Noncompetes are a scourge. If your company requires them to survive, then it deserves to fail. Any argument in favor of them can be trivially nullified by pointing at California's unrivaled economic success, "despite" (or perhaps in part because of) its complete ban on noncompetes dating back to its founding. Indentured servitude has no place in the modern world.
I feel like noncompetes could work under one condition: the person is paid at 100% with full benefits for the entire non-compete period. You want contract terms that make someone unemployable for a year? That means you’re stuck paying for their year-long vacation. Don’t like it? Well, then maybe have a shorter non-compete or none at all.
This still gives an employer an unfair advantage, in that they don't need to compete to keep the employee. It also adds a significant amount of friction to the job market, artificially suppressing wages. The fair solution to the problem, which is actually legal even in places where noncompetes are illegal, is to pay the employee to not work elsewhere. As in, that's their job, and just like any other job, they're free to quit it at any time, in exchange for giving up their compensation for doing that job.
Workers on gardening leave could hold an auction between their new prospective employer and their current employer. If the old firm can match the new one, they can keep the employee on gardening leave. If they can't, they can take the new job, though I guess that's strictly less freedom for the employee than the system you describe.
That's not a noncompete, as far as things like California's prohibition on them are concerned. That's just a job, where you have no job duties. There's nothing saying that an employer can't fire you for having a second job, and there's nothing saying your employees have to actually DO anything for you to pay them.
That's true for the State of California, AFAIK. But in places (or some type of organizations) with just cause instead of at will, firing you for moonlighting would be illegal if it didn't conflict with an actual required duty.
But this does nothing for the company to protect its IP from that employee quitting to immediately go to work for a competitor. By keeping them on the payroll but working on "Special Projects" that is no where close to IP, they become stale in current state of the art.
In the Silicon Valley show, this is why Big Head and the other folks "office" on the roof. They are segregated from the other employees while they continue to get paid.
You're confusing a noncompete with a nondisclosure
They're related but they are different things. You can't go work for Coke, learn the secret formula, then go work for Pepsi and tell them the secret formula.
No. Why do you think people are put on non-compete? They don't want competitors to be able to start doing what they are doing at the company. Sales is an easy example with the concern of clients being poached. There's no disclosures necessary there. If a sales person is put on ice for 12 months, that could destroy their relationship with the client. For techy people, there are ways of moving to a new company where they start up a way to directly compete with the first company without using any IP or breaking of a non-disclosure. Obviously, you can't recreate the formula for Coke at Pepsi, but you could create an RC Cola or a create a Dr. Pibb after leaving Dr. Pepper.
You're right, it is about protection. A nondisclosure only goes so far. You have to prove in court that the nondisclosure was violated. Because how do you prove that a prior employee gave that knowledge as opposed to Pepsi just reverse engineering it?[1] A noncompete is an extra layer of protection because the barrier for proof is lower. You don't have to prove they violated the NDA, you just have to prove they work for the competition.
You recognize that these are different things, right? I stressed that it can be subtle, but if you're having a hard time recognizing they are different then please give it a little more thought.
A noncompete *also* means your previous employee isn't taking institutional knowledge and training with them. These won't be covered by a NDA! As an employer you invested in an employee by training them, right?[2] So you lose that investment?
The reason I put so much stress on this second part is because it is exactly what the above conversation has been about. The employer is thinking in the instant and narrowly, not more broadly. Yes, you lose employees you invested in, but you can also get employees you didn't invest in. That's the bigger picture. Plus, you can... you know... pay your existing employees more than you pay new employees with similar skills. Instead of threatening them against leaving incentivize them to stay. You get a bigger return on your investment anyways
[0] personally, I don't think it justifies having them but we can still understand the reasoning, right?
[1] this is something most people with an undergraduate education in chemistry could probably do. So good luck
>You recognize that these are different things, right?
What about anything I've stated makes you think I don't understand the difference between a non-compete and a non-disclosure? I see no reason for you think I'm a moron and need to mansplained to here. I have not confused these at all, and you seem to want to preach about something but the choir ain't having it. So now you're left with the internet posts. I'm really confused here.
The behavior depicted in Silicon Valley is (a humorous exaggeration of) the real response to California's prohibition on noncompetes. You can't force your employees not to jump ship, so instead, you pay them not to. Continuously, and competitively. At any time, said workers are free to go work for your competitors, so you need to actually compete to keep them, even if your only interest in them is having them not working on anything important.
This is why Google has a dozen different applications that all do the same thing. Google didn't want high-level talent competing with them, so they just hired as many of the top developers as they could, and then paid them enough for them to be content working on miscellany.
this is known as "consideration", and is fairly common in Oil & Gas.
can't speak to other orgs but I know people who basically were given 80% of salary + health insurance coverage to politely fuck-off from the job market for ~2 years. Very specific list of orgs and roles they cannot do, otherwise anything is game.
My buddy basically took his time off and did a Master's, worked part time doing handyman work / light farm stuff, and then jumped back into a 6 figure gig.
There's no doubt in my mind that Silicon Valley's success should be credited in part to California's ban on non-competes. Bad for individual companies, but good for industries.
Just look at Meta's current poaching spree, and previously the founding of Anthropic, SSI, Thinky. Whatever secrets OpenAI has will slowly but inevitably diffuse into other companies. Bad for OpenAI but strongly positive for literally everyone else in the world. It pushes OpenAI to keep innovating rather than rest on their laurels.
You forgot to also mention that it was good for OpenAI too! Maybe not at this exact time, but it was previously.
Which is a big problem with a lot of companies, and frankly a common bias in human thinking: hyper fixation on the present. I find this ironic given that one of our greatest skills that has led to our success as a species is foresight.
There's a ton of inefficiencies going on right now because of this fixation. As a simple example, the best way for a worker to get a raise is to change jobs. Frequently the last person in has the highest pay (or rather it tends upwards). So older employees leave. But those employees leaving mean a bigger loss because they have institutional knowledge and newer employees are less valuable because they need to be trained. It's cheaper on the long run to readjust your current employee salaries to keep them rather than hide people's salaries and hope they don't jump ship. But the latter strategy is definitely cheaper in the short term.
You can probably think of tons of examples and even more if you start to include natural coalitions with others[0]
[0] there's frequent psych experiments that are along the lines of "would you rather get $10 and other person get $10 or you get $50 and other person gets $100?" The former is frequently chosen because it's "more fair" despite being a worse option for yourself
You linked to an example of statute preventing bad behavior. Yes, it took years, the law moves slowly, but it happened. Retroactive compensation was provided for those affected, but most importantly, corporate policies changed.
> but most importantly, corporate policies changed.
How confident are you about that? Given how small the compensation was, does this really represent much victory? Do you really think class action lawsuits as they stand present much disincentive?
> Indentured servitude has no place in the modern world.
Which is why we have “elites” who want to bring back chattel slavery and feudalism. The very wealthy will see us all dead before they give up a single iota of power.
I can see why small companies might want non-competes to prevent their employees from being poached by hyperscaler monopolies.
If non-competes continue to exist, they should be pared down to small-scoped work descriptions only, eg. not "AI" broadly, but rather something like "AI diffusion for skeletal movement". The non-competes shouldn't have durations longer than a year, and the companies enacting the contract should be required to pay departing employees a salary (or some large percentage of a salary) if they want to enforce the non-compete.
Non-competes should also only be used to prevent employees from joining larger companies, not smaller ones. And they should never prevent work at a startup or new venture.
I take issue with the idea that I, as an employee, may be "poached". I am not a deer or wild boar, owned by a feudal lord, and protected on his land from hunters. I should be free to have agency and enter into business arrangements with anyone I choose. Just because my company "invested" money into my growth/education/training, doesn't mean they should own me for some period of time while they figure out how to make that investment pay off. Let's stop using this word poached. It's not analogous to an employer/employee relationship.
Do you take issue with being "grilled" during interviews, because you are not a sizzling slab of beef? It's just a metaphor, just like headhunting is a metaphor for executive search, despite the CEOs being the feudal lords, as you see it.
Maybe instead the liability should be on the hiring company?
Again, the desire here is to stop Meta or a trillion dollar company from destroying a research-oriented startup's key staff. The idea isn't to encumber people's freedoms. It's to block large economy altering giants from making market distorting moves absorbing key talent from small disruptors.
I suppose the counter argument is that a fast growing startup could afford to make counter offers. Perhaps that's so. But these big companies always seem to threaten smaller companies if they don't accept buyout offers.
Watching Meta hire ten people for millions while simultaneously laying off thousands is wild. It feels market distorting. If they're going to poach these folks, the losing teams should get a buyout too. That's what happens in sports.
I don't actually disagree but it's worth pointing out the US government, which values freedom of association as a bedrock principle, itself takes the view that, if they invest in your education and training, they "own" you for a period of time. Military servicemembers are required to sign service commitments both when they enter the service, but also upon completion of training and the length of the commitment is tied to the length/intensity of training. Air Force pilots are usually committed to serving on active duty for up to 12 years, due to the value of their training and many immediately jump ship to private industry after reaching that point.
Personally, I think banning non-competes probably does reduce the amount of investment in education that companies make, but it's a tradeoff worth making to improve overall labor market efficiency and better guarantee personal freedom.
> the US government, which values freedom of association as a bedrock principle
That's fresh.
If your employees immediately jump ship after training, it means you're underpaying them, or mistreating them, or, in the case of the US military, probably both.
> Personally, I think banning non-competes probably does reduce the amount of investment in education that companies make, but it's a tradeoff worth making to improve overall labor market efficiency and better guarantee personal freedom.
