Slashdot Mirror
Judge Clears the Way for Google's Microsoft Hire
MarkEst1973 was one of the first to write to tell us MSNBC is reporting that a Judge has cleared the way for Google to hire former Microsoft employee Kai-Fu Lee. The hire does come with several limitations and Lee was also found to have 'misled his former employer and taken advantage of confidential Microsoft information'. This comes as a follow up to the original story in which Microsoft sued Google in order to prevent the hire. Tom Burt was quoted as saying that "Dr. Lee is going to be the highest-paid HR manager ever."
Google Blog link.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
would you want to be this chair?
This is good news all around (all right, maybe not for Mr. Ballmer) as it underscores faith in the rights of employees to work for whom they want when they want assuming they act in reasonably good faith (NOTE: this is a standard hardly applied equitably to corporations.
If you read the transcripts it seems clear (to me at least) Microsoft kind of blew it with this guy. They hired him for important work expanding their market into China and hamstrung him in his ideas and proposals.
Also, as an aside, I got criticized for my post and my views about this issue. Most notable I feel vindicated in this portion of the exchange:
My response (emphasis mine):Also, for the record, in contrast to Tom Burt's crowing ""Dr. Lee is going to be the highest-paid HR manager ever.", Google's main goal was to have Lee to establish recruiting and expansion in China... And I doubt for a moment Lee won't be contributing to discussions about products and company directions. That part of the "contract" is just plain unenforcable.
Maybe you didn't RTFA:
At the same time, King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez found that former Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) vice president Kai-Fu Lee had misled his former employer and taken advantage of confidential Microsoft information when first working at Google.
All's not good for Mr. Lee.
-everphilski-
Microsoft, your kung-fu no good!
am I the first to type to tell Slashdot this article is reporting that someone has eaten all the puncutation marks and hence we were runing out and didnt know how to form a second sentence and so this marathon keeps going with great editorial skills which brings me to the point that please help this sentence keep going for the benefit of mankind....
If they're well-connected, HR managers can bring in an extreme amount of talent. It really comes down to who you know and how they think of you.
If they know you and trust/like you, chances are you might be able to bring them aboard. Let's face it, it doesn't matter what company we're talking about - getting the right employees can make or break you.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
For the next year he will be the best compensated HR man around. After all MS, that is what the non-competion agreement you made him sign was for....After that, he can freely work to put MS into the ground. Which he will more than likely be very notivated to do after this debacle.
Requiem
"What is the strategic importance of an HR manager to a company like Google? I'm not dissing HR managers, I just don't really understand how they fit into the picture, and what one can do for a company."
Two mistakes here:
Here's the entire quote from Tom Burt:
In other words, Dr. Lee isn't really being hired as an HR manager. Tom Burt was being ironic. He was making a funny. His was a wry comment on the ruling that Dr. Lee can't use his expertise when working at Google -- in other words, all he can do is hire them, but not talk to them. Tom Burt was using humor and analogies to point out that if Dr. Lee were to comply with the ruling (which, as somebody pointed out, is unenforcable) then he'd effectively be working as a mere HR manager. Amazingly, even Microsoft employees can sometimes engage in wit and humor.
Again, Dr. Lee's title isn't HR Manager. It was a joke.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
This case isn't under California's jurisdiction. California law is irrelevent.
The contract was entered in the state of Washington. The contract stipulates legal action be brought in the state of Washington. Lee was employed in Washington. Microsoft is based in Washington.
Jurisdiction and venue for the case is Washington.
Maybe the 'confidential Microsoft information' he took advantage of was how to steal employees from competitors!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
A judge on Tuesday cleared the way for Google Inc. to hire a former Microsoft executive to head its Chinese research and development center so long as the employee does not recruit from Microsoft. [...] Lee can begin working for Google (Research) by setting up a research office in China and recruiting software engineers if he does not use confidential information gleaned while he worked at Microsoft, the judge found.
I have worked at two places that got raided by Microsoft for employees. Just about every month, some other important employee disappeared to Microsoft, sometimes in groups of two or three, and then those people would call their buddies and the next month even more would disappear. It was horrible for morale and it was horrible for projects. And of course these people were working on the same things at Microsoft that they had been working on before.
And historically, many of Microsoft's major products were created by hiring away key employees from competitors and then having them build exactly the same product for Microsoft that they had been building before.
This lawsuit is a complete joke, coming from Microsoft. The judge should have told Microsoft to stuff it.