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Can You Be Sued for Quitting?
An anonymous reader asks: "I work at a large hosting company in Texas, and recently decided to go work for a smaller competitor. I had a great relationship with my employer and wanted to leave on good terms, and I hadn't signed any non-compete or employment agreements . I felt my old company had just gotten too large and I didn't like working there anymore, so I gave them two weeks notice in writing. They were really upset when I insisted on leaving and one week into my last two weeks the V.P. of Sales told me the company was suing me for leaving, and they were also suing my new employer for hiring me. I was shocked, and they then escorted me out of the building. Has anybody ever heard of this happening? Do they have any legal basis for suing me?" It shouldn't have to be said that seeking professional legal representation, in such a situation, is the first thing one should do.
At my old company I gave them two weeks notice and then served as a contract employee for around four months just to help them close out the projects I was working on. I think anything else would have been kind of ass-ish of me. My goal is to avoid losing money for my employer, though it's not the primary goal. If they haven't been asses to you, don't be an ass to them. It's almost like it's as simple as living life.
-knewter
Non-compete agreements are tenuous at best, and very difficult to enforce. Essentially, in most regions in North America at least, you cannot lawfully stop someone from gainful employment.
In most cases, the ONLY way to ensure the effectiveness of a non-compete is to continue paying the person for the full term of the non-compete. I.e., if you don't want me to work for a competitor for the next 12 months, you have to pay me for the next 12 months instead.
Now - you CAN legally bind the person from not sharing confidential information or inside understanding of your business... but proving that is much tougher.
This is not a legal opinion (IANAL), but it IS a summary of legal advice was given to my wife (HR Manager) regarding employees of her company leaving.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
That seems ridiculous. Of course without any evidence to back this story up, Slashdot could probably now be sued by ThePlanet for libel.
My wife had a former employer threaten to sue her if she took a local job in her industry. She went to a lawyer, and showed him the letter. The lawyer basically laughed at it, sent his own letter back and that was that.
Having said the above, not all lawyers are created equal. Get one who knows what he's doing about employment law. Our local bar association has a lawyer referral service and will give you the names of lawyers with the correct specialization. Call your local bar association and see if they have a similar service.
As the CP says, two weeks is the norm in the US, and even that is only a matter of tradition and courtesy, not a matter of law. If you decide one day to quit your job, you can just say "I quit" and walk out and that's that.
Microsoft did sue Google, but they settled out of court, and Lee works for Google today.
Even if the guy being sued did sign a non-compete without realizing, they still can only sue to block him from working for a competitor. They can't sue him just for quitting. And depending on what Texas courts think of non-competes, they might still be on thin ice. Here in California, courts have generally held non-competes to unenforceable. I have a non-compete, like most other tech workers, and the major reason courts have generally held them unenforceable is that (especially in a narrow specialty like mine), a two-year non-compete clause would be tantamount to forcing me to leave my chosen career completely and work for a lot less money in some other industry.
Add to that the fact that the standard employment agreement states that you have an at-will relationship with your employer. They can terminate your employment at any time, for any reason, or for none. Likewise, you can quit at any time, for any reason, or for none. If an employee is going to be at-will (yes, you can still sue for wrongful termination in some circumstances, I know), companies can't expect to have it both ways. If they can do whatever they want with respect to their employees' employment, employees likewise should be able to do so.
I agree with that idea, both because I'm an employee, and because I have fairly libertarian principles regarding the free market for goods and services. My job skills, like my house, stocks, car, or any other assets, should be worth whatever the market will bear, to offer to any bidder, without restriction. If a company can keeps its employees happy (and that takes a lot more than salary; salary may not even be the top thing; I'd rather make a medium salary at a great place to work than a top-of-market salary at a bad place to work), they'll stay there and work. If it can't, they'll go elsewhere. Maybe to a competitor. That's fair. Employees should have the same relationship with a company that customers do: make them unhappy and you'll lose them.
Maybe their threat of a lawsuit is a form of coercive message to other workers that they had better stay... or else!!
If this actually happened the way OP described I would guess the VP of Sales (which in my experience isn't all that high of a position in management, and certainly not one to initiate a lawsuit on behalf of the company, but I could be wrong) was just being an ass. Threats of lawsuit are pretty common in this country, and most remain just that-- idle threats. Perhaps the VP of Sales heard the CEO say "I ought to sue him for leaving" in the heat of the moment and took it literally; that kind of thing happens all the time.
Except...
