In my field of work this is relatively important. For one thing there are company secrets that give the company an edge temporarily. Those things you generally don’t patent because you don’t want to disclose them yet.
So if you could just find another job and tell others these things, then yeah that could hurt a company. Usually we keep those things a just need to know level. So the guy who orders parts or the lady who does budgets don’t get to know details.
But then on the overall it hurts us workers because we would like to be paid more or get a promotion or a new higher income somewhere else. But we are trapped. But I think this sort of thing is very niche. I mean, I literally spent 3 years of my life trying to find another team member with the right engineering background.
And it also hurts the country overall. People who know the technology are few and far apart so when we loose one to old age or disease so goes all that knowledge.
I for one try to grow engineers. I find those who are open minded and hungry for new ideas and then I bring them to the water. If the donkey drinks, then my job is done. It’s really hard to see one of my guys just leave. It’s years of my life and effort gone. But for them, it’s spin-off open season. Or maybe they teach others the principles we developed together. And this in turn makes better and more engineers. Putting a limit on what we can say or do just sucks balls.
And they do. I got no complaints from that end of the bargain myself. But It depends on when you start. Like if you start at a point when the company is not doing well, you are probably not going to get a good bump. But then you don’t know what others make so it’s mostly going to be compared with rumors from the net as to how much you might ask for. Anyway if you join in a bad year you get stuck with that pay while new people probably get a lot higher when profitability comes back. The owners have no incentive to pay you more just because they are making more.
There’s a new law here in Washington State where the new positions must state the pay range. But then you can have a rate range that is far too large to be of any comparison or gage use.
The reason I would want freedom from these laws is so that I can get a good job doing what I like. Chasing a project from company to company just to learn more about it for example is not uncommon.