What happens as these states continue to get squeezed by unfavorable long term economics while these businesses and the wealthy continue their performance art? What happens when it becomes constantly more difficult to attract labor to states where the quality of education is low (assuming workers who have or plan to have kids) and the cost of living continues to go up (insurance, etc). An interesting natural experiment and observations ahead.
(Florida resident for the last ~decade, but no longer as of late; US climate costs are approaching ~$1T/year, make good choices)
Residents of Florida are already waiting months or over a year sometimes to get a roof replaced, because there are not enough workers.
South Florida's water supply under threat from saltwater intrusion crisis - https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/south-floridas-water-supp... - April 24th, 2025
Miami-Dade Saltwater Interface GIS Mapping - https://geoportal.sfwmd.gov/portal/home/item.html?id=128fce3...
‘The industry is in a crisis:’ Construction worker shortage delaying projects, driving up costs, experts say - https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2025/02/24/the-indus... - February 24th, 2025 ("Immigrants account for 31% of all workers in construction trades across the country. In Florida, an estimated 38% of construction workers are foreign-born.")
Miami is 'ground zero' for climate risk. People are moving to the area and building there anyway - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/26/miami-is-ground-zero-for-cli... - April 26th, 2024 ("By 2060, about 60% of Miami-Dade County will be submerged, estimates Harold Wanless, a professor of geography and sustainable development at the University of Miami." ... "The trend shows how many Americans are ultimately willing to overlook environmental risks, even though most acknowledge its presence — a choice that could later devastate them financially.")
Climate Costs in 2040: Florida - https://www.climatecosts2040.org/files/state/FL.pdf (9,243 miles of seawall are needed. Florida has the highest cost of building seawalls. 23 Florida counties face at least $1 Billion expenditures. 24 municipalities are up against bills of over $100,000 per person)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/28/millennia...
if it was actually and effective solution and only cost that much, it'd be a bargain; I'd expect 5-10x
Florida though, everything is sprawling, there's no small area you could actually wall off. And the whole point of Florida is living near the beach, not concrete canyons.
What bothers me more is being out of work for 4 years would have a pretty bad impact on anyone in tech. It would make it very hard to get another job after so long out of the workforce.
Maybe (and I do NOT believe in NCs) if they were an EXECUTIVE and made >$500K, then, possibly I could see it?
To get jobs tending to those (often well-off) old people. It's not for nothing that Florida is a top destination for pharmacy grads.
Funny. I said the same exact thing when I first moved to FL (except inside everywhere). Now I stay inside most of the time because there is little joy to be had when dew points push 85°F.
Now having said that, I do note how much they complain how dry it is here, so perhaps it is what you are used to.
I'll never forget living in Atlanta and we had a bizarre blast of dry heat, totally out of character for the area. It was 112 degrees or some nonsense. I remember sitting in my car in the Fry's parking lot, getting myself mentally ready for the march to the store. I opened the door and it was actually really pleasant, almost enjoyable, because humidity wasn't there.
Yes. East coast you sweat at night thru Aug. Same for FL except there aren't any months where that never happens.
> Weather
The manufactured perception of weather, really. What folks discover after moving to FL:
Florida has 6 or 8 seasons and none of them resemble fall, winter or spring.
The 13th month of summer is the worst.
In Oct, trees finally succumb to heat stroke and drop their leaves.
Hurricanes are much better than summer except for a few hours.
Rainfall doesn't stick around; drought begins when rain stops.
Drought season varies between 15 min and 15 years.
Wildfire seasons vary from all day to world class.
The least-hot months get warmer every decade.¹
The other months probably are too.
At night, the dew point can plunge to 85°.
Sweat is your constant companion but so is sand.
Schools cleverly time summer break between May (Hell) & Aug (also Hell).
¹ https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/FL/Tampa/e...
Now we sport multiple Cat 5 in a month. Every year we have our pick of hurricane relief opportunities, some are minutes away.
I live in Texas, and I often hear about people moving here for the weather. And I can't help but think... why? I've been to NYC, the weather is better.
Yes, the cold is inconvenient. But the heat is debilitating. I can wear a coat and boots and go outside in the north, but you can't do jack shit about the heat. I mean, we get 6 months of summer in Texas. You can't do anything.
Forget physical activities like golfing or jogging, even going to the grocery store practically saps all your will to live right out of your body.
But, at least for Eng types with higher TC a bunch of the comp is deferred, and if you breach the agreement you forfeit the money.
