Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Nel

Quoting: Mountain Man"Personally, I think these sorts of contracts do no good, and I am not a fan of them. I am surprised such a contract is even legal!"

Why should they be illegal? If an employer says, "Here are the terms you must agree to before we'll hire you," and the employee signs on the dotted line anyway then that's on them. Trendy Entertainment is perfectly within its right to enforce a contract that both parties willingly agreed to.

ROFL

Just one sentence from Noam Chomsky:
The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

Unless someone is holding a gun to his head, a prospective employee is under no compulsion to sign a contract he doesn't agree with.

That seems almost the exact inverse of what, when TheBoss said it, your rejoinder was "You're right, that is a stupid example". This is a ludicrous claim, why do I see it so often? Of course it's not the case that there is no such thing as compulsion that doesn't consist of holding a gun to the head. There are many kinds and degrees of compulsion. And it's certainly the case that overall, in gaming companies, people tend to need jobs much more than companies need any given employee, and this differential in power is often used to insist on crap working conditions and nasty contracts. If the power dynamic were different, so would the contracts be. And indeed, every so often you get a superstar programmer who is in great demand, and is well enough off not to really need a job at all, and whose contracts, surprise surprise, are very different. The notion that contracts are, ever really, something happening in some hypothetical magical neutral space where everyone is freed of all coercion is laughable.
This is one reason why it's important for there to be some kind of outside social arbiter (such as, although not necessarily limited to, the state) imposing some limits on how unfair contracts are allowed to be, how much power imbalance is allowed to be brought to bear.

As to this particular case, I think I dislike everyone involved. Stieglitz sounds like a jerk, given the way he seems to have treated people he bossed. Trendy sound like creeps who were probably just fine with Stieglitz's management style until it blew up on them and they had to shuffle things around to save face, and their contract is BS. Even some of the employees . . . even if Stieglitz was treating them like crap, was whining to the media the best action to take? I have my doubts. But dislike Stieglitz personally though I may (given current information at hand--maybe he's a great guy and the people who worked under him were indulging in horrible calumnies), I'd rather see this blow up in Trendy's face because abusing vicious contracts is a broader problem whereas Stieglitz is just one particular dude.

"Holding a gun to his head" is a euphemism. I didn't mean it literally.

My point is that at least here in America, it is extremely rare for someone seeking employment to be in a do-or-die situation where they literally have no choice but to accept an unfair contract. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between not being able to find work in your chosen field versus not being able to find work at all. Just because an aspiring game designer can't find work with a developer doesn't mean that his only other choice is to starve, so Chomsky's rather extreme analogy doesn't fit this scenario.

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Quoting: EagleDeltaSay what you want, a Non-Compete cannot Legally prevent you from earning a living in your profession. That info comes directly from a lawyer. The ONLY way Trendy's Non-compete clause can prevent someone from working in gaming is if that Non-Compete states that they can't work in gaming within 200 miles (or someother limited distance) of Trendy. ANY Non-Compete that prevents an employee from working in their profession and earning a living at all is considered "unenforceable". Basically a Non-Compete that prevents you from working in your chosen profession/specialty would be akin to signing yourself into servitude as no one would ever be able to leave their company without leaving their career, giving many companies absolutely no reason to treat their employees well.

I don't know the exact terms of the contract, so it's rather hard to say one way or another. My only point is that on general principle, there's nothing inherently wrong with a non-compete contract, although like anything in business -- or life -- it can be stretched beyond the bound of what's reasonable.

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Quoting: wintermute

Quoting: Mountain ManIt depends on the terms of the contract.

It really doesn't. If the employment is over the contract is over, the terms in the contract are irrelevant at that point.

No, the contract lasts for the length of time agreed to by both parties.

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I would have to assume the "annoyances" stem from porting code that was originally written to support a single, proprietary, closed-source platform.

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Quoting: Nel

Quoting: Mountain Man"Personally, I think these sorts of contracts do no good, and I am not a fan of them. I am surprised such a contract is even legal!"

Why should they be illegal? If an employer says, "Here are the terms you must agree to before we'll hire you," and the employee signs on the dotted line anyway then that's on them. Trendy Entertainment is perfectly within its right to enforce a contract that both parties willingly agreed to.

ROFL

Just one sentence from Noam Chomsky:
The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

Unless someone is holding a gun to his head, a prospective employee is under no compulsion to sign a contract he doesn't agree with. To claim that the employee in this instance was "starving" and had no choice but to accept an unfair deal is absurd. And "potentate"? Really? It's not as if Trendy Entertainment was the only company in the whole of the United States that would have been willing to hire him.

Chomsky is a brilliant linguist, but his view on politics are, to be polite, a bit out there.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Mountain ManSuppose, for instance, that an employer recruits an employee and invests time and resources into training him. Then the employee says, "Thanks for the training... see ya!" Now the employer will get no return on their investment, and they'll have to start from scratch. A non-compete clause is a reasonable precaution because it offers some assurance to the employer that the new employee won't suddenly flake out on them. If the prospective employee doesn't like the terms of the contract then it's his responsibility to walk away.

There are more positive ways to inspire loyalty. You are unlikely to have very productive staff if you need clauses like these to force/blackmail them to remain in your employ. But this is beside the point as well.

It really depends. I know the news staff at local TV stations are almost always bound by a non-compete clause because it can hurt a station's brand if a popular personality were to move to a competitor's channel. It also protects a company from having their employees "poached" by a competitor.

I personally would never sign a non-compete contract myself, but I don't see any reason why they should be illegal.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: Mountain Man"Personally, I think these sorts of contracts do no good, and I am not a fan of them. I am surprised such a contract is even legal!"

Why should they be illegal? If an employer says, "Here are the terms you must agree to before we'll hire you," and the employee signs on the dotted line anyway then that's on them. Trendy Entertainment is perfectly within its right to enforce a contract that both parties willingly agreed to.

If i sign a contract that says I have to kill myself if I ever leave company x, should that be on me? Stupid example, but you probably get my point. Such clauses shouldn't be allowed. They are from greedy people forcing crap on others. In this case the company is so scared of competition they put that clause in.

You're right, that is a stupid example. It's also a strawman fallacy. Unlike your analogy, a non-compete clause is not inherently unreasonable. Suppose, for instance, that an employer recruits an employee and invests time and resources into training him. Then the employee says, "Thanks for the training... see ya!" Now the employer will get no return on their investment, and they'll have to start from scratch. A non-compete clause is a reasonable precaution because it offers some assurance to the employer that the new employee won't suddenly flake out on them. If the prospective employee doesn't like the terms of the contract then it's his responsibility to walk away.

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Quoting: wintermute

Quoting: Foxv71He signed a contract which to me means something.... So if he broke it then he can just suck it up butter cup and get sued :).

Unless Trendy are still paying him, the contract is over.

It depends on the terms of the contract.

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Quoting: PeciskFirst of all, they can try sue employer, but it is employee who is breaking contract here, so I wonder how it would work even.

That's usually how these things go. If a company has a no-compete clause with an employee, and they learn that employee is now working for someone else, they will contact the new employer and say, "Either you fire that guy or we'll sue you for knowingly breaching a contract." Quite often the new employer will happily comply because the employee was obviously not honest with them during the interview.

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"Personally, I think these sorts of contracts do no good, and I am not a fan of them. I am surprised such a contract is even legal!"

Why should they be illegal? If an employer says, "Here are the terms you must agree to before we'll hire you," and the employee signs on the dotted line anyway then that's on them. Trendy Entertainment is perfectly within its right to enforce a contract that both parties willingly agreed to.

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