Two years ago I left a very large, now much larger, international company.  As part of my employment, each year all sales representatives chose to sign a “non-compete” agreement.  Well now those two years are up.  Here are some thoughts;

“Give people reasons to stay instead of leave and they will.”

Pathetic, seriously pathetic that any employer would want to use a non-compete or similar agreement.  I have seen many worse than mine as well.  Here is how I view it;   Yes, you will have to apply some effort and treat people like humans rather than “employees” but both parties will earn more money this way so why not.  What are you so worried about?

“it takes the same effort to burn a bridge as to keep it up”

Leaving any situation you quickly find out who is with you and who is against you.  Pretty simple, we all choose what we want.   I will never try and understand ruining a relationship but, awe well to each his own.

“loyalty is very underrated but also overpriced”

I am so thankful for the dozens of people that actively made an effort to hire me again.  As nice as money is, the basic human feelings that came with  it have way more value.  At the same time I am so surprised by the amount of people that have loyalty to a company.  Loyalty is meant to be a reciprocal relationship and I have yet to see this returned by a company.

“Way better to set your own success measures than trying to reach someone else’s”

Big mistake of mine was to try and reach company goals.  They are exactly that, company goals.  The things that are important to a large company are way different than what is important to an individual.

“There is always  another way”

In hindsight, oh how I wished I gathered more information on how other companies do business.  There is always something or someone doing things a little different or a little better.  Why wouldn’t you want to learn about a new way to do things?

Time to move on.   Learning is flat out awesome.  The lifetime value of all that I have learned in the last two years is huge.  There is not a course you can sign up for or a book you can read sometimes you just have to go out and do it.

Time to go, lots of people to reintroduce myself to 🙂