I was a mid-tier engineer and was able to bargain them away because I was often recruited based on my open source contributions and community work. It's a pretty easy sell to say: "You found out about me because of this work, and it's going to continue, or you're going to pay X for me to stop it for Y years."
What does "open source contributions" and "community work" have to do with non-compete clauses?
Non-competes prevent you from working for your employer's commercial competitors. I.E. if you leave Uber, you can't go work for Lyft.
Also, it's naive to assume you can just "sell" an employer on a contractual change that goes against their goals.
Saying "I'm a software engineer, and I plan to continue being a software engineer after we part ways, instead of waiting tables" also sounds like a strong "sell", but it does not work based on my experience.
It's not about convincing anyone, it's about power and who has it.
Pardon the nerd-sniping: both Uber and Lyft employees in California can job hop, because non-competes are unenforceable for employment (in general) in California.
> It's not about convincing anyone, it's about power and who has it.
Yes, you have to be good at your job and hard to replace before you make demands. That part should be obvious. At any rate, I've had plenty of success striking all non-compete agreements before starting my own business permanently. Just be good enough and hard to replace.
> Yes, you have to be good at your job and hard to replace before you make demands.
You are required to sign a non-compete before accepting the job. You cannot be "hard to replace" because you haven't started that job yet.
They won't even "replace" you - they just won't hire you!
> At any rate, I've had plenty of success striking all non-compete agreements
As I mentioned elsewhere, this is possible if you are a very strong senior candidate negotiating with relatively small employers who are desperate to hire you and don't have many alternative candidates.
At larger corporations, I've been told straight up that the non-competes are policy and won't be waived for anyone.
If you check the history of non-compete lawsuits, you'll find some very senior employees being sued, so this statements seem true.
Even with a smaller employer, you will need some bargaining power.