Leaving well: notice, restrictive covenants, and your former employer as a client
Notice periods, what non-competes restrict in the US, UK and EU, what your contract already owns, and how to price work for the company you left.
The most widely repeated belief about leaving a job to go independent is that non-competes are unenforceable anyway. In the US that was briefly on its way to being true and then wasn't. The Federal Trade Commission's Non-Compete Clause Rule was halted by a district court on 20 August 2024, the FTC moved to dismiss its appeal on 5 September 2025, and the rule was formally struck from the Code of Federal Regulations on 12 February 2026 (FTC, Noncompete Rule; 91 FR, 12 February 2026). The FTC's own page says it plainly: "The Noncompete Rule is not in effect and it is not enforceable."
So the answer is jurisdictional, and the variation is wider than most people assume. Florida has permitted covered non-competes of up to four years since 1 July 2025. Minnesota voids them outright. Those are two states in one country. Below is what actually differs, what your employment contract probably already owns, and the piece with real money attached — pricing yourself as a contractor to the company you just left. Whether to go at all is a separate set of arithmetic.
This is a description of how the rules differ, not legal advice. Restrictive covenants turn on the wording of your specific contract and the law of a specific place, and that is a question for a lawyer in that place.
Notice is the cheap part, and your contract almost certainly says more than the statute
In England, Wales and Scotland the statutory minimum an employee must give, after a month's continuous employment, is one week — section 86(2) of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The employer's obligation scales with your service: one week under two years, one week per year between two and twelve, twelve weeks beyond that. Almost nobody's actual notice period is one week, because the contract overrides upward and a mid-level contract commonly says one or three months.
In most US states employment is at will, so there is no statutory notice on either side and the two weeks people give is a professional convention rather than a legal duty. Across the EU, statutory notice is set by national law or collective agreement and the length varies substantially by country and by seniority.
The reason to serve the longer contractual period rather than negotiate it down is not sentiment. It is that the same people control two things you want: a reference, and the first contract. A month of notice worked properly is cheap relative to either.
What restrictive covenants actually do, by jurisdiction
Three clauses get lumped together and behave differently. A non-compete stops you working in a defined field for a period. A non-solicit stops you approaching named clients or colleagues. A confidentiality clause protects information and generally survives everywhere. Non-solicits are enforced more readily than non-competes almost everywhere, because they are narrower and easier to tie to a legitimate business interest — which, for a freelancer whose first clients are usually adjacent to the old job, is the clause that will actually bite.
Where | Position on post-termination non-competes, August 2026 | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
US federal | No rule in force. The FTC rule was vacated in 2024 and removed from the CFR on 12 February 2026. The FTC now acts case by case — in April 2026 it ordered Rollins to stop enforcing non-competes covering 18,000 workers and warned 13 other firms (FTC) | State law decides. Federal enforcement targets employers, not your individual contract |
California | Void, and void even if signed elsewhere; employers face civil liability for attempting to enforce (California Attorney General) | Strongest position in the US |
Minnesota | Any covenant not to compete in an employment contract is "void and unenforceable" (Minn. Stat. 181.988). Non-solicits and NDAs are expressly outside the ban | Non-compete gone, non-solicit alive |
Washington | Enforceable only above an indexed earnings threshold: $126,858.83 for employees and $317,147.09 for independent contractors in 2026 (WA L&I) | Check your last W-2 against the number |
Florida | The CHOICE Act, in force 1 July 2025, expressly permits covered non-compete and garden-leave agreements of up to four years for employees earning above twice the county annual mean wage (enrolled HB 1219) | The most employer-favorable regime in this table |
England and Wales | Common law only. A restraint of trade is unenforceable unless the employer shows it is reasonable. The government published a working paper on 26 November 2025 canvassing a statutory cap, a ban, or a salary threshold — nothing has been legislated (DBT working paper) | Length, scope and geography all argued case by case |
France | Valid only if all conditions are met cumulatively: written, limited in time, limited in space, tied to a specified activity, and paid for by the employer. Fail one and the clause falls (service-public.gouv.fr) | A non-compete without a financial counterpart is not a non-compete |
There is no EU-wide instrument here. Several member states follow the French pattern of requiring the employer to pay for the restriction, which changes the negotiation entirely: a clause that costs the employer money each month is one they will often release rather than fund. In the US and the UK the clause is usually free to the employer, so it stays in the drawer until someone decides to use it.
The practical move is the same in every column: before you resign, read the covenant, and if your first client is plausibly within it, ask in writing for a narrowed release covering that named client. Asking while you are still an employee in good standing costs nothing. Asking afterwards is a negotiation with someone who has no reason to help.
