Which is particularly relevant at consultancies where the product is a service.
If you join a consultancy group, and 2 months later quit with the client roster... is it really OK to poach all their clients to start your own consultancy?
All of these contracts are time limited, FWIW. E.g. non-solicitation doesn't mean you can never work your your colleagues again. It protects against someone leaving and then immediately poaching all employees within 12 months. After 12 months you're welcome to poach as much as you'd like.
Edit: Furthermore, non-solicits don't ban your colleagues from quitting with you, as long as you're not directly asking them to quit. If they make the decision independently without being lobbied by a former employee, it's not in violation of non-solicit.
Yes. It's called free market competition and it's great for the society and economy. NYC bankers should be first in line to understand that.
The way you solicit clients from a prior company is downloading the client list, exporting to a personal drive, quitting, then using the list to poach.
I’m fine if that’s your intention, but let your employer know upfront that you won’t protect confidential company data.
If I'm a waiter in a restaurant there should be nothing to stop me telling the customers that I'm going to a better restaurant and they should come and try it. Will the boss be annoyed? Yes. Should he be allowed to stop me? No.
In the real world there is no salesman who thinks of the clients as belonging to the company. They all know that sales relationships are personal. The contracts may say one thing, but the reality is different. The law ought to be to allow free association. Customers lose out when they are not offered better deals.
On HN we’re talking about tech employees who make 5-10x the median US salary.
We can have stricter rules and stricter contracts for the 5% top paid employees. Obviously a waitress shouldn’t be sued for talking about another restaurant with a customer.