hey friends welcome back to my channel it is so good to have you here we're continuing the know your worst series but taking a tangent to know your rights i did not want to make this video i did not want to make this video but since starting the know your worst series my inbox has been flooded with absolute horror stories of hellish experiences our servicenow brothers and sisters are going through these people found themselves in extremely overreaching contracts and have suffered dire financial damage by not being able to work some people not for two years so i made this video so you don't fall victim to the kinds of predatory and abusive contracts that are ruining the lives of our peers first a warning the information presented here is opinion and you should not interpret it as legal counsel contract law differs from country to country and state to state so you're responsible for understanding the laws where you live and you're also responsible for your own actions to help you understand your value and your rights i reached out to a lawyer friend of mine and he's agreed to spend some time with us he's available for legal consultations so check out the description below we'll also be hosting a q a session in a few weeks so if you want more information about that please join my mailing list and that's also in the description below now let's talk contract law and self-advocacy with my very special guest kevin comer good evening to everyone i'm kevin comer i'm a lawyer who works in the fields of employment law contract law civil litigation and bankruptcy i have law degrees from universities in the united states in the and the netherlands and have worked in amsterdam shanghai and london in addition to the united states i'm currently located in florida i have extensive experience working with employment law issues and with the tech industry i currently have clients throughout the united states and the world the first topic i want to talk about kevin is non-competes it seems to be a controversial kind of contract type and having been screwed over on a non-compete before i always kind of make sure i have my eyes open to what i'm signing and the horror stories people have been emailing me over the past few weeks you know at least in my non-legal opinion they seem very um well they just they just sound like contracts to tell you the truth how do you know if you're looking at a bad non-compete non-competes are very common in the tech world as you know one thing i want to point out that is there are different agreements that people sign sometimes people in the tech industry will sign things like non-disclosure agreements or confidentiality agreements or trade secret clauses those are not non-compete clauses so we're speaking specifically about non-compete clauses here your typical non-compete clause will essentially say something along the lines of you can't work once you leave the company you're working at you can't work for a specific length of time or for this competitor or in this geographic area a bad non-compete which unfortunately we see all the time and that will if you challenge it in court will likely not be upheld it wouldn't normally be longer than six months or for more than say a 50 or 75 mile radius geographically or if it includes competitors it would only include a handful of major competitors a few years ago that there was a an issue with a non-compete clause that jimmy john's made their sandwich makers sign that stopped them from working at subways for a year after they quit at jimmy john's so there's a lot definitely a lot of nonsense going on about non-compete clauses right now but like they're definitely in reality extremely limited in the scope that they can enforce on you and this is generally true throughout the united states it can depend on the exact state you're in the obvious example is california where non-compete clauses are essentially banned you have to be an extremely important key guy a phrase that comes up a lot in these sort of in the litigation about this is a key guy an extremely major figure in california to have a non-compete clause even begin to be effective against you but in most states you can get a basic non-compete effective as long as it has a reasonable amount of time reasonable geographic duration and is reasonable in the scope of who it affects like for instance what competitors you can go and work with so while it does depend on the state in essentially every state there are severe limits that the courts will actually put on the enforceability of non-compete contracts so do they need those three factors together or is it kind of any of those three like it could be a broader geography but a shorter amount of time or is it does do the three come together the three normally come together but the amount of time is the key point so if you had for instance a three month non-compete clause and it was a 150 miles in geographic scope that would be more likely to be enforced than six months and 150 miles the geographic radius and the competitors you can't work for is more incidental if you're gonna focus on what's wrong with a non-compete when you're looking at it if it's in a contract that you've been given the single most important thing to look at is the duration that the amount of time that it actually lasts i would say that's 80 percent of the issues that come up in non-compete clauses is someone signed one and they didn't read it closely and suddenly it's for two years that's kind of on the shorter end of what i've been hearing from my my sources telling me how bad they've been screwed over let's say there was a company that was giving me a non-compete and it was kind of a either a global or a national level company is it within their rights to say like you can't you can't work in any state like you just can't work in this space for six months or a year that would be virtually impossible to enforce in the court system i mean they can get you to sign something and