In Minnesota, I've had companies twice drag me into court trying to enforce a non-compete and the judge laughed at both companies and I was sent on my way.
The key in both cases was the company I had left was trying to keep me from working in the same field for a competitor. My attorney argued that if I'm "gainfully employable" you can't restrict me from earning a living in my chosen field - to do so would invite economic hardship.
The judge asked if they would rather compensate me for two years at my current salary (which was a six figure salary), or let me go work for their competitor. The company quickly chose the latter.
Noncompetes would be almost fair if it was required to compensate the employee for the duration of the time it is enforced. In the US, that's rare, but in the EU it not uncommon (gardening leave). In other words, the real underlying reason that noncompetes are used is to limit job-hopping by employees looking for better working conditions or a higher salary, but under the guise of prevent company secrets from being disclosed to a competitor is what is sold to the legislature.
Would it have been possible to leave the state(MN) and continue to work in your field?
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2015/02/19/electric-car-batter...
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/massachusetts-court-defe...
Emergency Motion, Restraining order, Injunction - these are all very exciting for the lawyers involved and gut wrenching for the employees. Usually you have to be a CxO level or salesperson - or do something that makes someone with money really mad.
By propaganda I mean the constant CA self congratulatory atmosphere, we're the best, most innovative, always at the forefront of cool, if we were a nation we'd rank... economically, etc...
Good on you bay state.
CA is larger than most nations on earth. Its economic opportunities are 100 for every 1 anywhere else.
All of these metrics except for productivity are "density" measures. That is the size of the state matters (in a way that penalizes states with larger, more diverse economies).
A better ranking would be to use CSAs. Industry clusters are based more on region than states. State borders are relatively arbitrary with respect to technology clusters. CSAs are based on commute times so better reflect industry clustering.
Having said all that, I think MA is great. If I didn't hate the cold weather and East coast cultural conservatism I would consider moving to the Boston area.
* Percentage of state GDP spent in R&D.
* Percentage of "tech" companies vs total companies. This counts software, hardware, defense, pharmaceutical, biotech, renewable energy, etc.
* GDP / employed person.
* Percentage of STEM employees / total employees.
CA beat MA in the following categories:
* Percentage of STEM degree holders / total population.
* Patents / US Total and Patents / million people.
All categories were equally weighted.
(Correlation isn't sufficient to show causation, but it would show that taxes don't have a negative effect on innovation as many anti-tax proponents would argue.)
http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...
- Tektronix (now acquired), founded in Portland in 1946 - Intel, opened their largest center outside Santa Clara in 1974 + lots of companies that have been acquired, etc.
It has been called the Silicon Forest at least since 1981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Forest
I grew up in Eugene.
I visited Boston once in the summer. Nice place, but no way would I ever live there.
Not sure if any of this applies to AK. The three states usually have more similarities than differences as it's all similar types of people. Like an extended family, haha.
Also Arkansas is AR, AK is Alaska. A pretty common mistake, cousin ;D
The difference in the statistics is explained below the chart - "STEM concentration" is based on employment field, regardless of education.
The most important difference between Boston (and the East Coast in general) and California is this: On the East Coast and in most other places, business culture has a kind of de-facto caste system in which executives, managers, and owners by definition are separate from and out-rank doers. To do is not to own, and to own is not to do.
In Boston if you roll up your sleeves and actually do the work, this makes you lower class compared to the executives who manage, own, and control. On one occasion I had this actually explained to me explicitly and the explanation included the phrase "CEOs don't do anything" stated as if this were a fact and a law of nature. It was explicitly explained to me that for a CXO-type person to actually get their hands dirty with real work was a dangerous distraction that would negatively impact their ability to lead.
In California, being a maker and a doer is respected equally and in some cases more than being a manager or a hustler. The extreme end of this is the CA startup culture where being a "non-technical founder" is sometimes seen as a liability. A founder might eventually transition to mostly managerial work but having a background and having been the original builder of the product is seen as a good thing and a badge of honor.
At the very least, being a maker and a doer in California does not count against you and mark you as lower class the way it does in Boston. It doesn't by definition mean you can't lead, found, or own.
This is why I left Boston. I couldn't stand it. The message I got from the culture is that I was a sucker for trying to get good at actually doing things. I don't have What It Takes and therefore I can only work for those who do. What It Takes is never quite defined but I gathered it to be a mixture of extroversion, a very dominant personality type, and mild to moderate narcissism. Skills and abilities and experience don't factor into it unless that experience is exclusively within the business realm.
East Coast: "I'll have my people talk to your people." -- the ideal archetype of the East Coast business elite would be Donald Trump or Carl Icahn.
West Coast: "Here let me get on that." -- the ideal archetype here is Elon Musk or Larry Page.
East Coast: "We're looking to hire people from the right schools." (I actually heard this multiple times and even read it in print at least once. Skills were not mentioned.)
West Coast: "We're looking to hire people with the right skills."