I largely work for Californian companies and by and large the benefits have been excellent. While I wish more money was put into training overall, I feel this is driven more by short term financial planning than things like non-competes.
What have you seen or encountered that led you to the conclusion that non-competes would lead to more educational investment?
My assumption is that they’re more useful when a non-compete reduces the amount of people with key skills from a market—it seems counter-intuitive to do this and then disseminate those skills via training programs.
If an employee was worth X and the company made them worth Y, they should pay them Y to continue having them as an employee. Anything else distorts the labor market.
Now having to pay back training or education if you leave before Z months seems reasonable.
When you're restricting people's freedom, you have to have a good justification for doing it. There are zero states that have achieved greater economic success than California by allowing noncompetes, thus it is safe to say that noncompetes are not necessary to achieve economic success.
There's no singular factor in almost everything. We should use good faith interpretation and assume the parent understands this as well, unless there is other evidence otherwise
They bolster businesses by making it easier for them to retain employees even if those employees are being treated like shit, because it makes it illegal for those employees to work anywhere else.
That doesn't help the economy, but it helps the businesses.
More Capital lashing against the minor victories of the prior administration for workers.
If your business information is so sensitive and valuable that losing an employee could hurt you, then you ought to be compensating that employee well enough that they don’t see the value in taking on the risk of a job hunt.
Florida doesn't have that many highly paid workers.
They've got a decent amount of rich retired or passive income folks.
Aren't they trying to attract high earners from high tax places like NYC?
This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL, which sounds like a bad idea for the businesses it's presumably trying to serve.
> This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL, which sounds like a bad idea for the businesses it's presumably trying to serve.
Employees, yes. But the execs at these big firms would love to have more control over their best people so they have less leverage
Employees unfortunately need employers to pay them, so they will take the deal they can get
If your options all move to Florida, guess where you’re moving
The way discourse has been trending lately, I suspect it will be just the opposite. Florida and Texas will probably be first to impose one-child-minimum policies, with heavy penalties for noncompliance.
Yea, I was gonna say! The current administration has this weird fixation on "babies" and encouraging people "having babies" and incentivizing "baby production" with these new savings accounts that are essentially baby bonds, and weirdly trying to denigrate childless people. Why this sudden politicization of childbearing?
Look to history[1][2]. In short, it’s an old tactic for increasing nationalistic sentiment, growing targeted demographics, and putting pressure on women’s rights/bodily autonomy.
Well population decline is a very real threat and with the conservative scapegoating of immigration (the only thing keeping the US growing) they need to get labor somewhere.
Plus it fits right in with their anti-woman and anti-lgbt sentiments. Good god-fearing Christians should be having children after all. But of course child poverty and healthcare is not their concern. Labor should be hungry and desperate.
I remember when the "threat" was out-of-control overpopulation. Most developed countries have finally solved that, and now the "threat" is underpopulation? It sounds like we're just justifying everything as a threat. In any well-run society that isn't a ponzi scheme that relies on ever-increasing labor, population decline is what you want, given the extreme environmental footprint of every single person. The Earth has fixed and limited resources, so the fewer people competing for them, the better.
Population decline is an economic issue not an ecological one. How do we support a larger population of non-working elderly with an ever decreasing population of workers. I don't see how without a restructuring of our economy and society which doesn't seem to be on the table.
South Korea is essentially already doomed. In 25 years over half their population will be over 65. It's workforce will be half what it is now. It simply will not be able to care for the elderly. They will work until they die in poverty.
Ideally as society advances and productivity increases the necessary ratio of workers to non-workers should decrease as well but, the gains of productivity increases have historically not translated to wealth of the populace. And even if productivity does shift to benefit the worker it has to outpace population implosion which seems impossible considering the compounding nature of the decline.
A threat to what? How can it be that AI is poised to eliminate large numbers of skilled jobs but we still don't have enough humans? Both can't be true simultaneously. One of them has to be a lie.
Even if you believe AI will eliminate a significant portion of skilled labor do you honestly believe that the increased productivity will be used to support our aging population?
It can't be worse than too many children, not enough work. We've had that for most of our history.
Have you pictured what a society with mostly unproductive humans (relative to AI) and no income redistribution looks like? Peaceful and tranquil aren't words I'd use to describe it.
Neither did I. My argument is we need a long-term population decrease to maintain a stable society if all the wild AI predictions come true. We simply can't have 25% unemployment for multiple generations without something like UBI. And even with UBI there will be lots of idle hands and unrest.
In that sense we're lucky that the AI boom and a trend toward smaller family sizes is happening roughly at the same time.
A halving of the world population is like the world as it was in 1970. Not some Dark Age devoid of prosperity. Getting to that in 2 or 3 generations, in the absence of a climate change calamity, wouldn't be the worst thing.
I don’t personally see AI as replacing a significant portion of workers any time soon, nor our government implementing UBI if it does. But should both those things come to pass then sure, the devastating effects of population decline on our economy could be mitigated to some degree.
The population doesn’t just halve. Instead the population ages dramatically.
Traditionally higher population means a bigger workforce and army. Things a country can use to become "great." The US reaped a demographic dividend from the Baby Boom and is now feeling the pain of Baby Boomers retiring and transitioning to needing elder care. The Trump Administration is overlooking how US led free trade, security alliances, and R&D funding were also important factors in the US becoming the wealthiest and most powerful country.
Bonus is a very significant component (often the majority) of comp that gets cut when you're under a noncompete in these kinds of jobs. Yes I understand that's a "world's smallest violin" problem at these scales.
Seriously? HN and the tech news sector have exhaustively covered the abuse and exploitation of noncompetes inside and outside of tech for the past decade. They protect employers at the expense of employees, consistently fail to provide reasonable compensation for lengthy agreements, and are regularly exploited by bad actors to harm current and former employees by making them accept lower wages and worse working conditions.
Even fifteen minutes of casual reading through old threads here should answer this question for you. The only supporters of non-competes tend to be those who do not view employees as people, but as proprietary property.
If your company information is so sensitive that losing a worker would leave you vulnerable, then the solution is to compensate that employee well enough that they don’t see the need to leave and take on that additional risk.
> If your company information is so sensitive that losing a worker would leave you vulnerable, then the solution is to compensate that employee well enough that they don’t see the need to leave and take on that additional risk.
Yes, this is what I think people are missing: non-competes harm the free labor market.
Labor is a resource like any other, and as such there's a market. If the labor is highly valuable that means we should value it as such, in dollars. If we're not doing that then that means something is distorting or otherwise breaking the free market.
I would never expect to buy a car for 5,000 dollars. But, for some reason, with labor, everyone's expectations of how a market works suddenly need not apply. Why is that?
The problem is if we forcibly lower wages via non-competes then that harms the labor market as a whole. Yes, companies get to save a few bucks, but in exchange the expectations are broken. This is actually self-destructive. Why? Because companies, as much as labor, relies on those expectations. Now, you can't hire better workers for more money because we've detached monetary value from the actual value of labor. Oops! You want the best of the best? You can't do that do anymore.
On the surface, non-competes appear to benefit companies, but they don't. It's an illusion, and a seductive one.
The freedom not to sign is not the same as the liberty to pass up an opportunity for survival. Your snippy quip just makes you sound like an ignorant fool who can’t defend their position, let alone coherently argue against others.
If I walk across the desert and find a house on an oasis and the owner offers me water on the condition that I first put a chain on my ankle that is tethered to the property, do I really have the option to say no?
What if all the houses are following the “standard industry practice” of chaining anyone who asks for water? What if refusing to follow this practice means that you can’t obtain funding to build a house?
> This is limited to industry category and employee’s keep their current pay. How is this bad?
I don't know... former communist countries had restrictions precisely like this one, it was an integral part of their regulations.
Former feudal countries too, maybe a bit harsher.
The land of the serfs and category 5 hurricanes - sounds sweet.
> and employee’s keep their current pay
Oh yeah, inflation is just starting - to pay for the big bubblegum bill, in real terms that pay is going down 10%/yr, and the serfs cannot renegotiate.
Anecdotally, I heard that at these firms, all the "interesting" work is moving to Florida office because of the longer non-compete period. New York and other offices still exist but the most promising proprietary stuff goes to Florida.
As someone living in Texas, which also has no state income tax, it's not this simple. The tax burden is not actually lower, it's just more convoluted. Property taxes, aka wealth taxes, are much higher. These are passed along to consumers, meaning even if you don't have personal wealth you still pay a bit of it.
I doubt it. Not just reports on various online forums, but I have family in FL and they always, still are, complaining about low wages. FL is mostly hospitality and tourism. Not a whole lot of 140k + salaries to go around.
Economically challenged Red states seem to have an almost self-destructive compulsion to pass legislation that puts them further in the hole.
Say what you want about California, but they have an economy. Florida doesn't. Naturally, the legislative landscape of California has a lot to do with that. Usually everyday people have the hubris to acknowledge that emulation is a viable strategy when you're in the hole. Evidently, not Red state legislators.
You're either using the term incorrectly, or your overall claim is incorrect.
For example, minarchists are not in favor of universal healthcare, by definition - it doesn't fit the short list of the kinds of roles that minarchists believe government should play. There are plenty of people who are in favor of universal healthcare, who can't be called minarchists.
Colloquially, when people say "large government" they refer to the level and breadth of regulation, aka restrictions on private actors. This restricts private actors, so colloquially we say it made the government larger.