if you're i hate to say if someone is foolish enough to sign an agreement to that effect they can attempt to enforce it against you but the chances of say a nationwide non-compete clause there is essentially zero possibility of that being enforced against virtually any individual who would sign it you'd have to play to win in court and you probably would win you're just going through that drama to declare victory right exactly okay and one of the things we can talk about later is how a court case would actually pan out but in almost all cases that i've seen of non-compete clauses in the tech industry that tech engineers and major figures in the tech industry sign any court once it gets down to the point where a court is actually going to issue a ruling the court is not going to uphold it so just to rewind our listeners those three things are the duration the geographic area and specific competitors within the space exactly so a lot of people think that they get this contract in front of them maybe they're new in the industry or maybe they just don't have a lot of negotiation savvy is your only option signing and this goes for non-competes or any other non-disclosures employment contracts is the expectation that you sign whatever they give you i think that's the approach that a lot of people take but especially in a hot industry like tech that is absolutely the wrong approach to take your typical tech engineers especially now can easily get other job offers and it's hard to get qualified personnel everything in your contract is up for negotiation salary every fringe benefit everything should be up for negotiation just don't accept whatever you're given especially in terms of a non-compete clause i would argue that you should never accept a non-compete clause that should never be in any contract you sign if the company insists on it as a condition of employment you need to get extremely specific on what you are getting in return for that in case it ever becomes an issue the most basic thing is that you would need to get a severance package for the length of the non-compete clause is everybody listening to that say it again kevin i think that bears repeating you need to get a severance package for the length of the non-compete clause that deals with your pay your benefits etc say you have you sign a non-compete clause for a year a court would probably not uphold that but if you're willing to do that and you can get a severance package for that full year that pays you that covers your benefits that takes care of you maybe that's worth it you can put anything in a contract you want so long as it's legal if you're willing to sign you know a 12 month 18 month non-compete clause make sure that you get a severance package that covers that entire period because if you don't then you're going to be taking the trouble of challenging the non-compete clause without having any income i'm going to take a moment here i'm going to try not to swear as i do it folks the nightmare stories that are coming into my inbox since i started this know your worth series are horrifying we are in one of the hottest tech markets in tech and in our space there are people who are one check away from homelessness there are people who for over a year have taken jobs at gas stations driving uber and lyft and working 18-hour days to get by because they got locked into these horrible non-compete contracts okay don't be a victim here follow kevin's advice if they're gonna put some kind of like nonsensical time limit on your non-compete make sure you're covered go for that severance package you deserve it they're literally telling you some of these contracts you're not allowed to work anywhere for anyone for two years what are you supposed to do exactly and this is a problem i've seen it's a problem rob has seen this is becoming a huge issue even in the current market it's a huge issue all right that was that was great advice and hopefully hopefully worth the listen up to this point just on its own i hadn't even thought about that so thank you so much for bringing that to our attention a lot of people you know when they walk into a job interview that can be a very stressful situation for people and especially if you're looking for a job people have the assumption that the employer has all the power that is not true in this industry at all first of all and i cannot emphasize this too much if you were offered a contract never sign it that day always take it home with you and think about it read through it understand what's going on if you don't understand it talk to one of your friends about it if you want to be really careful tell them you're going to need a few days and hire a lawyer to read it and give you advice on it but the absolute worst thing someone can do is walk into hr who are not your friends who are never going to be your friends and get bounced into signing a contract if you take anything from this talk never walk into hr when you're looking for a job and walk out having signed a contract never do that that is never a good thing to do all right so we talked about putting some wait time between receiving the contract and signing the contract we talked about everything is negotiable we talked about severance packages because they're essentially telling you that you're not allowed to work afterwards is there anything else where you would say somebody should negotiate you can negotiate any part of your compensation you can negotiate the salary you can negotiate extra insurance you can negotiate working from home a big thing that i think people absolutely ought to negotiate which i virtually never see is the use of patents and ideas that you come up with while working for a company who has long term control of that it's not necessarily the company there's no law that says the company has control of those patents and those ideas if you write it into your contract that you have long-term control you have long-term control that is