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Simple line to draw: non competes can't be enforced unless the employees total average compensation over two of the preceding 3 years (or the entirety of the employment period if less) is greater than 10x the federal poverty line for a household of two. That puts it for 2024 at 200k. Beyond that simply enforcing existing common law restrictions on geographic and temporal scope will be sufficient.
I don't really have a problem with non competes for executives, managers, major salesmen, top engineers. Make them spend six months or a year on vacation, no big deal.
But I once took what amounted to a retail job and they wanted me to sign an unlimited non compete. For a job where I made $50k! That's awful. No working man should face that kind of restriction on earning a livelihood.
That's a reasonable take. My gut response was "well if the terms are bad just don't sign it", but for working class people that's not really an option, especially if this becomes the norm and people get used to signing it. And this allows companies to have their noncompetes if it's important, but they have to pay for it so won't do it just because they can.
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There’s surely another easier way to prevent the “train an employee at great cost, then they get poached by a competitor for slightly higher pay”, namely very high signing bonuses that only fully vest after several years. So sure, you can jump after your year of training, but then you need to pay back the $100,000 (or whatever amount acts as enough of an incentive) we gave you when you joined.
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