This reduces government regulations on contracts, not increases, a wider range of private contracts are allowed now hence this results in "smaller government".
If you mean this makes private corporations gain leverage over workers, sure, but that isn't what "large government" means.
There's two private actors here: private companies, and private workers. This explicitly restricts the mobility and freedom of private workers, and actively undermines the free labor market.
IMO this does fit the bill of "large government", as it's explicitly done to manipulate and pollute the free market.
I’m curious if you consulted with an attorney about that? I’ve heard the opposite from people looking to move from Chicago to CA. Does your former employer have a nexus in CA?
Using Florida as an example, if your contract was signed in Florida, your former employer is in Florida, and your case is tried in Florida, the courts aren’t going to pay any regard to California law, and you can be found liable for breach of contract and damages. Correct me if I’m wrong.
SB 699 (passed in 2024) made noncompetes illegal to enforce against against California workers, regardless of where the noncompete was signed. It's very unambiguous on the topic. However, as you correctly pointed out, that involves getting your case in front of a California judge, which you best bet the company suing you for violation of your noncompete is going to do their damndest to avoid.
However, under the wording of SB 699, even if you get sued for violating your noncompete in, say, Michigan, and lose, you can then sue that company, in California courts, and as long as California has jurisdiction (which they probably do, given most businesses don't completely avoid doing business in the largest economy in the country), you can successfully sue them for suing you over the noncompete.
What do you mean by "deferred" here? I'm a fairly high level IC at a big tech company (high TC), but it's only "deferred" in the sense of more of the TC being in RSUs (over 80%) with less frequent vesting vs. biweekly salary paychecks. But if you leave, you're already forfeiting future vests anyways.
Hedge funds don’t pay in stock. So they often take part of your cash bonus (which is what you would have made in RSU vesting) and put it into the fund. You get it back out in a few years.
Generally, probably not. The federal courts have not been a fan of California's noncompete ban specifically including those signed out of state. But if you can find some way to force the case into California courts, then yes.
Apparently for employers a significant benefit is that it actually requires courts to issue an injunction against the covered employee.
The injunction in turn can only be modified or dissolved if the covered employee – or prospective employer – proves by clear and convincing evidence (which must be based on non-confidential information) that:
the employee will not perform similar work during the restricted period or use confidential information or customer relationships;
the employer failed to pay the salary or benefits required under a covered garden leave agreement, or failed to provide consideration for a non-compete agreement, after the employee provided a “reasonable opportunity” to cure the failure; or
the prospective employer is not engaged in (or preparing to engage in) a similar business as the covered employer within the restricted territory.[0]
The "clear and convincing standard" (which is an intermediate burden of proof between the standard civil "balance of probabilities" and the strict "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard) coupled with the requirement of providing only non-confidential information to oppose the injunction will likely make this a slam dunk for employers.
> the employer failed to pay the salary or benefits required under a covered garden leave agreement, or failed to provide consideration for a non-compete agreement, after the employee provided a “reasonable opportunity” to cure the failure; or
Do I understand this correctly - they're expanding non-competes to 4 years and you have to be paid full compensation during that time or the agreement is nullified?
That appears to be a correct reading. The issue, apparently, is that you're only paid your base compensation. If a large portion of your total compensation is based on bonuses or equity grants, as is frequently the case in finance and tech, you're out of luck.
Seems short-sighted by the investment firms. They aren’t just competing with other Florida firms, they are competing with NYC and London and Hong Kong. Why would top talent move there?
The manufactured perception of weather, really. What folks discover after moving to FL:
Florida has 6 or 8 seasons and none of them resemble fall, winter or spring.
The 13th month of summer is the worst.
In Oct, trees finally succumb to heat stroke and drop their leaves.
Hurricanes are much better than summer except for a few hours.
Rainfall doesn't stick around; drought begins when rain stops.
Drought season varies between 15 min and 15 years.
Wildfire seasons vary from all day to world class.
The least-hot months get warmer every decade.¹
The other months probably are too.
At night, the dew point can plunge to 85°.
Sweat is your constant companion but so is sand.
Schools cleverly time summer break between May (Hell) & Aug (also Hell).
It's funny: I lived in a state with similar weather (hotter at the hottest, colder during the winter, but on balance similar humidity and climate generally) but fewer imports from NY/NJ/CA/etc., and we were outside all the time enjoying it. In Florida, everyone spends time inside with the AC set to 64 degrees and complains endlessly about the heat. It's odd to see: a bunch of folks move to "Endless Summer!" and then ... stay inside all the time. I'll happily march around outside on a 100-degree day while my NY colleagues absolutely refuse to.
As someone who lives in the NYC area it’s always entertaining to me when I go to Florida and see how low they set the AC. Basically every house from before 2010 doesn’t have AC in the NYC area. I’m currently working in an office that’s 85 and it’ll hit mid 90s before the end of the day. Climate acclimation is pretty neat.
> I have never been so cold, so very cold to my bones, as when I walk into a Florida Five Guys.
Funny. I said the same exact thing when I first moved to FL (except inside everywhere). Now I stay inside most of the time because there is little joy to be had when dew points push 85°F.
I am from the California desert with family in Florida and 100 degree here is almost nothing, back east it is pure misery. As bonus the dry desert air retains heat poorly so it is always cool at night. The humidity there tends to keep it hot all night.
Now having said that, I do note how much they complain how dry it is here, so perhaps it is what you are used to.
It totally is. I'm not saying I ENJOY 100 degrees and 89% humidity. I'm not a monster. But it's ... fine. I can go for a walk and not die, because it's what I grew up with. I'll happily sit on the front porch, sweating profusely, and enjoy a summer night. But people not from here--and, weirdly, a large proportion of people from here who have adopted the AC habits of the imports--treat it like a personal affront, a vigorous assault on their very being.
I'll never forget living in Atlanta and we had a bizarre blast of dry heat, totally out of character for the area. It was 112 degrees or some nonsense. I remember sitting in my car in the Fry's parking lot, getting myself mentally ready for the march to the store. I opened the door and it was actually really pleasant, almost enjoyable, because humidity wasn't there.
Only one of those hit the area my family has a vacation home in the past 40 years. There was another big one in the 90s. So 2 times in 50 years and both were not catastrophic.
Not sure what you mean. The GP listed out a bunch of hurricanes since 2000. Only one of those hit the panhandle in a way that was slightly impactful to my families vacation home(s). 2 storms in 50 years isnt enough to say I wouldn’t live there because of storms.
Insurance costs might scare me away more than the chance of a storm.
Listing all the hurricanes that hit any part of Florida isn't useful for evaluating the real risk faced by a family with a home in Florida. Most hurricanes that hit Florida won't effect most of the homes in Florida. If you just look at the raw number of hurricanes you might think the average Floridian home can't last more than two years without being flattened, but that's not reality.
Personally I'd take 10 feet of snow year round over a single week of Florida's muggy heat. I get that old people like it because they're always cold, but why anybody young lives anywhere in Florida, besides maybe Miami, is completely beyond my comprehension.
> I get that old people like it because they're always cold, but why anybody young lives anywhere in Florida, besides maybe Miami, is completely beyond my comprehension.
To get jobs tending to those (often well-off) old people. It's not for nothing that Florida is a top destination for pharmacy grads.
I live in Texas, and I often hear about people moving here for the weather. And I can't help but think... why? I've been to NYC, the weather is better.
Yes, the cold is inconvenient. But the heat is debilitating. I can wear a coat and boots and go outside in the north, but you can't do jack shit about the heat. I mean, we get 6 months of summer in Texas. You can't do anything.
Forget physical activities like golfing or jogging, even going to the grocery store practically saps all your will to live right out of your body.
Lol... Florida has some of the worse weather in the US. The winters can be nice but it has incredibly hot/humid summers. Miserable. It's why all the snow birds leave early spring and come back in the winter. I'd take a winter in North Dakota vs a summer in Florida any day.
Offset by exceptionally high fees, insurance rates, etc. The taxes argument is generally a benefit only for the owners (which may well have been your point).
But the admins, marketing team, junior employees, etc. get screwed, and the worst part is they are genuinely not expecting it. "I thought it was going to be cheaper to live here than NYC" is something I hear _weekly_.
Absolutely. But the mgmt does not really care about them, they can just hire locals. They only care about “top talent”, something they talk about all the time…
They can hire locals ... until they find out that the talent they genuinely need isn't here in the numbers they require, either driving up their costs or requiring importing people. But they're drooling about replacing all of those troublesome nobodies--their perspective--with AI ASAP anyway.
It's an interesting tug of war, Florida and Texas vs other states. Businesses move there because it's the wild west and low regulation, but their climate costs are accelerating rapidly which is going to lead to what I can only describe as this image from São Paulo: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/29/sao-paulo-inj...
What happens as these states continue to get squeezed by unfavorable long term economics while these businesses and the wealthy continue their performance art? What happens when it becomes constantly more difficult to attract labor to states where the quality of education is low (assuming workers who have or plan to have kids) and the cost of living continues to go up (insurance, etc). An interesting natural experiment and observations ahead.
(Florida resident for the last ~decade, but no longer as of late; US climate costs are approaching ~$1T/year, make good choices)
I've mentioned this before, but once the climate problems in Florida can no longer be handwaved away and Miami is perpetually in a shin-deep layer of water (this already happens after every major rain event, and it will gradually take longer and longer to return to normal, and eventually it will not), Floria will demand and probably get a hundred-billion-dollar engineering megaproject to try and fix the issue on the taxpayer's dime. This will happen because there is too much invested-- both financially in the real estate market, and emotionally in the climate change don't real market-- to walk away.
