If these are true, why would a company with 232.9 billion in revenue be afraid of paying an employee's salary only when the non compete is enforced?
If the non compete is almost never enforced this agreement would cost the company under 0.01% of total company wide employee spend. Surely if the knowledge was that important to the business the company would easily make up the "extra" salary paid in revenue.
It's strange that a company that large wouldn't agree to pay salary if it's chosing to enforce the non-compete. It seems like the choice is motivated by something else than reason. Tradition? Optimizing locally for cost reduction?
Presumably in that case they could avoid paying you by canceling the non-compete. They could decide whether the information you learned during your one month is worth paying you.
That does sound nice. Ideally though the company wouldn't chose to enforce the non compete because the new employee hadn't picked up any secrets worth sharing in a month.
Actually, this might incentivise a new employee to hunt for secrets so they could quit as soon as possible and enjoy their serverance. That might not be ideal.
Even in the absence of non-compete clauses, you're still obliged to keep your company's trade secrets when you leave, or they can sue you. California companies sue each other all the time over things like this.
Please don't post ideological battle comments to HN. They lead to ideological flamewars, which are predictable, tedious, and off topic. This is in the site guidelines; would you mind reviewing them?
> It’s never enforced.
If these are true, why would a company with 232.9 billion in revenue be afraid of paying an employee's salary only when the non compete is enforced?
If the non compete is almost never enforced this agreement would cost the company under 0.01% of total company wide employee spend. Surely if the knowledge was that important to the business the company would easily make up the "extra" salary paid in revenue.
It's strange that a company that large wouldn't agree to pay salary if it's chosing to enforce the non-compete. It seems like the choice is motivated by something else than reason. Tradition? Optimizing locally for cost reduction?