I also felt more classism in general on the East Coast. The fact that I'm originally from Ohio and went to a small Midwestern university meant I wasn't fit to mop the floor. The West Coast certainly has its Stanford cult but the Ivy League cult on the East is orders of magnitude more intense and pervasive. I know and do business with a number of high-ranking Stanford types and never have I gotten the sense that I'm a "plebeian" simply because I don't have an impressive university name behind me. If I'm talking to a Stanford Ph.D and what comes out of my mouth is intelligent, it feels like a conversation between equals and I don't get the sense that my opinions are inherently suspect.
Don't get me wrong. There is absolutely class in California, and if you're not from a top-tier university or an otherwise impressive background you will probably have to work harder to achieve a similar level of cred in most circles. But you can. Class is malleable here and if you demonstrate merit I've found that people respond quickly. By contrast out East it feels fixed by birth and education. After being there for years and working really really hard I did gradually feel like I'd risen a bit but it felt like a really slow process with a constant undertow. I did find that if I stopped referring to my educational background or place of origin people started to assume I'd gone to a place like MIT, so I could sort of sneak in under the radar and only reveal my beginnings once I'd thoroughly demonstrated ability. Out East I was actually tempted to lie about my education (never did), while out West the idea seems preposterous and silly.
There are exceptions in both places of course, but that was the general cultural zeitgeist I ran into. I imagine it might be even worse in a place like Washington DC where it's all about political clout.
Like 2nd rank California, home to 50 Fortune 500 companies ranging from Apple to Clorox to Allergan? /s
Also, diverse economy doesn't mean more innovative. Some companies like, say CVS in Rhode Island, can prop up a state's economy, but add little to the innovativeness of the state.
Glad to hear you moved on to greater things. :)
Having lived in NYC and SF, I find that California's claim to being a liberal bastion isn't nearly as strong as reputed, and that the overall tenor of its social liberalism is fairly superficial.
Would you be willing to go to court to find out?
I used to work with a guy who came up with a fairly good product idea (in his own time and at his own cost). He brought it to mgmt and they were not interested (wasn't in our space). So he tried to go out on his own with it and immediately received a Cease & Desist order. His lawyer said if he went to court could easily cost him up to $50K to defend successfully. So he gave up & complied.
Can you imagine the outrage if a plumbing business tried to enforce a non-compete (e.g. "you can't work as a plumber for 2 years"). Well ... unions.
Mass. would do well to outlaw them, but sadly the state legislature is easily bought so I don't expect it to happen anytime soon.
Our blocking issues for growing are enough devs, infrastructure costs (roads are crowded, buildings are in shorter supply, hard to find a place to build a new building in Kirkland, say). Also high cost of living. I personally think non-competes must hurt freedom to move around companies here a little bit too. I have only heard of it being an issue a few times. Still, more worker freedom is better; it must be that some people are disincentivized from switching. Worker "job switching lubrication" is an important economic boost that California has and we don't.
[1] http://www.crn.com/news/storage/217201071/emc-former-employe...
I was already planning on it and one of the companies I was in talks with at the time had an out state office I could work at until "the heat" died down so to speak.
Also, read up on Section 16600 in in the California Business and Professions code.
http://www.boston.com/business/news/2014/06/09/massachusetts...
What you think? Competitiveness might help where other strategies failed?
Note: Texas has to factor into these discussions one way or another as they've shown how to get it done. I figure at least Nashville or Knoxville in TN could follow suite as they're already playing it smarter (err closer to Texas) than most of the South in IT. Chattanooga went 1Gbps, too. I'm not sure what cities are comparable in... AR... and MS.
I had lots of experiences like yours up there. People noticeably changed their demeanor when they found out I was from Kentucky and Ohio, grew up on food stamps, and went to a medium sized Midwestern school. I once had someone actually ask me with a totally straight face "how do you know this stuff?" He was referring to machine learning and combinatorics. It was not meant as an offense. He was genuinely mystified that someone with my background could possibly know what a state space was.
http://www.theonion.com/article/midwest-discovered-between-e...
Another true story:
I was once sitting in a restaurant in Boston for lunch. There was a basketball game on. I overheard two obviously upper crust fellows at the bar chatting about it: "I see they're playing a bit of street hoops... they must be in Chicago or Detroit."
"Detroit" was pronounced "dee-troit."
I'm a white nerd and right then I felt black as oil. Hilarious.
There's an amazing amount of brains and talent up there but it's all stuck in this morass of cultural anachronism. You could probably fix the place by kidnapping all incoming Harvard freshmen, dosing them with acid, and dropping them off at a hip hop show or Burning Man or something. It's too bad because Boston is a fantastic city and I otherwise liked it up there.
Unfortunately I fear that the insane gentrification in the Bay Area may eventually infect it with this stuff or at the very least drive out its culture of hands-on reality. You should thank the bums and the dirty hippies. They're a vital part of the ecosystem, a constant reminder that there is in fact a universe beyond planet trust fund.
I want to drive my Tesla up to the nice restaurant and get out in jeans. Up yours, fancy pants places.
There is a pretty strong burner community in Boston.
Sadly, it's just par-for-the-course for being a high-tech employee in MA.
They want the docile job candidate who will sign anything with no questions asked.