Except on very narrow cases, these have always been a sham. And in those narrow cases it should be an NDA and the onus on the business to actually prove proprietary info was divulged or a patent was violated. Sucks for the businesses, but the alternative was in many cases needlessly handcuffing so many employees
My personal opinion is that ndas should require the business to continue paying the employees wage and offering a benefits package as though they were employed. The wage should increase by a ramping percentage each year
Actually important NDAs do this - they’ll just pay you to come in (or at least not work anywhere else) until the knowledge you had is irrelevant… and if the action that the NDA would prevent is legitimately damaging there do exist laws around corporate espionage that already cover these breeches. If you outright steal legitimately protected information from an employer (a common example is customer lists) and resell it… an NDA isn’t needed. NDAs have traditionally just been used as a scare tactic to contain information that isn’t legitimately protected… and, of course, to unfairly punish ex-employees for leaving.
I had an optional non-compete clause in one of my first jobs, but it was rarely activated by the employer, only for senior management and above. It also included payment for the period (iirk third of your salary for 2 years). In my EU country a non-compete without payment wouldn’t have been legal, not sure how it is/was in the US
Except on very narrow cases, these have always been a sham. And in those narrow cases it should be an NDA and the onus on the business to actually prove proprietary info was divulged or a patent was violated. Sucks for the businesses, but the alternative was in many cases needlessly handcuffing so many employees
My personal opinion is that ndas should require the business to continue paying the employees wage and offering a benefits package as though they were employed. The wage should increase by a ramping percentage each year
Actually important NDAs do this - they’ll just pay you to come in (or at least not work anywhere else) until the knowledge you had is irrelevant… and if the action that the NDA would prevent is legitimately damaging there do exist laws around corporate espionage that already cover these breeches. If you outright steal legitimately protected information from an employer (a common example is customer lists) and resell it… an NDA isn’t needed. NDAs have traditionally just been used as a scare tactic to contain information that isn’t legitimately protected… and, of course, to unfairly punish ex-employees for leaving.
That’s the idea behind CEOs golden parachutes.
I had an optional non-compete clause in one of my first jobs, but it was rarely activated by the employer, only for senior management and above. It also included payment for the period (iirk third of your salary for 2 years). In my EU country a non-compete without payment wouldn’t have been legal, not sure how it is/was in the US