The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.

  • Savaran@lemmy.world
    43·
    7 months ago

    When places talk about how they’ll be “the next Silicon Valley” this is one of the reasons none of them have actually managed it. In CA people in many cases can take a good idea that their employer doesn’t want and do something with it themselves. In most other places it will get so tied up in non competes that it’s not worth the effort to even try.

    And it’s not just tech, here in Colorado we recently had a restaurant try and shut down another restaurant simply because the newer place’s chef had worked at the older place. They settled but it’s so entirely ridiculous that it could have even started court proceedings in the first place.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      13·
      7 months ago

      Forget ideas, just normal worker mobility. A couple of years ago I switched jobs.

      The old company had gotten bought by a conglomerate and they were milking the product line by stopping development, stopping raises, and letting attrition do its thing. Time to leave. One of my peers found a great company still investing in their products and jumped ship. Me too. However we both had noncompetes specifically prohibiting “poaching”, so could we even talk to co-workers? Everyone lost because of this noncompete. New company missed out on potential new hires, co-workers missed a potential opportunity, and even old company attrited slower than otherwise so less profit

      This is a classic case of noncompetes blocking worker mobility, hurting everyone