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Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

416 points throwarayes | 5 comments | 21 Jun 25 16:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.547s | source

Just a note of warning from personal experience.

Companies don’t really need non-competes anymore. Some companies take an extremely broad interpretation of IP confidentiality, where they consider doing any work in the industry during your lifetime an inevitable confidentiality violation. They argue it would be impossible for you to work elsewhere in this industry during your entire career without violating confidentiality with the technical and business instincts you bring to that domain. It doesn’t require conscious violation on your part (they argue).

So beware and read your employment agreement carefully.

More here https://www.promarket.org/2024/02/08/confidentiality-agreeme...

And this is the insane legal doctrine behind this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inevitable_disclosure

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matsemann ◴[21 Jun 25 18:56 UTC] No.44339861[source]▶
So happy my union managed to ban broad non-competes in my country ~8 years ago. Now it needs to be very specific if they want to enforce it (not just "development work in the same industry" which most contracts had back when I graduated), only applicable for maximum a year, and they have to pay your salary for the time they stop you working somewhere else.
replies(2): >>44340095 #>>44346916 #
1. throwaway173738 ◴[21 Jun 25 19:49 UTC] No.44340258[source]▶
So are corporations.
2. theoreticalmal ◴[21 Jun 25 19:56 UTC] No.44340312[source]▶
Sounds like the union negotiated a heck of a deal for the parent poster
3. superb_dev ◴[21 Jun 25 20:08 UTC] No.44340391[source]▶
I don't care about the free market, I just want food and shelter for my family.
4. arunabha ◴[21 Jun 25 20:11 UTC] No.44340416[source]▶
Care to back up that definitive statement? Or is it just a pavlovian reflex?
5. mitthrowaway2 ◴[21 Jun 25 20:15 UTC] No.44340429[source]▶
How is a union any different in that respect than a corporation? I mean on a theoretical level. A true free-market firm would just be an association of individuals making individually negotiated transactions, with no employee-employer relationship, and no coordination on the side of purchasing labor. Of course that's very inefficient outside of pure theory. A corporation acts as a coordinating body that collectively negotiates the purchasing of labor contracts, and a union collectively negotiates on the selling side.