Using Florida as an example, if your contract was signed in Florida, your former employer is in Florida, and your case is tried in Florida, the courts aren’t going to pay any regard to California law, and you can be found liable for breach of contract and damages. Correct me if I’m wrong.
The normal way to use the agreement is to seek injunctive relief. That would have the be in CA, where no judge will allow it.
And they did informally confirm they could not prevent me of taking a competitive job, which my employment lawyer confirmed.
However, under the wording of SB 699, even if you get sued for violating your noncompete in, say, Michigan, and lose, you can then sue that company, in California courts, and as long as California has jurisdiction (which they probably do, given most businesses don't completely avoid doing business in the largest economy in the country), you can successfully sue them for suing you over the noncompete.
They've got a decent amount of rich retired or passive income folks.
Aren't they trying to attract high earners from high tax places like NYC?
This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL, which sounds like a bad idea for the businesses it's presumably trying to serve.
But what do I know?
Employees, yes. But the execs at these big firms would love to have more control over their best people so they have less leverage
Employees unfortunately need employers to pay them, so they will take the deal they can get
If your options all move to Florida, guess where you’re moving
Even fifteen minutes of casual reading through old threads here should answer this question for you. The only supporters of non-competes tend to be those who do not view employees as people, but as proprietary property.
If your company information is so sensitive that losing a worker would leave you vulnerable, then the solution is to compensate that employee well enough that they don’t see the need to leave and take on that additional risk.
Yes, this is what I think people are missing: non-competes harm the free labor market.
Labor is a resource like any other, and as such there's a market. If the labor is highly valuable that means we should value it as such, in dollars. If we're not doing that then that means something is distorting or otherwise breaking the free market.
I would never expect to buy a car for 5,000 dollars. But, for some reason, with labor, everyone's expectations of how a market works suddenly need not apply. Why is that?
The problem is if we forcibly lower wages via non-competes then that harms the labor market as a whole. Yes, companies get to save a few bucks, but in exchange the expectations are broken. This is actually self-destructive. Why? Because companies, as much as labor, relies on those expectations. Now, you can't hire better workers for more money because we've detached monetary value from the actual value of labor. Oops! You want the best of the best? You can't do that do anymore.
On the surface, non-competes appear to benefit companies, but they don't. It's an illusion, and a seductive one.
I don't know... former communist countries had restrictions precisely like this one, it was an integral part of their regulations.
Former feudal countries too, maybe a bit harsher.
The land of the serfs and category 5 hurricanes - sounds sweet.
> and employee’s keep their current pay
Oh yeah, inflation is just starting - to pay for the big bubblegum bill, in real terms that pay is going down 10%/yr, and the serfs cannot renegotiate.
The way discourse has been trending lately, I suspect it will be just the opposite. Florida and Texas will probably be first to impose one-child-minimum policies, with heavy penalties for noncompliance.
Plus it fits right in with their anti-woman and anti-lgbt sentiments. Good god-fearing Christians should be having children after all. But of course child poverty and healthcare is not their concern. Labor should be hungry and desperate.
South Korea is essentially already doomed. In 25 years over half their population will be over 65. It's workforce will be half what it is now. It simply will not be able to care for the elderly. They will work until they die in poverty.
Ideally as society advances and productivity increases the necessary ratio of workers to non-workers should decrease as well but, the gains of productivity increases have historically not translated to wealth of the populace. And even if productivity does shift to benefit the worker it has to outpace population implosion which seems impossible considering the compounding nature of the decline.
A threat to what? How can it be that AI is poised to eliminate large numbers of skilled jobs but we still don't have enough humans? Both can't be true simultaneously. One of them has to be a lie.
Have you pictured what a society with mostly unproductive humans (relative to AI) and no income redistribution looks like? Peaceful and tranquil aren't words I'd use to describe it.
Neither did I. My argument is we need a long-term population decrease to maintain a stable society if all the wild AI predictions come true. We simply can't have 25% unemployment for multiple generations without something like UBI. And even with UBI there will be lots of idle hands and unrest.
In that sense we're lucky that the AI boom and a trend toward smaller family sizes is happening roughly at the same time.
A halving of the world population is like the world as it was in 1970. Not some Dark Age devoid of prosperity. Getting to that in 2 or 3 generations, in the absence of a climate change calamity, wouldn't be the worst thing.
The population doesn’t just halve. Instead the population ages dramatically.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Births
2. https://ahistoryfactaday.org/the-nazi-lebensborn-program-a-c...
This is not a Trump or American thing... This is a problem in EU too.. Lack of births is a very real issue and will only get worse.
