> Those are protected by NDAs, confidentiality agreements, copyrights, patents, etc.
This gets thrown around HN a lot but I don't think it matches reality. Say I work in machine learning algorithms for show recommendations at Netflix. Amazon hires me to work on their machine learning algorithm recommender on Prime Video. Sure, I might have NDAs to protect what I learned at Netflix, but how does Netflix realistically show whether or not I disseminated that knowledge at Amazon? It's not like they can just ask to see Amazon's code to see if the knowledge has been ported over to there. The only way to really show that I infringed an NDA is for someone to rat me out, which is probably pretty rare. To that end, I understand why companies want non-competes (I'm not saying they should be allowed to have them... I'm just saying that there are reasons that they exist beyond "we don't want employees to leave). In finance, it's very common to get a paid non-compete where you get your full salary for as long as the company wants to enforce the non-compete. Companies aren't paying these high salaries just because "training cost is expensive and it's to limit staff from training at one company and leaving". They are doing it because they actually fear the consequences of the employee's new firm competing with them based on the knowledge that the employee has. For this reason, it's also pretty common for companies in finance to not pay out gardening leave when they aren't worried about the employee's new company directly competing.
Violations are determined via a legal complaint and review/investigation. Violations are not termined by company A hiring a person from company B.
Non-competes (non-paid out) only put time between companies (in some states it might be beyond the lifetime of the person under a NC). To put that, and not fully pay out at the current salary, puts a uneven pressure on the individual who was pressured into agreeing to it for (unguarenteed) employment.
Additionally, non-competes survive termination by the company.
The legality, and even the exact definition, of IP is not black and white and comes up all the time in copyright discussions. If we want to say that the NDA states that your brain while at this company is ours and must be wiped if you leave, uh what? I think the spirit of an NDA is more that you don't release private information about the company.
I look forward to the day I can add inventions to that one field that asks for them upon being hired!
> Sure, I might have NDAs to protect what I learned at Netflix, but how does Netflix realistically show whether or not I disseminated that knowledge at Amazon?
Personal integrity. If you have it, you are valuable. If you do not any value you have is short lived.
Cuts both ways. Does Amazon have the integrity to not expect the violation of your agreement with NF?
> It's not like they can just ask to see Amazon's code to see if the knowledge has been ported over to there.
Probably not, but I would imagine that in cases like this there would be a third party given access to both sides, and charged with determining if theft has occurred.
This gets thrown around HN a lot but I don't think it matches reality. Say I work in machine learning algorithms for show recommendations at Netflix. Amazon hires me to work on their machine learning algorithm recommender on Prime Video. Sure, I might have NDAs to protect what I learned at Netflix, but how does Netflix realistically show whether or not I disseminated that knowledge at Amazon? It's not like they can just ask to see Amazon's code to see if the knowledge has been ported over to there. The only way to really show that I infringed an NDA is for someone to rat me out, which is probably pretty rare. To that end, I understand why companies want non-competes (I'm not saying they should be allowed to have them... I'm just saying that there are reasons that they exist beyond "we don't want employees to leave). In finance, it's very common to get a paid non-compete where you get your full salary for as long as the company wants to enforce the non-compete. Companies aren't paying these high salaries just because "training cost is expensive and it's to limit staff from training at one company and leaving". They are doing it because they actually fear the consequences of the employee's new firm competing with them based on the knowledge that the employee has. For this reason, it's also pretty common for companies in finance to not pay out gardening leave when they aren't worried about the employee's new company directly competing.