There is a limit to how much an employer can ask for in negotiations before I start to assume bad faith.

A 2 year non-compete covering the entire industry I work in? That's not even halfway reasonable. You're actively trying to fuck me over.

I don't care that it's not enforceable. You're still trying to fuck me over.

I don't care that you're willing to compromise on that clause when I argue. You're still trying to fuck me over.

This is not going to be a productive relationship even if I do get you to remove that clause because you started out trying to fuck me over.

Every employer who attempts this kind of bullshit is a cancer upon this industry. They are preying upon people's tendencies to assume honesty and good faith.

A reasonable clause to put in is a 6 month non-compete in the very specific industry covering maybe two or three companies. That would be a good starting point for negotiations.

I've accepted jobs where they tried to pull this kind of bullshit on me right out of the gate. I used to think I was smart getting them to slice the contract up and make it reasonable like you suggested.

Maybe it was, but it still would have been smarter to never have taken the job in the first place. Those people made terrible employers and are best just avoided.

Most companies buy packages of HR docs from their law firm, or from an HR-focused law firm that does nothing but churn these things out. They all have the same basic list of clauses. So I wouldn't attribute this one clause to general maliciousness. I would wonder though, why so many people said there was no such clause.

I have drawn lines through the objectionable parts of employment agreements, initialed my changes, and then sat patiently while the HR people freak out. It has usually worked out happily for all concerned, not counting the people who think the employment agreement is a gift from their god and must not be altered by mere mortals. When those people have enough power to reject my rejection, I'm happy to walk. But it's important to verify that they have that power, IMHO.

I used to think this too, but not any more. If you sign something, you're taking responsibility for it. Period. It applies to me and it applies to the employer. No exceptions.

The exception you're describing is where the employer is hopelessly naive and unknowingly signed and gave me a contract they didn't read with horrendous terms, and they're very apologetic when I ask them to amend it.

Well, that actually happened to me once.

I thought everything was fine when the terms were amended, but the guy who hired me was still hopelessly naive.

That ended up SERIOUSLY coming back to bite me in the ass as he ran out of money, panicked, hid himself and didn't tell anybody what happened. Eventually he told me that he ended up not paying me because he couldn't.

He was a nice guy and he plainly felt awful, but that wasn't much consolation to my bank account.

So yeah, the when there's a possibility you're negotiating with somebody who is either hopelessly naive or evil, I don't really care which they are. I don't want to work for them either way and neither should you.

In general the ones who intentionally put the clauses in weren't necessarily the most awful places to work in the world, but none of them were job opportunities of the lifetime, and I wouldn't have felt bad passing any of them up.

I totally respect that stance and I wish it was more widespread. Just speaking from my own experiences – I’ve been presented 2 or 3 very unreasonable contracts that I renegotiated and the employers were fine to work with. I think the non-compete clauses were there out of their own insecurities about competitors rather than any intention to screw me over. I can’t know that for sure, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is it was all out of the contract before I signed it.

In business, a lot of people like to play hardball. Doesn't mean they’re all assholes. Taking them on and negotiating mutually agreeable terms can be a good outcome in itself. It’s a very useful skill to have.

>In business, a lot of people like to play hardball. Doesn't mean they’re all assholes.

Playing negotiation hardball with somebody who is potentially reliant upon you to put a roof over their head and food on the table makes you an asshole. Let's stop pretending that it doesn't.

It's entirely different to negotiating a 20 million dollar exit.

If I'm going to be paid a LOT of money I might consider some of these terms (> $250k), but generally I find anyway that the more the employer pays you the more reasonable they tend to be.

I've seen "unenforceable" non-competes, combined with bogus accusations of infringement, destroy entire companies and the products that other companies built on them, just through attrition.