absolutely something that can't be negotiated and that very few people in the tech industry even know that they can negotiate yep and this one uh for those of you who might still be kind of afraid to do it this one in particular i've done numerous times i just send it back to legal i'm like you gotta redline this i'm solving problems for you and i'm going to take the solutions to other people who have those problems and i have had one client to say nope this is absolutely ours and you can't do anything about it and we'll go find somebody else but most of the time they come back and say sure whatever and i think that's an extremely important point your typical hr department your typical legal department they don't care they don't understand the importance of a lot of these issues you would be shocked at some of the things you can negotiate and get through with them they simply don't understand the implications of some of the things that are in these contracts normally it's not someone from the legal department who's going through it with a fine-tooth comb it's someone from hr it's a generalist who's looking to onboard employees and they don't know a lot of these issues so if you can get them to take things out of a contract to put things into a contract you can end up very far ahead that's some great insight i never would have thought of that myself so do these hr reps have the authority to do the legal redlines they often do another topic from the horror stories that are getting mailed to me like i can't believe people told me that they got to the point where they were fired from whatever organizations they had these absurd non-competes tied to but on being fired they were told you have to sign this other document where there's a non-disclosure or something imposing a new contractual limitation now in my own fights with a non-compete in my 20s i had a lawyer that said there has to be quid pro quo you can't be forced to sign a new document unless you're getting something out of it yourself is that still sound advice absolutely a company especially when you're leaving they can't make you sign anything they can't lock the door and not let you out it's extremely common for companies to attempt to force people to sign these contracts this goes back to something we discussed before never sign one of these contracts until you take it home and look at it read it get a lawyer to review it you should never in any situation whether you're coming into a company or leaving a company just sign something that hr gives you that's the absolute worst thing you can do if they want you to sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement if they want you to sign that sort of thing you absolutely have a right to negotiate it say i will sign this if you give me the severance package if you negotiate a severance package for signing something like that that's fine but they can't and i know shadier people and let's be clear those people are out there right now and they're not small companies okay but if shady people said you need to sign this or we're gonna take legal action against you is that mostly an empty threat if they're not giving you anything in compensation for that signage that that is an extremely empty threat there's essentially nothing they can do to you i wish i wish i would have found you like a year ago because so many of my friends have been screwed by that oh i cannot emphasize this too much and again if you only take one thing away from listening to this take this away from it never sign something that hr gives you on that day always take it home with you always say you have to look at it always say you got to talk to your spouse about it but never ever just get bounced into signing something that you don't understand because then you're stuck with it let's say i got a contract there was some bits that gave me the heebie-jeebies and i wanted to say get counsel on it like i know lawyers have a wide range of rates but is this kind of a three-figure problem or a four-figure problem to get a council to look at look at your contract and advise you i would say it's probably a very low four figure problem you're looking at maybe eight hundred dollars to twelve hundred dollars in range of getting a lawyer to look at it to advise you who knows about the industry i think that that's money that's absolutely well spent because again we have all seen the horror stories of people who are working at uber because they've been blocked from working in another job for two years because they didn't read the original contract they signed having a lawyer look at this sort of contract is a form of insurance it's no different than paying your car insurance than paying your medical insurance you want to be protected when something happens and getting a lawyer just to read the contract to give you some ideas to give you counsel is often the best thousand dollars you can ever spend in a situation like this because you don't want to get two years down the road you have a falling out with the company and suddenly you actually read the non-compete clause that you signed without recognizing its significance and it bans you from working for 24 months how is this is it good this is awesome this is this is so good like this is gonna make me a lot of friends and a few enemies which is exactly the way i like it um i've worked with with people in the tech industry before doing exactly this and i'm shocked at what people don't know they can do techies are kind of focused right on very specific types of problems oh man it's kind of one of those things right it's just i'll get a lawyer if i need a lawyer but then they don't know they need a lawyer exactly and then or even if they did then they're like oh what could i research myself cause i'm super smart and so they just don't get exposure to here's some easy problems you can solve and another problem i've seen especially with people who try to do it themselves is they don't know what