Your employment contract probably already owns more than you think
Copyright in work made by an employee in the course of employment belongs to the employer by default in both major systems. In the UK that is section 11(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988: the employer is first owner "subject to any agreement to the contrary." In the US, for a work made for hire, "the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author" and owns all rights unless a signed written instrument says otherwise (17 U.S.C. 201(b)). Patents follow a similar logic: under section 39 of the Patents Act 1977, an invention made in the course of your normal duties belongs to the employer, and anything else belongs to you.
The friction point is side work. Many employment contracts contain an assignment clause drafted to sweep up everything you create during the employment, on any equipment, at any hour. Several US states cut that back by statute — Washington makes an assignment clause void to the extent it reaches inventions developed entirely on your own time without the employer's equipment or trade secrets, and unrelated to its business, and requires the employer to give you written notice of that carve-out (RCW 49.44.140).
If you built a tool, a template library or a product while employed and intend to sell or reuse it, get a written release naming it. A generic assurance that "nobody minds" survives exactly as long as the person who said it stays in the job.
Price the work, not your old salary divided by 2,080
This is where the money is. Returning as a contractor to your former employer is the highest-conversion first engagement available to almost anyone leaving a job: they know your standard, the onboarding cost is near zero, and there is usually a gap where you used to be. It is also where most people set a rate they then spend two years trying to climb out of, because they anchor on their own payslip.
Work it through with illustrative figures. A $100,000 salary divided by 2,080 hours is $48.08 an hour, and that is the number your former manager will have in their head. It is not what you cost them. Applying the March 2026 ratio of total compensation to wages, $46.60 ÷ $32.60 = 1.43 (BLS ECEC), the same person cost about $143,000 a year in employer spend.
Then fix the denominator, which is the larger error. You cannot bill 2,080 hours. Selling, scoping, invoicing, chasing and admin are unbilled, and you now fund your own time off. At 25 billable hours a week over 46 working weeks you have 1,150 billable hours. So $143,000 ÷ 1,150 = $124 an hour. Add $9,000 of your own overhead (software, accounting, professional indemnity insurance, hardware) and $152,000 ÷ 1,150 = $132 an hour, or roughly $1,057 for an eight-hour day. That is 2.75 times the $48.08 the payslip implied, and it still contains no profit margin and no premium for the fact that they can end the arrangement on thirty days' notice while your old job required them to make you redundant.
The rate converter moves between hourly, day rate and annual salary if you want to run your own numbers in the other direction, and the rate calculator will give you the floor from a target income and a tax set-aside. Two other things change once the relationship is commercial. Your tracked hours stop being a utilization report for a manager and start being the evidence behind an invoice, which is a different job from the one your old timesheet did — worth comparing tools on that basis rather than on stopwatch features, as a Toggl alternative where tracked hours turn into invoices does. And you will be onboarded through procurement rather than HR, so the tax forms, bank details and insurance certificates that vendor onboarding requires are now the thing standing between delivery and your first payment.
The contractor agreement is not your employment contract with a new cover page
Three specifics catch people returning to a former employer.
Worker classification. The same person, doing the same work, under the same manager, is exactly the fact pattern tax authorities look at. The IRS weighs behavioral control, financial control and the type of relationship, with no single factor decisive (IRS worker classification). In the UK, if your former employer is a medium or large private-sector organization, it rather than you determines your status for tax under the off-payroll working rules and must issue a status determination statement, a responsibility that moved to clients on 6 April 2021 (HMRC, understanding off-payroll working). Ask what determination they will make before you quote, because an inside-IR35 determination changes your net materially.
IP now flows the other way. As an employee it vested in them automatically. As a contractor it vests in you unless the contract assigns it, so the assignment clause has to be written, and you should decide what you are keeping (tooling, methods, templates) before you sign rather than after. The contract generator produces a PDF with the parties, dates, governing law and custom clauses in the browser, and Worklyn's contracts feature will read a draft back to you and flag clauses that carry risk.
Payment terms are now a real thing. Salary arrived on a date without you doing anything. Invoices arrive after someone in accounts payable processes them, on a run you don't control. Agree the terms, the invoicing contact and the purchase-order requirement in writing before the first day of work, not after the first invoice goes unpaid.
What to do with the first offer they make
They will anchor on your old salary. Expect it, and don't argue about your worth — argue about the denominator. The sentence that works is arithmetic: the role cost roughly 1.43 times the salary in total compensation, you can bill about 1,150 hours a year rather than 2,080, and the rate that reproduces the same economics is therefore around 2.7 times the hourly figure they have in mind.
The decision rule: if their counter-offer, converted to an annual figure at your realistic billable hours, lands below the total-compensation cost of the role you just left, decline the work and keep the relationship. A former employer paying below their own internal cost for the same output is not a first client, it is a discount that becomes your reference price for everyone who asks what you charge.
Worklyn's contracts module drafts and e-signs the agreement and flags the clauses worth arguing about, so the terms you agreed verbally on the way out are the terms that end up on paper.