[detroitcoder]

This is a GREAT point, but hard to do in practice when deferred can be several multiples of base. I know many people who internalize large sign on bonuses and deferred comp as though they already earned the income. They are psychologically unable to accept writing this amount of money off, and force themselves to stick in situations that are at times not healthy or at least sub-optimal. Often times this is called life, and you deal with it because it is putting food on the table and providing above and beyond for your family. However a lot of times it would be better to just find something that makes you happier which is easier if you don't factor in deferred comp when thinking through personal finances.

[s1artibartfast]

So let's say you strip it down to the bare minimum. If an employer said I will pay you X times your a salary to not start a competitor for 2 years, should that be legal?

[DaiPlusPlus]

> I will pay you X times your a salary to not start a competitor for 2 years, should that be legal?

What about joining an existing competitor? How is "competitor" defined? Is it competition if someone left Apple's iWork team to join Microsoft's Office team? Or just left Apple to join Microsoft even if it's in a non-competing, or even a team that's actually beneficial to Apple's bottom-line (e.g. Azure, as iCloud runs on Azure+AWS+GCP)?

...these difficulties in nailing down "competition" is what leads to overly broad and ultimately unconscionable noncompete agreements.

Ultimately I wouldn't trust an employer to define it for me - so if I were in that position I'd tell them I'd treat a noncompete as a gardening-leave clause and require 200% my final TC for the same time period (so 4x my salary for 2 years) - if my ability to compete with the company is really worth that much then they'll gladly have no problems paying it - and if they don't, then they're clearly a company that wants to exert undue interference (i.e. punishment?) on former employees for no good reason and I'd interview somewhere else.

[dfxm12]

Nah. Any society probably suffers when people are legally limited in doing something they're trained to do.

On a philosophical level, I'm not sure it's good to allow people to sign away any kind of freedom, including the economic liberty to start your own company. Competition is also very important for capitalism to work for people who don't own capital...

[smsm42]

Why not? If they want to buy your time & experience, and don't even require you to show up in the office but just do nothing - what's wrong with that? If the competitor wanted, they could counter with X+2 times and win.

[p1necone]

On a personal level, sounds like a great deal. On a societal level, sounds like it's going to have a negative effect on the industry as a whole.

I don't think it's a good idea to allow things like this. You're just giving big incumbent companies another way to spend money to stifle competition.

[sokoloff]

Why would society want to prevent the employee from freely entering into such an agreement? I don’t see sufficient upside to warrant the restraint on freedom that making this illegal would impose.

“You’re allowed the pursuit of happiness, but not in this particular way.”

[ARandomerDude]

As long as X >= 2, I personally wouldn’t have a problem with it.