White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
I don&#x27;t understand why there&#x27;s so many people in the comments defending non-competes.  They have literally no value to society, or to individual employees.  They are a tool of restrictive coercion to stifle an employees freedom of movement in the job market.<p>Trade secrets, IP, secret sauce: covered by NDA and IP assignment agreements<p>Client lists, contract terms, sales strategies, reported metrics, financials: covered by NDA and in some cases SEC regulations about insider trading.<p>Etc.<p>The only thing a non-compete does is say that Employee A cannot work in their chosen field for some period of time after they are fired or quit.  In doing so it offers no consideration or compensation typically in the contract.<p>So your employer underpays you by 40% and treats you badly?  You want to leave for greener pastures at that hip new startup that offered you a Senior Engineer gig?  Well, sorry to say you have a mortgage, a wife, and 2 kids and that non-compete says you are only legally allowed to be a burger flipper for two years after quitting, that software engineering is verboten.<p>Totally fair right?<p>If you don&#x27;t sit on the board of a Fortune 500 company, you have literally no incentive to support non-competes.  There is no rational basis to argue in their favor.  Please learn the difference between NDAs, IP assignment agreements, and non-competes before lending non-competes some mystical powers they don&#x27;t have.