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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: 0.478s | 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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tianqi ◴[21 Jun 25 19:56 UTC] No.44340313[source]▶
I think the Chinese law is effective in this regard: in order to maintain any non-competition agreement, the company must continue to pay you a monthly compensation amount equal to 30% of your total monthly income when you were at the company. Whenever the payment stops, the non-competition agreement is automatically void.
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jjallen ◴[21 Jun 25 23:42 UTC] No.44341558[source]▶
Then the employee is only making 30% and presumably not working elsewhere or that would defeat the purpose. So how is this a good approach? I would get 80% or more but don’t see how this is effective.
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1. helpfulclippy ◴[21 Jun 25 23:52 UTC] No.44341605[source]▶
This is the first I’ve heard of this so I’m just rolling it around… but I suppose this would make it cost-prohibitive for companies to insist on non-competes unnecessarily.

As the employee, it’s still clearly a bad position for me unless I can find a non-competing job that pays me at least 70% plus whatever pay bump I’d expect for career advancement.

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2. scarby2 ◴[22 Jun 25 00:05 UTC] No.44341656[source]▶
> unless I can find a non-competing job that pays me at least 70% plus whatever pay bump I’d expect for career advancement.

This clearly depends on your role and industry. I can write code in a bunch of industries I've actually never had 2 jobs in the same industry. If I were an oil pipeline engineer it would be different.