outside of the Bay Area. It might be more common in the financial world of NYC, not sure, but just working in enterprise SaaS software world, haven't seen it.

I have never not seen it. Non-compete and non-solicitation clauses are almost always non-negotiable and standard in employment contracts I have helped friends review, outside of CA. (Specifically TX, NY, WA, MA are the ones I’ve seen)

I have worked for or received offers from seven companies in Texas, New York, and Florida. Only one had such a clause, and that one was a small company that didn't really care about it.

I believe you. I’m just saying it’s not as uncommon as parent made it out to be.

> just working in enterprise SaaS software world

Microsoft, at least used to, aggressively enforce non-competes. I worked on an enterprise product at Microsoft in the 2000s and left to go work at Google, but I could not work on Drive/Docs etc

How was that enforceable? Unless you were working for Google outside of CA?

I was working in WA.

But have you seen aggressive assignment of invention clauses? California is pretty straightforward about "your time, your equipment, your invention".

One more condition normally, I think -- it shouldn't be relevant to your employer's business. That's a biggie, and makes it very dangerous to do any kind of programming in your own time if you work for a big company.

Ah, yep. That's an important one.

Note that:

1.) Massachusetts recently passed a law significantly limiting non-competes

2.) I've never been able to find specific numbers, but my experience in Massachusetts is that they're far from universal. I've only had one in my career and that one was quite narrow. (That was EMC which was one of the local employers who fought hardest against the weakening of non-competes.)

I don't like non-competes and personally think the new law should have been stronger than it was. But, historically people jumped around employers like the Route 128 computer companies all the time.

I'm in Massachusetts and when I got a grunt job at an Amazon FC a few years ago I had to sign a noncompete. I don't know if it's enforceable and doubt it'd be enforced, but technically I think I'm not supposed to take a comparable job elsewhere for a year after I quit, or something like that.

the law bans this kind of thing now (as of October 2018): you simply can't have a noncompete unless the employee is exempt from overtime.

even for an exempt employee, the MA law now requires 50% salary to be paid for the period the employee can't work.

i don't know if existing agreements are enforceable or not though.

In my time in MA, I worked for three separate MIT startups, one top software company and one IP law firm. The law firm was the only one that didn’t require a noncompete. One of those companies was backed by one of the loudest voices in the Boston/Cambridge VC community campaigning against such agreements. The company had me sign an updated non-compete upon closing a funding round at the same time their VC was giving public speeches denouncing noncompete agreements in MA. Until the garden leave requirement covers 100% salary, the updated provisions to MA noncompete law are toothless.

Probably due to the culture of those in HR and Legal they have gown up for generations with these one-sided agreements and just implement them with out thinking.

A few high profile sackings of HR directors or General Counsels might help.

50% garden leave isn’t ideal. A lot of people aren’t in a position to take that pay cut (along with bonuses and RSUs) to hang out for a year. OTOH it makes companies put a fair bit of skin in the game which has considerable value.

Generally the 'exempt' thing needs to be pushed up to CEOs and such only as well.

Someone without the latitude to hire, fire and delegate as necessary should NOT be exempt.

There’s already a very limited set of exemptions, although most startups definitely pay zero attention to these laws. We’re very careful about them, but most aren’t; frankly, it’s very annoying to our non-exempt employees because tracking is a pain in the ass, but them’s the laws :/