The NYC seawall depicted in The Expanse seems pretty plausible, it's such a dense area with so many people and so much income. And the seawall isn't really any different from the existing waterfront, so NYC remains recognizably NYC.
Florida though, everything is sprawling, there's no small area you could actually wall off. And the whole point of Florida is living near the beach, not concrete canyons.
You can't fix flooding in south Florida with seawalls or levees, because the bedrock is porous limestone: if there's too much water, it literally comes up through the ground. You can't pump floodwater away either, for the same reason.
Construction (both infrastructure and housing) faces a shortage of low single digit million workers nationally. Now, account for deportations of workers in those industries. Account for 4M Boomers retiring per year. Account for an annual year over year decline in prime working age participation due to declining total fertility rates. Who is going to do this actual megaproject engineering and construction work? Print or borrow all the fiat you want, there aren't enough people for the body of work to be done.
Residents of Florida are already waiting months or over a year sometimes to get a roof replaced, because there are not enough workers.
‘The industry is in a crisis:’ Construction worker shortage delaying projects, driving up costs, experts say - https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2025/02/24/the-indus... - February 24th, 2025 ("Immigrants account for 31% of all workers in construction trades across the country. In Florida, an estimated 38% of construction workers are foreign-born.")
Miami is 'ground zero' for climate risk. People are moving to the area and building there anyway - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/26/miami-is-ground-zero-for-cli... - April 26th, 2024 ("By 2060, about 60% of Miami-Dade County will be submerged, estimates Harold Wanless, a professor of geography and sustainable development at the University of Miami." ... "The trend shows how many Americans are ultimately willing to overlook environmental risks, even though most acknowledge its presence — a choice that could later devastate them financially.")
Climate Costs in 2040: Florida - https://www.climatecosts2040.org/files/state/FL.pdf (9,243 miles of seawall are needed. Florida has the highest cost of building seawalls. 23 Florida counties
face at least $1 Billion expenditures. 24 municipalities are up against bills of over $100,000 per person)
Well-off, retired Boomers still have enormous political power in the USA, and have a history of voting to point the money funnel at themselves. If it's a choice between a stable, sustainable economy for everyone vs. a few years of nice retirement in Florida for them, they will vote to throw the next 5 generations under the bus to give them a few more years of living in comfort and leisure.
~2M voters 55+ die every year, ~5k per day. Millenials overtook Boomers as the largest generation circa 2019. How you push the olds in power out faster I leave to be solved for by others.
Before even opening the article, I speculated that this is related to financial firms eyeing Miami as an alternative location to NYC. And right there at the top "The new law is a big win for Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, who advocated for it."
Many hedge funds and trading companies saddle their employees with very stringent non-competes. Citadel Securities moved to Miami recently.
"If we want to attract those kinds of clean, high-paying jobs, you have to provide those businesses protection on the investment that they're making and their employees."
Why isn't the relatively free job market in Silicon Valley something "East Coast" corporations are looking to emulate? I speculate that there's a major difference in the moat (or lack thereof) between tech firms and financial firms. I can know roughly how Youtube or Instagram work and still not be able to replicate them and take their profits for myself. But knowing which "fishing hole" the guys at Citadel visit might be enough to replicate their strategy. They must not really have a "moat" (outside of the super low latency front running stuff that's really costly to get started).
Why oh why am I not surprised that the state yet again chooses to side with the corporation over an individual citizen. At least it apparently requires that they pay the person, but bonus and stock are a big part of the comp that's conveniently left off.
What bothers me more is being out of work for 4 years would have a pretty bad impact on anyone in tech. It would make it very hard to get another job after so long out of the workforce.
If it's any consolation, they people on these non-competes keep their salary and benefits, and it only applies to people making significantly above the average salary. That said it's still bad imo
Yeah; as if $140K is a salary which deserves this sort of limitation. $140K is your average Project Management or Senior Analyst role. This is basically every fucking white collar worker.
Maybe (and I do NOT believe in NCs) if they were an EXECUTIVE and made >$500K, then, possibly I could see it?
Kind of a dumb question, but how does it work if you have a 10 year non-compete in FL but move to another state after 5 years, is the non-compete valid in the other state?
Generally yes, unless you move to California (which expressly bans noncompetes regardless of where they were signed or where the work was done), in which case it's a "consult a lawyer, but you're probably fine" situation.
makes it significantly less bad. I always say that if they want to decide what I can and can't do, they're going to have to pay me. And this is that, so that's definitely something.
Financial industry comp for top earners is mostly bonuses so 4 years of not being able to earn a competitive rate isn't a high cost for the company to prevent you from helping competitors or keeping your skills up to date.
The downside for employees is that they're not able to keep current and will likely have a harder time finding jobs in the future. The downside for society is that it will cause skilled people to not be producing anything.
Adding friction to changing jobs stifles competition (hey, it's right there in the name), and thus suppresses wages. Employers already have a massive advantage in employment negotiations, so a just society has zero reason to give them more.
Yeah I mean it's "scummy" as in you don't control your destiny, but if your guaranteed the pay and benefits for 4 years, and you know that up front when you sign the contract it's sort of like knowing you will get a sabbatical
That's always been the actual effect of non competes in the US. Slavery was abolished; you can't be told by a former employer that you can't work for someone else unless they continue to pay you not to.
That you're being downvoted is telling for the HN crowd who will rally behind "tax the rich" but ignore the call to "help the poor."
Noncompetes are a scourge. If your company requires them to survive, then it deserves to fail. Any argument in favor of them can be trivially nullified by pointing at California's unrivaled economic success, "despite" (or perhaps in part because of) its complete ban on noncompetes dating back to its founding. Indentured servitude has no place in the modern world.
I feel like noncompetes could work under one condition: the person is paid at 100% with full benefits for the entire non-compete period. You want contract terms that make someone unemployable for a year? That means you’re stuck paying for their year-long vacation. Don’t like it? Well, then maybe have a shorter non-compete or none at all.
This still gives an employer an unfair advantage, in that they don't need to compete to keep the employee. It also adds a significant amount of friction to the job market, artificially suppressing wages. The fair solution to the problem, which is actually legal even in places where noncompetes are illegal, is to pay the employee to not work elsewhere. As in, that's their job, and just like any other job, they're free to quit it at any time, in exchange for giving up their compensation for doing that job.
Workers on gardening leave could hold an auction between their new prospective employer and their current employer. If the old firm can match the new one, they can keep the employee on gardening leave. If they can't, they can take the new job, though I guess that's strictly less freedom for the employee than the system you describe.
That's not a noncompete, as far as things like California's prohibition on them are concerned. That's just a job, where you have no job duties. There's nothing saying that an employer can't fire you for having a second job, and there's nothing saying your employees have to actually DO anything for you to pay them.
That's true for the State of California, AFAIK. But in places (or some type of organizations) with just cause instead of at will, firing you for moonlighting would be illegal if it didn't conflict with an actual required duty.
> artificially suppressing wages
What if the 100% is of a competing offer?
But this does nothing for the company to protect its IP from that employee quitting to immediately go to work for a competitor. By keeping them on the payroll but working on "Special Projects" that is no where close to IP, they become stale in current state of the art.
In the Silicon Valley show, this is why Big Head and the other folks "office" on the roof. They are segregated from the other employees while they continue to get paid.
You're confusing a noncompete with a nondisclosure
They're related but they are different things. You can't go work for Coke, learn the secret formula, then go work for Pepsi and tell them the secret formula.
No. Why do you think people are put on non-compete? They don't want competitors to be able to start doing what they are doing at the company. Sales is an easy example with the concern of clients being poached. There's no disclosures necessary there. If a sales person is put on ice for 12 months, that could destroy their relationship with the client. For techy people, there are ways of moving to a new company where they start up a way to directly compete with the first company without using any IP or breaking of a non-disclosure. Obviously, you can't recreate the formula for Coke at Pepsi, but you could create an RC Cola or a create a Dr. Pibb after leaving Dr. Pepper.
There's multiple reasons for noncompetes[0]
You're right, it is about protection. A nondisclosure only goes so far. You have to prove in court that the nondisclosure was violated. Because how do you prove that a prior employee gave that knowledge as opposed to Pepsi just reverse engineering it?[1] A noncompete is an extra layer of protection because the barrier for proof is lower. You don't have to prove they violated the NDA, you just have to prove they work for the competition.
You recognize that these are different things, right? I stressed that it can be subtle, but if you're having a hard time recognizing they are different then please give it a little more thought.
A noncompete *also* means your previous employee isn't taking institutional knowledge and training with them. These won't be covered by a NDA! As an employer you invested in an employee by training them, right?[2] So you lose that investment?
The reason I put so much stress on this second part is because it is exactly what the above conversation has been about. The employer is thinking in the instant and narrowly, not more broadly. Yes, you lose employees you invested in, but you can also get employees you didn't invest in. That's the bigger picture. Plus, you can... you know... pay your existing employees more than you pay new employees with similar skills. Instead of threatening them against leaving incentivize them to stay. You get a bigger return on your investment anyways
[0] personally, I don't think it justifies having them but we can still understand the reasoning, right?
[1] this is something most people with an undergraduate education in chemistry could probably do. So good luck
[2] I stressed this above
>You recognize that these are different things, right?
What about anything I've stated makes you think I don't understand the difference between a non-compete and a non-disclosure? I see no reason for you think I'm a moron and need to mansplained to here. I have not confused these at all, and you seem to want to preach about something but the choir ain't having it. So now you're left with the internet posts. I'm really confused here.
