The problem happens when you accept a job offer, quit your previous job, then during new hire orientation you are given a stack of "standard HR forms" to sign. You are never told "Take these home and have your lawyer look them over" (how many of us even have a lawyer?), and are given the impression that everything is boilerplate.
People really need to learn that there's no such thing as a boilerplate contract, everything is up for negotiation, and when somebody tells you to sign something and not worry about it because "we never enforce that anyway" then they're either bullshitting you or they're complete idiots.
This sort of thing ought to be taught in high school, along with other basic adult concepts like how to get a bank account, how credit cards work, how to vote, and how to pay taxes.
It's bizarre how such important things are left to each person to learn on their own on an ad hoc basis.
I don't think I really gained a good understanding of contracts until my first employer out of university sent me on a 3 day course on contracts.
The fact that a contract is very much a legally binding document that you can't easily walk away from is not given nearly enough emphasis in the UK school system.
That's usually part of the employment contract, so it's not something you'll be shown after having gotten hired, and if it was, it would have even less standing than if the clause was included in the employment contract.
When I got hired by Microsoft, I was specifically told to get a lawyer to review the contract before I sign it. I did and my lawyer promptly told me the same at the person here, which is that the two non-compete clauses were so broad as to be unenforceable.
When a "partner company" to my MSFT division kept hiring our staff, Microsoft didn't try to enforce the non-competes, but instead threatened to sue the partner if they kept at it.
> That's usually part of the employment contract, so it's not something you'll be shown after having gotten hired, and if it was, it would have even less standing than if the clause was included in the employment contract.
It would, if we weren't living in a world where courts had consistently held that things like this changing the employment contract after it begins are just as valid, because continued employment is sufficient consideration for them to be valid (the exception would be if the original employment contract had, e.g., a set term, but that's unusual.)
