Non-competes continue to take a beating. New York could be the latest to ban them, with a bill passed in the Assembly and now on the governor’s desk. Your state of play update from Axios:
- Minnesota passed a law banning noncompetes last year; it will go into effect July 1.
- Washington, D.C.’s ban went into effect this year, making the agreements unenforceable for those earning less than $150,000 yearly or medical specialists who make under $250,000.
- Nine other states, including Colorado, Illinois, and Oregon, have laws — all passed since 2019 — limiting noncompete agreements to higher earners.
- Three states have had non-compete bans in place for more than a century: California (since 1872), North Dakota (1865), and Oklahoma (1890).
Why do we care?
This is a pretty straight line to non-competes going away. If I were an IT services company, I’d get ahead of it now and make it a feature, not a bug. I have an upcoming interview with Peter Kujawa of Service Leadership, and he offers that a critical issue for MSPs is that they don’t plan for the departure of their teams. His analogy – think college sports. Those coaches expect their players to be gone in four years, and they run their organizations that way. And still, win.