To give a third-person perspective, you asked “Why do you think people are put on non-compete?” and the parent commenter answered.
The behavior depicted in Silicon Valley is (a humorous exaggeration of) the real response to California's prohibition on noncompetes. You can't force your employees not to jump ship, so instead, you pay them not to. Continuously, and competitively. At any time, said workers are free to go work for your competitors, so you need to actually compete to keep them, even if your only interest in them is having them not working on anything important.
This is why Google has a dozen different applications that all do the same thing. Google didn't want high-level talent competing with them, so they just hired as many of the top developers as they could, and then paid them enough for them to be content working on miscellany.
this is known as "consideration", and is fairly common in Oil & Gas.
can't speak to other orgs but I know people who basically were given 80% of salary + health insurance coverage to politely fuck-off from the job market for ~2 years. Very specific list of orgs and roles they cannot do, otherwise anything is game.
My buddy basically took his time off and did a Master's, worked part time doing handyman work / light farm stuff, and then jumped back into a 6 figure gig.
There's no doubt in my mind that Silicon Valley's success should be credited in part to California's ban on non-competes. Bad for individual companies, but good for industries.
Just look at Meta's current poaching spree, and previously the founding of Anthropic, SSI, Thinky. Whatever secrets OpenAI has will slowly but inevitably diffuse into other companies. Bad for OpenAI but strongly positive for literally everyone else in the world. It pushes OpenAI to keep innovating rather than rest on their laurels.
You forgot to also mention that it was good for OpenAI too! Maybe not at this exact time, but it was previously.
Which is a big problem with a lot of companies, and frankly a common bias in human thinking: hyper fixation on the present. I find this ironic given that one of our greatest skills that has led to our success as a species is foresight.
There's a ton of inefficiencies going on right now because of this fixation. As a simple example, the best way for a worker to get a raise is to change jobs. Frequently the last person in has the highest pay (or rather it tends upwards). So older employees leave. But those employees leaving mean a bigger loss because they have institutional knowledge and newer employees are less valuable because they need to be trained. It's cheaper on the long run to readjust your current employee salaries to keep them rather than hide people's salaries and hope they don't jump ship. But the latter strategy is definitely cheaper in the short term.
You can probably think of tons of examples and even more if you start to include natural coalitions with others[0]
[0] there's frequent psych experiments that are along the lines of "would you rather get $10 and other person get $10 or you get $50 and other person gets $100?" The former is frequently chosen because it's "more fair" despite being a worse option for yourself
Well, it's "bad for individual companies" in the same sort of way as not being able to murder your competitors is bad for individual companies.
It really hurt Borland with Microsoft poaching their people purely to cause Borland damage.
> There's no doubt in my mind that Silicon Valley's success should be credited in part to California's ban on non-competes.
Maybe, but it's clear that even statute doesn't prevent bad behavior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
You linked to an example of statute preventing bad behavior. Yes, it took years, the law moves slowly, but it happened. Retroactive compensation was provided for those affected, but most importantly, corporate policies changed.
> but most importantly, corporate policies changed.
How confident are you about that? Given how small the compensation was, does this really represent much victory? Do you really think class action lawsuits as they stand present much disincentive?
Yes, class action lawsuits in general and this one in particular present strong disincentives that companies respond to, especially after they lose.
Well, we'll wait and see. I don't agree on any level but time will certainly tell.
It's been ten years since the last settlement was finalized in those cases. They were a success and we don't need to wait any longer to decide that.
Right but to imply "lack of prosecution implies lack of wrongdoing" is just a non-starter.
> Indentured servitude has no place in the modern world.
Which is why we have “elites” who want to bring back chattel slavery and feudalism. The very wealthy will see us all dead before they give up a single iota of power.
> Noncompetes are a scourge.
I can see why small companies might want non-competes to prevent their employees from being poached by hyperscaler monopolies.
If non-competes continue to exist, they should be pared down to small-scoped work descriptions only, eg. not "AI" broadly, but rather something like "AI diffusion for skeletal movement". The non-competes shouldn't have durations longer than a year, and the companies enacting the contract should be required to pay departing employees a salary (or some large percentage of a salary) if they want to enforce the non-compete.
Non-competes should also only be used to prevent employees from joining larger companies, not smaller ones. And they should never prevent work at a startup or new venture.
I take issue with the idea that I, as an employee, may be "poached". I am not a deer or wild boar, owned by a feudal lord, and protected on his land from hunters. I should be free to have agency and enter into business arrangements with anyone I choose. Just because my company "invested" money into my growth/education/training, doesn't mean they should own me for some period of time while they figure out how to make that investment pay off. Let's stop using this word poached. It's not analogous to an employer/employee relationship.
Do you take issue with being "grilled" during interviews, because you are not a sizzling slab of beef? It's just a metaphor, just like headhunting is a metaphor for executive search, despite the CEOs being the feudal lords, as you see it.
Maybe instead the liability should be on the hiring company?
Again, the desire here is to stop Meta or a trillion dollar company from destroying a research-oriented startup's key staff. The idea isn't to encumber people's freedoms. It's to block large economy altering giants from making market distorting moves absorbing key talent from small disruptors.
I suppose the counter argument is that a fast growing startup could afford to make counter offers. Perhaps that's so. But these big companies always seem to threaten smaller companies if they don't accept buyout offers.
Watching Meta hire ten people for millions while simultaneously laying off thousands is wild. It feels market distorting. If they're going to poach these folks, the losing teams should get a buyout too. That's what happens in sports.
I don't actually disagree but it's worth pointing out the US government, which values freedom of association as a bedrock principle, itself takes the view that, if they invest in your education and training, they "own" you for a period of time. Military servicemembers are required to sign service commitments both when they enter the service, but also upon completion of training and the length of the commitment is tied to the length/intensity of training. Air Force pilots are usually committed to serving on active duty for up to 12 years, due to the value of their training and many immediately jump ship to private industry after reaching that point.
Personally, I think banning non-competes probably does reduce the amount of investment in education that companies make, but it's a tradeoff worth making to improve overall labor market efficiency and better guarantee personal freedom.
> the US government, which values freedom of association as a bedrock principle
That's fresh.
If your employees immediately jump ship after training, it means you're underpaying them, or mistreating them, or, in the case of the US military, probably both.
> Personally, I think banning non-competes probably does reduce the amount of investment in education that companies make, but it's a tradeoff worth making to improve overall labor market efficiency and better guarantee personal freedom.
I largely work for Californian companies and by and large the benefits have been excellent. While I wish more money was put into training overall, I feel this is driven more by short term financial planning than things like non-competes.
What have you seen or encountered that led you to the conclusion that non-competes would lead to more educational investment?
My assumption is that they’re more useful when a non-compete reduces the amount of people with key skills from a market—it seems counter-intuitive to do this and then disseminate those skills via training programs.
If an employee was worth X and the company made them worth Y, they should pay them Y to continue having them as an employee. Anything else distorts the labor market.
Now having to pay back training or education if you leave before Z months seems reasonable.
Ok, but let's make the non-compete bidirectional.
If I leave or am fired from your company, then you are not allowed to hire anybody who works in my field for at least one year.
Non-competes should not exist. Full stop. The only person who should be able to restrict my freedom of movement between employers is ME.
Don't want your employees to leave? Pay them more.
What other states have had non-competes similar to California? North Dakota and Oklahoma.
It's possible that other factors might be more important in driving California's economic success...
When you're restricting people's freedom, you have to have a good justification for doing it. There are zero states that have achieved greater economic success than California by allowing noncompetes, thus it is safe to say that noncompetes are not necessary to achieve economic success.
There's no singular factor in almost everything. We should use good faith interpretation and assume the parent understands this as well, unless there is other evidence otherwise
The point being that strict non-competes do not actually bolster the business environment.
They bolster businesses by making it easier for them to retain employees even if those employees are being treated like shit, because it makes it illegal for those employees to work anywhere else.
That doesn't help the economy, but it helps the businesses.
More Capital lashing against the minor victories of the prior administration for workers.
If your business information is so sensitive and valuable that losing an employee could hurt you, then you ought to be compensating that employee well enough that they don’t see the value in taking on the risk of a job hunt.
Florida doesn't have that many highly paid workers.
They've got a decent amount of rich retired or passive income folks.
Aren't they trying to attract high earners from high tax places like NYC?
This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL, which sounds like a bad idea for the businesses it's presumably trying to serve.
But what do I know?
> This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL, which sounds like a bad idea for the businesses it's presumably trying to serve.
Employees, yes. But the execs at these big firms would love to have more control over their best people so they have less leverage
Employees unfortunately need employers to pay them, so they will take the deal they can get
If your options all move to Florida, guess where you’re moving
The US is going full Cyberpunk! After 20 years of service you are eligible for citizenship of the Corporate zone and one child permit.
> and one child permit
The way discourse has been trending lately, I suspect it will be just the opposite. Florida and Texas will probably be first to impose one-child-minimum policies, with heavy penalties for noncompliance.
Yea, I was gonna say! The current administration has this weird fixation on "babies" and encouraging people "having babies" and incentivizing "baby production" with these new savings accounts that are essentially baby bonds, and weirdly trying to denigrate childless people. Why this sudden politicization of childbearing?
Look to history[1][2]. In short, it’s an old tactic for increasing nationalistic sentiment, growing targeted demographics, and putting pressure on women’s rights/bodily autonomy.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Births
2. https://ahistoryfactaday.org/the-nazi-lebensborn-program-a-c...