they're looking for they'll concentrate on a provision which actually isn't important and then they'll overlook three things that are vitally important and they don't even realize it it's the same with any specialty right if you're a servicenow resource you're like gosh i'm making 90 an hour and it could take you 10 hours to figure out all the legal stuff you need to fight it or to inform yourself like you've basically spent 900 you could gain that time back keep it billable and just pay somebody to to do that analysis for you a professional to do it right exactly all right so since we're on this side of the rink i get for layman's there's this fear that to go to court i could be like putting myself in the poor house just to show that i'm right is there any kind of rule of thumb that might help somebody decide okay this needs to go to court i need to fight this and what are they in for if they decide to fight it going to court in a non-compete context is almost always going to be a loser and the reason for that is is that even the terrible non-competes that i've seen that have been people have signed even the worst ones are for two three four years and you can speak from your own experience on this anytime you're doing a civil action in a federal or state court in this country it's gonna take anywhere between one and two years to be resolved especially when you're attempting to fight a non-compete against a major corporation it doesn't matter if legally they are 100 wrong they have expensive lawyers who will try to make you look bad especially for people who are trying to do this without their own legal counsel if you get a lawyer it will take a minimum of one year in order to do the motion practice in order to deal with all the deadlines to file the right complaint it's likely to cost thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars and at the end say after 18 months you get a court order saying yes this non-compete is invalid well what have you been doing the last 18 months you've been fighting the company that wanted to hire you they probably don't want to get involved it's a huge issue for them because they need someone to do your job but you're not able to do your job so an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure for sure absolutely i will go back to one thing in terms of what you should negotiate one of the other things that you can absolutely negotiate is what projects you'll be working on who you'll be working with you can absolutely negotiate the conditions under which you can leave because that's not at all clearance in most contracts you can define what one of your competitors is even if there is a non-compete clause and if you're in demand in an industry like the tech industry you should negotiate every single last thing you do if something was ever an issue in a previous job and let's be honest we've all had issues in previous jobs and we all know what they were and sometimes they were our fault and that's like you you learn and you move on and you try to grow but a lot of the times they're the fault of your employer for whatever reason they're making your life more difficult always negotiate what makes your life easier at work can you give us example of like conditions where when you can leave i've never heard of that before say you have a two-year contract and it's very obvious that it's not working out for whatever reason maybe you don't like it maybe they don't like you this happens you know if you have a say a two-year contract it can be difficult just to walk out you don't necessarily want to get fired but you can put a provision in there to say hey you know if this isn't working for whatever reason there's no reason to assign blame in these cases either because often stuff happens that'll make it easier for everyone to walk away in a clean split all right so we are approaching time i'm just going to do a quick review for my listeners so we talked at the start about non-competes and the three non-compete factors you have to watch out for duration geography and specific competitors kevin i can quote you on the typical duration is six months and the typical geography is say 50 miles i mean that's a little bit more fungible with the tech industry but i mean that's still a good rule of thumb part and parcel of this is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so read that very carefully and if it gives you the heebie jeebies even a little bit a talk to your lawyer don't sign it right there and negotiate and then we talked about all the things you can negotiate we could negotiate everything if you're looking at a non-compete make sure you negotiate a severance package because somebody's basically telling you when you're done with us don't work for a year negotiate your ideas and your solutions and your intellectual property kevin taught me very clearly that you can negotiate what kind of projects you can work on and conditions where you can leave we also talked about hr is not the same as the legal department and also hr is not on your side they're on the company side you're entering a relationship with and then never ever sign something the same day as hr gives it to you that that's excellent that's everything that's all the points i wanted to hit all right thanks so much for watching everybody again kevin's information is going to be down in the description below so please check his business out if you need any legal assistance thanks so much for joining us tonight man i really appreciate it no thanks for having me on if you'd like to sponsor this channel's content email me at the address pictured here if you need a conversation on where your servicenow implementation is or where it's going you can reach me on super peers and book a short consult if you want to contribute to high quality high frequency output consider a donation if not i still appreciate your viewership consider hitting the like button and sharing within your network thanks for watching