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

416 points throwarayes | 2 comments | 21 Jun 25 16:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.488s | 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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stego-tech ◴[21 Jun 25 18:59 UTC] No.44339879[source]▶
Have an employment attorney always look over said agreements before signing. A local acquaintance who did work for an MSP had said MSP try such a ploy, only for the employment attorney to sue and get it thrown out as unreasonable and unenforceable.

Never, EVER sign a contract without reading it first, and having your lawyer review it.

replies(2): >>44339950 #>>44340027 #
iLoveOncall ◴[21 Jun 25 19:08 UTC] No.44339950[source]▶
> your lawyer

That presupposes that people have a lawyer, and one specialized in employment law at that, which is highly unlikely to be the case for 99% of the population.

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1. kragen ◴[21 Jun 25 21:28 UTC] No.44340864[source]▶
We're talking about negotiating a contract with a value on the order of a million dollars (say, US$200k total compensation per year for five years). Even if you don't have a lawyer normally, it may be worth the few hundred dollars it costs to hire one for this purpose, unless you have no savings.

I never did, though. I just crossed out the clauses I didn't want to accept and initialed them.

replies(1): >>44341430 #
2. inetknght ◴[21 Jun 25 23:12 UTC] No.44341430[source]▶
> I just crossed out the clauses I didn't want to accept and initialed them.

Places like Zoho or Verisign don't let you do that.