Well population decline is a very real threat and with the conservative scapegoating of immigration (the only thing keeping the US growing) they need to get labor somewhere.
Plus it fits right in with their anti-woman and anti-lgbt sentiments. Good god-fearing Christians should be having children after all. But of course child poverty and healthcare is not their concern. Labor should be hungry and desperate.
I remember when the "threat" was out-of-control overpopulation. Most developed countries have finally solved that, and now the "threat" is underpopulation? It sounds like we're just justifying everything as a threat. In any well-run society that isn't a ponzi scheme that relies on ever-increasing labor, population decline is what you want, given the extreme environmental footprint of every single person. The Earth has fixed and limited resources, so the fewer people competing for them, the better.
Population decline is an economic issue not an ecological one. How do we support a larger population of non-working elderly with an ever decreasing population of workers. I don't see how without a restructuring of our economy and society which doesn't seem to be on the table.
South Korea is essentially already doomed. In 25 years over half their population will be over 65. It's workforce will be half what it is now. It simply will not be able to care for the elderly. They will work until they die in poverty.
Ideally as society advances and productivity increases the necessary ratio of workers to non-workers should decrease as well but, the gains of productivity increases have historically not translated to wealth of the populace. And even if productivity does shift to benefit the worker it has to outpace population implosion which seems impossible considering the compounding nature of the decline.
> population decline is a very real threat
A threat to what? How can it be that AI is poised to eliminate large numbers of skilled jobs but we still don't have enough humans? Both can't be true simultaneously. One of them has to be a lie.
Even if you believe AI will eliminate a significant portion of skilled labor do you honestly believe that the increased productivity will be used to support our aging population?
If the productivity isn't well-distributed, it's all the more reason to have fewer mouths to feed.
Have you pictured what that will look like in practice?
It can't be worse than too many children, not enough work. We've had that for most of our history.
Have you pictured what a society with mostly unproductive humans (relative to AI) and no income redistribution looks like? Peaceful and tranquil aren't words I'd use to describe it.
A false dichotomy. I did not suggest rampant population growth. Not that I agree with your characterization anyway.
> I did not suggest rampant population growth
Neither did I. My argument is we need a long-term population decrease to maintain a stable society if all the wild AI predictions come true. We simply can't have 25% unemployment for multiple generations without something like UBI. And even with UBI there will be lots of idle hands and unrest.
In that sense we're lucky that the AI boom and a trend toward smaller family sizes is happening roughly at the same time.
A halving of the world population is like the world as it was in 1970. Not some Dark Age devoid of prosperity. Getting to that in 2 or 3 generations, in the absence of a climate change calamity, wouldn't be the worst thing.
I don’t personally see AI as replacing a significant portion of workers any time soon, nor our government implementing UBI if it does. But should both those things come to pass then sure, the devastating effects of population decline on our economy could be mitigated to some degree.
The population doesn’t just halve. Instead the population ages dramatically.
Traditionally higher population means a bigger workforce and army. Things a country can use to become "great." The US reaped a demographic dividend from the Baby Boom and is now feeling the pain of Baby Boomers retiring and transitioning to needing elder care. The Trump Administration is overlooking how US led free trade, security alliances, and R&D funding were also important factors in the US becoming the wealthiest and most powerful country.
>The current administration has this weird fixation on "babies"
This is not a Trump or American thing... This is a problem in EU too.. Lack of births is a very real issue and will only get worse.
I live in Sweden where you get 480 days off work already to split between 2 parents already and has for years. Births are in record decline.
Imo we are just too comfortable and don't need kids the same way we used to.
gotta have more wagies to do the drudgery
They're equally as likely to reintroduce the medieval policy of prima nocta.
This is limited to industry category and employee’s keep their current pay. How is this bad?
Bonus is a very significant component (often the majority) of comp that gets cut when you're under a noncompete in these kinds of jobs. Yes I understand that's a "world's smallest violin" problem at these scales.
Seriously? HN and the tech news sector have exhaustively covered the abuse and exploitation of noncompetes inside and outside of tech for the past decade. They protect employers at the expense of employees, consistently fail to provide reasonable compensation for lengthy agreements, and are regularly exploited by bad actors to harm current and former employees by making them accept lower wages and worse working conditions.
Even fifteen minutes of casual reading through old threads here should answer this question for you. The only supporters of non-competes tend to be those who do not view employees as people, but as proprietary property.
If your company information is so sensitive that losing a worker would leave you vulnerable, then the solution is to compensate that employee well enough that they don’t see the need to leave and take on that additional risk.
> If your company information is so sensitive that losing a worker would leave you vulnerable, then the solution is to compensate that employee well enough that they don’t see the need to leave and take on that additional risk.
Yes, this is what I think people are missing: non-competes harm the free labor market.
Labor is a resource like any other, and as such there's a market. If the labor is highly valuable that means we should value it as such, in dollars. If we're not doing that then that means something is distorting or otherwise breaking the free market.
I would never expect to buy a car for 5,000 dollars. But, for some reason, with labor, everyone's expectations of how a market works suddenly need not apply. Why is that?
The problem is if we forcibly lower wages via non-competes then that harms the labor market as a whole. Yes, companies get to save a few bucks, but in exchange the expectations are broken. This is actually self-destructive. Why? Because companies, as much as labor, relies on those expectations. Now, you can't hire better workers for more money because we've detached monetary value from the actual value of labor. Oops! You want the best of the best? You can't do that do anymore.
On the surface, non-competes appear to benefit companies, but they don't. It's an illusion, and a seductive one.
If only people weren't forced to sign non-compete agreements... seriously, you don't like em, don't sign em.
The freedom not to sign is not the same as the liberty to pass up an opportunity for survival. Your snippy quip just makes you sound like an ignorant fool who can’t defend their position, let alone coherently argue against others.
If I walk across the desert and find a house on an oasis and the owner offers me water on the condition that I first put a chain on my ankle that is tethered to the property, do I really have the option to say no?
Yes and to stay within your metaphor you can just go to the house next door and get water without being chained up
What if all the houses are following the “standard industry practice” of chaining anyone who asks for water? What if refusing to follow this practice means that you can’t obtain funding to build a house?
> This is limited to industry category and employee’s keep their current pay. How is this bad?
I don't know... former communist countries had restrictions precisely like this one, it was an integral part of their regulations.
Former feudal countries too, maybe a bit harsher.
The land of the serfs and category 5 hurricanes - sounds sweet.
> and employee’s keep their current pay
Oh yeah, inflation is just starting - to pay for the big bubblegum bill, in real terms that pay is going down 10%/yr, and the serfs cannot renegotiate.
their current pay is getting increasingly worthless given inflationary trends
Citadel and other hedge funds have been moving people there (from NY and Chicago)
Anecdotally, I heard that at these firms, all the "interesting" work is moving to Florida office because of the longer non-compete period. New York and other offices still exist but the most promising proprietary stuff goes to Florida.
They are moving to Florida because the personal income tax rate in Forida is 0% and in New York it's about 14%.
As someone living in Texas, which also has no state income tax, it's not this simple. The tax burden is not actually lower, it's just more convoluted. Property taxes, aka wealth taxes, are much higher. These are passed along to consumers, meaning even if you don't have personal wealth you still pay a bit of it.
there have been a few threads here comparing TX to CA and found that CA is still pretty competitive even having a beefy income tax.
According to the article, this kicks in at $140K. I imagine this impacts a LOT of Floridians these days.
I doubt it. Not just reports on various online forums, but I have family in FL and they always, still are, complaining about low wages. FL is mostly hospitality and tourism. Not a whole lot of 140k + salaries to go around.
Non anecdotal source - https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/12057
Economically challenged Red states seem to have an almost self-destructive compulsion to pass legislation that puts them further in the hole.
Say what you want about California, but they have an economy. Florida doesn't. Naturally, the legislative landscape of California has a lot to do with that. Usually everyday people have the hubris to acknowledge that emulation is a viable strategy when you're in the hole. Evidently, not Red state legislators.
I hear that many financial services jobs are moving to cities like Tampa and Miami -- would like someone to confirm that.
Tampa and Dallas, lower wages and regulation (vs NYC and NJ traditionally).
I work in the space and it's a steady trickle for sure.
There is a large medical technology presence in Florida. Many of these people are highly paid.
> This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL
People will typically come to Florida (despite this) because it's Florida and a nicer place to work year round than NY etc.
Ahh the party of small government strikes again.
everyone's a minarchist, it's just they disagree on which bits of the state are necessary
You're either using the term incorrectly, or your overall claim is incorrect.
For example, minarchists are not in favor of universal healthcare, by definition - it doesn't fit the short list of the kinds of roles that minarchists believe government should play. There are plenty of people who are in favor of universal healthcare, who can't be called minarchists.
Well phrased.
This change neither increases nor decreases the size of the government, so it's unclear how you think "party of small government" is relevant here.
Colloquially, when people say "large government" they refer to the level and breadth of regulation, aka restrictions on private actors. This restricts private actors, so colloquially we say it made the government larger.
This reduces government regulations on contracts, not increases, a wider range of private contracts are allowed now hence this results in "smaller government".
If you mean this makes private corporations gain leverage over workers, sure, but that isn't what "large government" means.
There's two private actors here: private companies, and private workers. This explicitly restricts the mobility and freedom of private workers, and actively undermines the free labor market.
IMO this does fit the bill of "large government", as it's explicitly done to manipulate and pollute the free market.
