[PhoenixReborn]

It's because WA allows for non-compete agreements for employees above a certain income level, whereas CA bans non-competes outright. So it's much more difficult to get top/high-ranking people to leave MS/AMZN since they might get sued by their employer.

Note that the threshold in WA is around $116K annual salary and I imagine that most senior tech employees would be above this level.

Source: https://foley.com/insights/publications/2023/01/non-competes...

[xxpor]

Brand new SDE1s right out of college make more than that.

[PhoenixReborn]

And this is precisely why the law is so toothless in WA. It was intended to kill non-competes for low-wage workers (McDonald's workers, etc), not for tech workers. That's still a good thing overall, but techies don't really see the benefits of it.

[zachthewf]

Do you know of there's any data on the prevalence of these noncompetes in employment contracts?

[VirusNewbie]

Woah. What is the standard non compete for a software engineer? Do most Amazon employees risk being sued if they leave for google or microsoft?