I live in Sweden where you get 480 days off work already to split between 2 parents already and has for years. Births are in record decline.
Imo we are just too comfortable and don't need kids the same way we used to.
People will typically come to Florida (despite this) because it's Florida and a nicer place to work year round than NY etc.
Non anecdotal source - https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/12057
Say what you want about California, but they have an economy. Florida doesn't. Naturally, the legislative landscape of California has a lot to do with that. Usually everyday people have the hubris to acknowledge that emulation is a viable strategy when you're in the hole. Evidently, not Red state legislators.
For example, minarchists are not in favor of universal healthcare, by definition - it doesn't fit the short list of the kinds of roles that minarchists believe government should play. There are plenty of people who are in favor of universal healthcare, who can't be called minarchists.
This seems like a win for both sides. Employee’s would still be paid for keeping the non-compete.
That you're being downvoted is telling for the HN crowd who will rally behind "tax the rich" but ignore the call to "help the poor."
I fail to see the issue here. The employee’s would continue to receive pay for up to 4 yrs to keep the non-compete.
It means whoever employs you in Florida controls your destiny for the 4 years after you leave.
If you don't see a problem with that I can only assume you hope you'll be the employer and not the employee.
Many hedge funds and trading companies saddle their employees with very stringent non-competes. Citadel Securities moved to Miami recently.
"If we want to attract those kinds of clean, high-paying jobs, you have to provide those businesses protection on the investment that they're making and their employees."
Why isn't the relatively free job market in Silicon Valley something "East Coast" corporations are looking to emulate? I speculate that there's a major difference in the moat (or lack thereof) between tech firms and financial firms. I can know roughly how Youtube or Instagram work and still not be able to replicate them and take their profits for myself. But knowing which "fishing hole" the guys at Citadel visit might be enough to replicate their strategy. They must not really have a "moat" (outside of the super low latency front running stuff that's really costly to get started).
Because there isn't that much potential profit in finance/trading. As the years go by, more and more is commoditized/automated.
The injunction in turn can only be modified or dissolved if the covered employee – or prospective employer – proves by clear and convincing evidence (which must be based on non-confidential information) that:
the employee will not perform similar work during the restricted period or use confidential information or customer relationships;
the employer failed to pay the salary or benefits required under a covered garden leave agreement, or failed to provide consideration for a non-compete agreement, after the employee provided a “reasonable opportunity” to cure the failure; or
the prospective employer is not engaged in (or preparing to engage in) a similar business as the covered employer within the restricted territory.[0]
The "clear and convincing standard" (which is an intermediate burden of proof between the standard civil "balance of probabilities" and the strict "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard) coupled with the requirement of providing only non-confidential information to oppose the injunction will likely make this a slam dunk for employers.
[0] https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/news-insights/florida-enfo...
Do I understand this correctly - they're expanding non-competes to 4 years and you have to be paid full compensation during that time or the agreement is nullified?
If your business information is so sensitive and valuable that losing an employee could hurt you, then you ought to be compensating that employee well enough that they don’t see the value in taking on the risk of a job hunt.
I can see why small companies might want non-competes to prevent their employees from being poached by hyperscaler monopolies.
If non-competes continue to exist, they should be pared down to small-scoped work descriptions only, eg. not "AI" broadly, but rather something like "AI diffusion for skeletal movement". The non-competes shouldn't have durations longer than a year, and the companies enacting the contract should be required to pay departing employees a salary (or some large percentage of a salary) if they want to enforce the non-compete.
Non-competes should also only be used to prevent employees from joining larger companies, not smaller ones. And they should never prevent work at a startup or new venture.
Personally, I think banning non-competes probably does reduce the amount of investment in education that companies make, but it's a tradeoff worth making to improve overall labor market efficiency and better guarantee personal freedom.
That's fresh.
If your employees immediately jump ship after training, it means you're underpaying them, or mistreating them, or, in the case of the US military, probably both.
I largely work for Californian companies and by and large the benefits have been excellent. While I wish more money was put into training overall, I feel this is driven more by short term financial planning than things like non-competes.
What have you seen or encountered that led you to the conclusion that non-competes would lead to more educational investment?
My assumption is that they’re more useful when a non-compete reduces the amount of people with key skills from a market—it seems counter-intuitive to do this and then disseminate those skills via training programs.
Again, the desire here is to stop Meta or a trillion dollar company from destroying a research-oriented startup's key staff. The idea isn't to encumber people's freedoms. It's to block large economy altering giants from making market distorting moves absorbing key talent from small disruptors.