"Size" can be power, not just headcount.
So if you move out of Florida after you leave your job, can you escape the restriction?
Yes. I moved from NY to CA, and that made it non-enforceable.
But, at least for Eng types with higher TC a bunch of the comp is deferred, and if you breach the agreement you forfeit the money.
I’m curious if you consulted with an attorney about that? I’ve heard the opposite from people looking to move from Chicago to CA. Does your former employer have a nexus in CA?
Using Florida as an example, if your contract was signed in Florida, your former employer is in Florida, and your case is tried in Florida, the courts aren’t going to pay any regard to California law, and you can be found liable for breach of contract and damages. Correct me if I’m wrong.
SB 699 (passed in 2024) made noncompetes illegal to enforce against against California workers, regardless of where the noncompete was signed. It's very unambiguous on the topic. However, as you correctly pointed out, that involves getting your case in front of a California judge, which you best bet the company suing you for violation of your noncompete is going to do their damndest to avoid.
However, under the wording of SB 699, even if you get sued for violating your noncompete in, say, Michigan, and lose, you can then sue that company, in California courts, and as long as California has jurisdiction (which they probably do, given most businesses don't completely avoid doing business in the largest economy in the country), you can successfully sue them for suing you over the noncompete.
The agreements don’t have damages (other than the loss of deferred compensation as I noted).
The normal way to use the agreement is to seek injunctive relief. That would have the be in CA, where no judge will allow it.
And they did informally confirm they could not prevent me of taking a competitive job, which my employment lawyer confirmed.
What do you mean by "deferred" here? I'm a fairly high level IC at a big tech company (high TC), but it's only "deferred" in the sense of more of the TC being in RSUs (over 80%) with less frequent vesting vs. biweekly salary paychecks. But if you leave, you're already forfeiting future vests anyways.
Hedge funds don’t pay in stock. So they often take part of your cash bonus (which is what you would have made in RSU vesting) and put it into the fund. You get it back out in a few years.
Generally, probably not. The federal courts have not been a fan of California's noncompete ban specifically including those signed out of state. But if you can find some way to force the case into California courts, then yes.
Apparently for employers a significant benefit is that it actually requires courts to issue an injunction against the covered employee.
The injunction in turn can only be modified or dissolved if the covered employee – or prospective employer – proves by clear and convincing evidence (which must be based on non-confidential information) that:
the employee will not perform similar work during the restricted period or use confidential information or customer relationships;
the employer failed to pay the salary or benefits required under a covered garden leave agreement, or failed to provide consideration for a non-compete agreement, after the employee provided a “reasonable opportunity” to cure the failure; or
the prospective employer is not engaged in (or preparing to engage in) a similar business as the covered employer within the restricted territory.[0]
The "clear and convincing standard" (which is an intermediate burden of proof between the standard civil "balance of probabilities" and the strict "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard) coupled with the requirement of providing only non-confidential information to oppose the injunction will likely make this a slam dunk for employers.
[0] https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/news-insights/florida-enfo...
> the employer failed to pay the salary or benefits required under a covered garden leave agreement, or failed to provide consideration for a non-compete agreement, after the employee provided a “reasonable opportunity” to cure the failure; or
Do I understand this correctly - they're expanding non-competes to 4 years and you have to be paid full compensation during that time or the agreement is nullified?
That appears to be a correct reading. The issue, apparently, is that you're only paid your base compensation. If a large portion of your total compensation is based on bonuses or equity grants, as is frequently the case in finance and tech, you're out of luck.
ah, there's the catch. I feel like garden leave should extend your employment so things like stock continue to vest while you're on it.
https://archive.today/4VN6F
Seems short-sighted by the investment firms. They aren’t just competing with other Florida firms, they are competing with NYC and London and Hong Kong. Why would top talent move there?
Florida's Homestead Law also exempts one's primary residence from being taken to pay creditors.
Weather
>> Why would top talent move there?
> Weather
The manufactured perception of weather, really. What folks discover after moving to FL:
Source: 30yrs of FL survivorship.¹ https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/FL/Tampa/e...
Hurricanes are only going to keep getting worse too.
Absolutely. When I moved here, Cat 5s where once in a generation. I traveled for hurricane relief trips 1 year out of 4.
Now we sport multiple Cat 5 in a month. Every year we have our pick of hurricane relief opportunities, some are minutes away.
It's funny: I lived in a state with similar weather (hotter at the hottest, colder during the winter, but on balance similar humidity and climate generally) but fewer imports from NY/NJ/CA/etc., and we were outside all the time enjoying it. In Florida, everyone spends time inside with the AC set to 64 degrees and complains endlessly about the heat. It's odd to see: a bunch of folks move to "Endless Summer!" and then ... stay inside all the time. I'll happily march around outside on a 100-degree day while my NY colleagues absolutely refuse to.
As someone who lives in the NYC area it’s always entertaining to me when I go to Florida and see how low they set the AC. Basically every house from before 2010 doesn’t have AC in the NYC area. I’m currently working in an office that’s 85 and it’ll hit mid 90s before the end of the day. Climate acclimation is pretty neat.
I have never been so cold, so very cold to my bones, as when I walk into a Florida Five Guys. I need a fleece just to get a hot dog.
> I have never been so cold, so very cold to my bones, as when I walk into a Florida Five Guys.
Funny. I said the same exact thing when I first moved to FL (except inside everywhere). Now I stay inside most of the time because there is little joy to be had when dew points push 85°F.
I am from the California desert with family in Florida and 100 degree here is almost nothing, back east it is pure misery. As bonus the dry desert air retains heat poorly so it is always cool at night. The humidity there tends to keep it hot all night.
Now having said that, I do note how much they complain how dry it is here, so perhaps it is what you are used to.
It totally is. I'm not saying I ENJOY 100 degrees and 89% humidity. I'm not a monster. But it's ... fine. I can go for a walk and not die, because it's what I grew up with. I'll happily sit on the front porch, sweating profusely, and enjoy a summer night. But people not from here--and, weirdly, a large proportion of people from here who have adopted the AC habits of the imports--treat it like a personal affront, a vigorous assault on their very being.
I'll never forget living in Atlanta and we had a bizarre blast of dry heat, totally out of character for the area. It was 112 degrees or some nonsense. I remember sitting in my car in the Fry's parking lot, getting myself mentally ready for the march to the store. I opened the door and it was actually really pleasant, almost enjoyable, because humidity wasn't there.
> 100 degree [in California] is almost nothing, back east it is pure misery.
Yes. East coast you sweat at night thru Aug. Same for FL except there aren't any months where that never happens.
Florida has endless summers, but they're in winter
You mean increasingly severe hurricanes?
Those seem to hit NYC now too. Not as often, but it's also less prepared for them when they do.
I’ll take a chance of a Hurricane every couple decades vs a single season of snow.
• Hurricane Gabrielle (2001) – Venice, Category 1 • Hurricane Charley (2004) – Punta Gorda, Category 4 • Hurricane Frances (2004) – Hutchinson Island, Category 2 • Hurricane Ivan (2004) – Near Pensacola, Category 3 • Hurricane Jeanne (2004) – Stuart (Hutchinson Island), Category 3 • Hurricane Dennis (2005) – Near Pensacola, Category 3 • Hurricane Katrina (2005) – South Florida, Category 1 • Hurricane Wilma (2005) – Cape Romano, Category 3 • Hurricane Hermine (2016) – Alligator Point, Category 1 • Hurricane Irma (2017) – Cudjoe Key and Marco Island, Category 4 • Hurricane Michael (2018) – Mexico Beach, Category 5 • Hurricane Ian (2022) – Cayo Costa / Fort Myers area, Category 4 • Hurricane Nicole (2022) – Vero Beach, Category 1 • Hurricane Idalia (2023) – Keaton Beach (Big Bend region), Category 3 • Hurricane Debby (2024) – Steinhatchee, Category 1 • Hurricane Helene (2024) – Aucilla River mouth near Perry, Category 4 • Hurricane Milton (2024) – Siesta Key, Category 3
Only one of those hit the area my family has a vacation home in the past 40 years. There was another big one in the 90s. So 2 times in 50 years and both were not catastrophic.
Florida is only the region directly surrounding your vacation home?
Not sure what you mean. The GP listed out a bunch of hurricanes since 2000. Only one of those hit the panhandle in a way that was slightly impactful to my families vacation home(s). 2 storms in 50 years isnt enough to say I wouldn’t live there because of storms.
Insurance costs might scare me away more than the chance of a storm.
Listing all the hurricanes that hit any part of Florida isn't useful for evaluating the real risk faced by a family with a home in Florida. Most hurricanes that hit Florida won't effect most of the homes in Florida. If you just look at the raw number of hurricanes you might think the average Floridian home can't last more than two years without being flattened, but that's not reality.
You'll actually be taking your chance with a couple of major hurricanes every year.
Personally I'd take 10 feet of snow year round over a single week of Florida's muggy heat. I get that old people like it because they're always cold, but why anybody young lives anywhere in Florida, besides maybe Miami, is completely beyond my comprehension.
> I get that old people like it because they're always cold, but why anybody young lives anywhere in Florida, besides maybe Miami, is completely beyond my comprehension.
To get jobs tending to those (often well-off) old people. It's not for nothing that Florida is a top destination for pharmacy grads.
Win some lose some.
But the weather is ass.
I live in Texas, and I often hear about people moving here for the weather. And I can't help but think... why? I've been to NYC, the weather is better.
