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.
If a waitress shouldn't be sued, why should a dev or a PM? We should all be equal under the law, there shouldn't be a "oh well you make enough money" clause. If anything, freeing high-productivity workers is the bigger win for society, far outweighing the benefit from better restaurants.
In an ideal world, employees would also share in the losses when companies aren’t profitable (forgo a paycheck).
…everyone wants the first scenario, but absolutely not the 2nd! When will people realize that one of the value props of working for a company (as opposed to starting your own) is you’re guaranteed a stable income regardless of whether profits are going up or down.
(You can say it’s not guaranteed because you can be fired. Fair. But the point still stands, it’s nice to have a stable paycheck that doesn’t wildly fluctuate up and down)