With two weeks remaining of formal legislative sessions for the year, time has apparently run out on efforts to reach a compromise that would limit noncompete agreements in the state.
— Read on www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/07/17/legislative-session-comes-close-without-action-noncompete-reforms/kUkGAUgfilttAuTL0NG0kO/story.html
Single thing holding back MA versus CA is that non-competes are legal in MA and not in CA. This means that all the bright kids have to leave MA to switch jobs. I tried to argue this many years ago, and particularly that if the state increased its retention rate of those kids, they’d start companies and that would mean more investment capital, etc. But there’s a strong ‘dumb’ streak in MA. It’s the same ‘dumb’ streak that stretches back into history, the one that made Boston unfriendly to immigrants – there were handfuls of immigrants before the Irish famine and then only handfuls of immigrants other than the Irish into the 20thC. It’s the same ‘dumb’ that allowed Boston’s economy to stagnate for about 100 years.
jomi: playing with perception 