I suppose the counter argument is that a fast growing startup could afford to make counter offers. Perhaps that's so. But these big companies always seem to threaten smaller companies if they don't accept buyout offers.
Watching Meta hire ten people for millions while simultaneously laying off thousands is wild. It feels market distorting. If they're going to poach these folks, the losing teams should get a buyout too. That's what happens in sports.
Now having to pay back training or education if you leave before Z months seems reasonable.
If I leave or am fired from your company, then you are not allowed to hire anybody who works in my field for at least one year.
Just look at Meta's current poaching spree, and previously the founding of Anthropic, SSI, Thinky. Whatever secrets OpenAI has will slowly but inevitably diffuse into other companies. Bad for OpenAI but strongly positive for literally everyone else in the world. It pushes OpenAI to keep innovating rather than rest on their laurels.
Maybe, but it's clear that even statute doesn't prevent bad behavior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
How confident are you about that? Given how small the compensation was, does this really represent much victory? Do you really think class action lawsuits as they stand present much disincentive?
Which is a big problem with a lot of companies, and frankly a common bias in human thinking: hyper fixation on the present. I find this ironic given that one of our greatest skills that has led to our success as a species is foresight.
There's a ton of inefficiencies going on right now because of this fixation. As a simple example, the best way for a worker to get a raise is to change jobs. Frequently the last person in has the highest pay (or rather it tends upwards). So older employees leave. But those employees leaving mean a bigger loss because they have institutional knowledge and newer employees are less valuable because they need to be trained. It's cheaper on the long run to readjust your current employee salaries to keep them rather than hide people's salaries and hope they don't jump ship. But the latter strategy is definitely cheaper in the short term.
You can probably think of tons of examples and even more if you start to include natural coalitions with others[0]
[0] there's frequent psych experiments that are along the lines of "would you rather get $10 and other person get $10 or you get $50 and other person gets $100?" The former is frequently chosen because it's "more fair" despite being a worse option for yourself
It's possible that other factors might be more important in driving California's economic success...
That doesn't help the economy, but it helps the businesses.
In the Silicon Valley show, this is why Big Head and the other folks "office" on the roof. They are segregated from the other employees while they continue to get paid.
They're related but they are different things. You can't go work for Coke, learn the secret formula, then go work for Pepsi and tell them the secret formula.
You're right, it is about protection. A nondisclosure only goes so far. You have to prove in court that the nondisclosure was violated. Because how do you prove that a prior employee gave that knowledge as opposed to Pepsi just reverse engineering it?[1] A noncompete is an extra layer of protection because the barrier for proof is lower. You don't have to prove they violated the NDA, you just have to prove they work for the competition.
You recognize that these are different things, right? I stressed that it can be subtle, but if you're having a hard time recognizing they are different then please give it a little more thought.
A noncompete *also* means your previous employee isn't taking institutional knowledge and training with them. These won't be covered by a NDA! As an employer you invested in an employee by training them, right?[2] So you lose that investment?
The reason I put so much stress on this second part is because it is exactly what the above conversation has been about. The employer is thinking in the instant and narrowly, not more broadly. Yes, you lose employees you invested in, but you can also get employees you didn't invest in. That's the bigger picture. Plus, you can... you know... pay your existing employees more than you pay new employees with similar skills. Instead of threatening them against leaving incentivize them to stay. You get a bigger return on your investment anyways
[0] personally, I don't think it justifies having them but we can still understand the reasoning, right?
[1] this is something most people with an undergraduate education in chemistry could probably do. So good luck
[2] I stressed this above
What about anything I've stated makes you think I don't understand the difference between a non-compete and a non-disclosure? I see no reason for you think I'm a moron and need to mansplained to here. I have not confused these at all, and you seem to want to preach about something but the choir ain't having it. So now you're left with the internet posts. I'm really confused here.
This is why Google has a dozen different applications that all do the same thing. Google didn't want high-level talent competing with them, so they just hired as many of the top developers as they could, and then paid them enough for them to be content working on miscellany.
What if the 100% is of a competing offer?
Which is why we have “elites” who want to bring back chattel slavery and feudalism. The very wealthy will see us all dead before they give up a single iota of power.
Probably true in that it's on track to be mostly destroyed by climate change and people are injuring themselves looking the other way.
> They would keep their pay
makes it significantly less bad. I always say that if they want to decide what I can and can't do, they're going to have to pay me. And this is that, so that's definitely something.
toomuchtodo•7h ago