Yes, the cold is inconvenient. But the heat is debilitating. I can wear a coat and boots and go outside in the north, but you can't do jack shit about the heat. I mean, we get 6 months of summer in Texas. You can't do anything.
Forget physical activities like golfing or jogging, even going to the grocery store practically saps all your will to live right out of your body.
Lol... Florida has some of the worse weather in the US. The winters can be nice but it has incredibly hot/humid summers. Miserable. It's why all the snow birds leave early spring and come back in the winter. I'd take a winter in North Dakota vs a summer in Florida any day.
Taxes
Offset by exceptionally high fees, insurance rates, etc. The taxes argument is generally a benefit only for the owners (which may well have been your point).
7 figure comps are pretty common, compared to NYC rates that’s a real difference.
But the admins, marketing team, junior employees, etc. get screwed, and the worst part is they are genuinely not expecting it. "I thought it was going to be cheaper to live here than NYC" is something I hear _weekly_.
Absolutely. But the mgmt does not really care about them, they can just hire locals. They only care about “top talent”, something they talk about all the time…
They can hire locals ... until they find out that the talent they genuinely need isn't here in the numbers they require, either driving up their costs or requiring importing people. But they're drooling about replacing all of those troublesome nobodies--their perspective--with AI ASAP anyway.
Coming soon (again) to a Florida near you: Liberty of Contract and Lochner Era jurisprudence.
It's an interesting tug of war, Florida and Texas vs other states. Businesses move there because it's the wild west and low regulation, but their climate costs are accelerating rapidly which is going to lead to what I can only describe as this image from São Paulo: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/29/sao-paulo-inj...
What happens as these states continue to get squeezed by unfavorable long term economics while these businesses and the wealthy continue their performance art? What happens when it becomes constantly more difficult to attract labor to states where the quality of education is low (assuming workers who have or plan to have kids) and the cost of living continues to go up (insurance, etc). An interesting natural experiment and observations ahead.
(Florida resident for the last ~decade, but no longer as of late; US climate costs are approaching ~$1T/year, make good choices)
I've mentioned this before, but once the climate problems in Florida can no longer be handwaved away and Miami is perpetually in a shin-deep layer of water (this already happens after every major rain event, and it will gradually take longer and longer to return to normal, and eventually it will not), Floria will demand and probably get a hundred-billion-dollar engineering megaproject to try and fix the issue on the taxpayer's dime. This will happen because there is too much invested-- both financially in the real estate market, and emotionally in the climate change don't real market-- to walk away.
The NYC seawall depicted in The Expanse seems pretty plausible, it's such a dense area with so many people and so much income. And the seawall isn't really any different from the existing waterfront, so NYC remains recognizably NYC.
Florida though, everything is sprawling, there's no small area you could actually wall off. And the whole point of Florida is living near the beach, not concrete canyons.
You can't fix flooding in south Florida with seawalls or levees, because the bedrock is porous limestone: if there's too much water, it literally comes up through the ground. You can't pump floodwater away either, for the same reason.
> a hundred-billion-dollar engineering megaproject
if it was actually and effective solution and only cost that much, it'd be a bargain; I'd expect 5-10x
Let’s see how this is working in New Orleans with the levees subsiding
Construction (both infrastructure and housing) faces a shortage of low single digit million workers nationally. Now, account for deportations of workers in those industries. Account for 4M Boomers retiring per year. Account for an annual year over year decline in prime working age participation due to declining total fertility rates. Who is going to do this actual megaproject engineering and construction work? Print or borrow all the fiat you want, there aren't enough people for the body of work to be done.
Residents of Florida are already waiting months or over a year sometimes to get a roof replaced, because there are not enough workers.
South Florida's water supply under threat from saltwater intrusion crisis - https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/south-floridas-water-supp... - April 24th, 2025
Miami-Dade Saltwater Interface GIS Mapping - https://geoportal.sfwmd.gov/portal/home/item.html?id=128fce3...
‘The industry is in a crisis:’ Construction worker shortage delaying projects, driving up costs, experts say - https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2025/02/24/the-indus... - February 24th, 2025 ("Immigrants account for 31% of all workers in construction trades across the country. In Florida, an estimated 38% of construction workers are foreign-born.")
Miami is 'ground zero' for climate risk. People are moving to the area and building there anyway - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/26/miami-is-ground-zero-for-cli... - April 26th, 2024 ("By 2060, about 60% of Miami-Dade County will be submerged, estimates Harold Wanless, a professor of geography and sustainable development at the University of Miami." ... "The trend shows how many Americans are ultimately willing to overlook environmental risks, even though most acknowledge its presence — a choice that could later devastate them financially.")
Climate Costs in 2040: Florida - https://www.climatecosts2040.org/files/state/FL.pdf (9,243 miles of seawall are needed. Florida has the highest cost of building seawalls. 23 Florida counties face at least $1 Billion expenditures. 24 municipalities are up against bills of over $100,000 per person)
Well-off, retired Boomers still have enormous political power in the USA, and have a history of voting to point the money funnel at themselves. If it's a choice between a stable, sustainable economy for everyone vs. a few years of nice retirement in Florida for them, they will vote to throw the next 5 generations under the bus to give them a few more years of living in comfort and leisure.
~2M voters 55+ die every year, ~5k per day. Millenials overtook Boomers as the largest generation circa 2019. How you push the olds in power out faster I leave to be solved for by others.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/28/millennia...
Before even opening the article, I speculated that this is related to financial firms eyeing Miami as an alternative location to NYC. And right there at the top "The new law is a big win for Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, who advocated for it."
Many hedge funds and trading companies saddle their employees with very stringent non-competes. Citadel Securities moved to Miami recently.
"If we want to attract those kinds of clean, high-paying jobs, you have to provide those businesses protection on the investment that they're making and their employees."
Why isn't the relatively free job market in Silicon Valley something "East Coast" corporations are looking to emulate? I speculate that there's a major difference in the moat (or lack thereof) between tech firms and financial firms. I can know roughly how Youtube or Instagram work and still not be able to replicate them and take their profits for myself. But knowing which "fishing hole" the guys at Citadel visit might be enough to replicate their strategy. They must not really have a "moat" (outside of the super low latency front running stuff that's really costly to get started).
>Why isn't the relatively free job market in Silicon Valley something "East Coast" corporations are looking to emulate?
Because there isn't that much potential profit in finance/trading. As the years go by, more and more is commoditized/automated.
> Miami is the 'future of America'
Probably true in that it's on track to be mostly destroyed by climate change and people are injuring themselves looking the other way.
Why oh why am I not surprised that the state yet again chooses to side with the corporation over an individual citizen. At least it apparently requires that they pay the person, but bonus and stock are a big part of the comp that's conveniently left off.
What bothers me more is being out of work for 4 years would have a pretty bad impact on anyone in tech. It would make it very hard to get another job after so long out of the workforce.
If it's any consolation, they people on these non-competes keep their salary and benefits, and it only applies to people making significantly above the average salary. That said it's still bad imo
Twice the average Floridian salary, not average for the role. ie well below what tech workers can make.
Yeah; as if $140K is a salary which deserves this sort of limitation. $140K is your average Project Management or Senior Analyst role. This is basically every fucking white collar worker.
Maybe (and I do NOT believe in NCs) if they were an EXECUTIVE and made >$500K, then, possibly I could see it?
Kind of a dumb question, but how does it work if you have a 10 year non-compete in FL but move to another state after 5 years, is the non-compete valid in the other state?
Generally yes, unless you move to California (which expressly bans noncompetes regardless of where they were signed or where the work was done), in which case it's a "consult a lawyer, but you're probably fine" situation.
While I generally oppose non-competes,
> They would keep their pay
makes it significantly less bad. I always say that if they want to decide what I can and can't do, they're going to have to pay me. And this is that, so that's definitely something.
How does one become an employee that other companies fight over and try to poach?
Paid holiday for 1-3 years, what’s wrong with that?
The hedge fund effect.
Ah, the rewards for those of us cosplaying as temporary embarrassed billionaires.
“They would keep their pay and benefits but wouldn't be entitled to bonuses”
I fail to see the issue here. The employee’s would continue to receive pay for up to 4 yrs to keep the non-compete.
Financial industry comp for top earners is mostly bonuses so 4 years of not being able to earn a competitive rate isn't a high cost for the company to prevent you from helping competitors or keeping your skills up to date.
High earners get most of their compensation from bonuses, RSUs, etc., none of which will be paid out over the garden leave period.
It means whoever employs you in Florida controls your destiny for the 4 years after you leave.
If you don't see a problem with that I can only assume you hope you'll be the employer and not the employee.
The downside for employees is that they're not able to keep current and will likely have a harder time finding jobs in the future. The downside for society is that it will cause skilled people to not be producing anything.
Adding friction to changing jobs stifles competition (hey, it's right there in the name), and thus suppresses wages. Employers already have a massive advantage in employment negotiations, so a just society has zero reason to give them more.
Yeah I mean it's "scummy" as in you don't control your destiny, but if your guaranteed the pay and benefits for 4 years, and you know that up front when you sign the contract it's sort of like knowing you will get a sabbatical
“They would keep their pay and benefits but wouldn't be entitled to bonuses”
This seems like a win for both sides. Employee’s would still be paid for keeping the non-compete.
That's always been the actual effect of non competes in the US. Slavery was abolished; you can't be told by a former employer that you can't work for someone else unless they continue to pay you not to.
That you're being downvoted is telling for the HN crowd who will rally behind "tax the rich" but ignore the call to "help the poor."