I'd like to hear more of your views on non-compete clauses. I agree, they are the bane of technical/creative people. But I also understand the need for them.

I'm not real familiar with your (now lapsed?) corporation Shelley.... did you have people working for you or was it more self-incorporated? If you did employ people, how did you approach this issue?

I can appreciate an employer's need to protect their investment in training and time. But I also appreciate how delicate the balance is between protecting your investment and stifling innovation.

I'd love to hear your views on this!

My problem with non-compete is the same problem I have with patents - the people who draft the documents don't understand technology.

Most non-compete clauses are so broad in their inclusion of material covered that you can have a difficult time finding work in your field once you leave. Worse, if you work on something in your own time while employed by the company, they can expand the concepts of the clause (this is particularly relevant to contractors) to the point that they demand ownership of your effort. This even though they don't fund it, or the material isn't related to the nature of the business.

Case in point - I was offered a tech arch position in Boston just before leaving for San Fran, which I ended up declining because of the contract I would have to agree to, assigning creative rights to the company. I had no problems with assigning the rights to the work I performed at the company, but the contract was so broad that it basically included anything I would do that had anything to do with RDF, the Resource Descriptiong Framework, XML as a message content, and so on - pretty standard stuff for a P2P developer.

No can do.

Not only would this make it impossible for me to continue my own personal projects, I would have a difficult time finding work, period, once I left the company.

I'll only sign a contract with a non-compete clause or creative rights assignment if and only if the company attaches a functional specification, detailed requirements document, or some other description of work to be performed to the document, providing a detailed outline of the "work", so there is no confusion about what belongs to the company, and what belongs to me.

Shelley, love, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease, y'know what I mean?

Thanks for the kind words, though. I appreciate them.

BTW, didn't comment in the other post, but you have a lovely cat there. Such eyes. I'm a sucker for green cat eyes.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that non-compete clauses are illegal in California. So if some company tries to make you sign one there it isn't going to work anyway :) Apparently, you can even take them to court.