The "anonymous reader" was thoughtful enough to name his former employer in the link, in effect smearing the company's name on a website read by hundreds of thousands of people (many in their industry) daily. Assuming this wasn't made up to begin with, the identity of the "anonymous reader" should be easy for the company to discover. If they weren't going to sue before, this may make them angry enough to do so now-- and they might have a better case.
The place I work at is great. My boss is the kind of guy you can go and have a beer with every now and again. My coworkers are the nicest people in the world. If someone from another company started talking about my department or boss or coworkers, there would probably be physical violence to right the wrongs.
We are a tight group and we get things done.
However, if you make a wrong step, it can all turn sour in a minute.
Don't ever mistake the place you work for anything other than a symbiotic relationship. Don't ever mistake the people in the next cubicle for your friends. If you start something that devalues their stock or makes them work harder to pick up your slack, then you'll be out in the cold.
It pays to keep ammunition for those times. It might just literally save your life.
And, if it's never needed, then it's no blood no foul.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire (1694-1778)
Am I the only one who thinks there has to be more to the story? I know there are a lot of silly lawsuits out there, but c'mon...
Since the company escorted him out of the building they are not trying to leverage him to stay, so they must be trying to recover some damages. I'm not saying the company is right, I'm just saying that a large company with a legal department wouldn't waste their money on a lawsuit unless they had at least a CHANCE to get some money.
For example.......
Did he recently get a promotion that included relocation, which carried with it a minumum commitment? Something else? What's the rest of the story OP?
Am I the only one that finds it a LITTLE suspicious that this article links to two wikipedia articles, the "evil" hosting company, and is posted by an AC? Can we say smear campaign or disgruntle employee? People, this is a completely transparent ploy to smear the poor bastards who are being accused. It is a travesty that this crap was even posted in the first place. It would have been one thing if the hosting company hand not been named, or if the accuser had named themselves. The fact that only the 'evil' hosting company in question is named and there is absolutely zero evidence that they did anything wrong, not even an angry blog, should be causing all of your bullshit detectors to go off.
Personally, I am deeply disappointed that this blatant smear was even posted in the first place.
I dont give notice when I quit because if I was fired my employer wouldnt give me two weeks notice that I was out of a job in two weeks.
I had that discussion with one of my managers about people giving notice, and I asked him how much notice I would get from him if I were to be fired or laid off. He went into a long explanation of how telling an employee he's getting canned causes all sorts of security problems and low productivity etc etc, to which I pointed out I would give him as much notice as I thought he would give me.
I don't think he liked that, but he understood where I was coming from. Companies expect generosity and loyalty from their employees, but have absolutely no intention of being generous or loyal to their employees. Generous and loyal employees increase company proffit. Generous and loyal companies lower company proffit. That can only lead to this sort of behavior.
I hope this fellow gets a nice settlement from a countersuit, he deserves it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
If you say so, man.
I always try to leave a place on a somewhat positive note, not bitching and moaning the whole way out. I don't tend to join places where they're completely incompetent or assholes, so I show the colleagues I leave behind the respect that I think they deserve.
What goes around comes around, too. I've never had someone just walk out on me and leave their projects hanging. People who work for me and feel they need to go work elsewhere almost universally have done so without just ditching me. They usually give me a couple weeks to a month.
Treat people with respect and you tend to get respect. Treat people like shit and they tend to treat you like shit.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
There are things called friendship and trust.
If you are secretly storing up a list of 'ammunition' against people, then you are betraying that friendship and trust. (The only time I would consider it OK is if there is no trust to begin with.) It is wrong to think that such a secret list will have no deleterious effect unless you actually decide to deploy it.
This is the same myth that 'private life' and 'public life' are separable entities. They are not. What you do secretly affects the way you think, which affects they way you act, which affects how you treat others. It just isn't possible to do something in private without it subtly (or not so subtly) affecting the public aspects of your life.
"Where's my "funny" mod points when I need them?"
Better still, where's the "ironic" mod points? Aside from that, this is terrible advice. Why burn your bridges? Put in your two weeks notice, then during that time do your best for your current employer. That way if your current job does not work out, or you find yourself desiring to return, it would make it much easier for you, as your employer will remember what you did for them in your final days.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
No, your goal is to not lose money from your employer while they are still your employer. :)
Being a professional and finishing up your projects is a good way to encourage goodwill should you choose to come back, and also to get good references.
I had that discussion with one of my managers about people giving notice, and I asked him how much notice I would get from him if I were to be fired or laid off.
For security purposes, I understand why a company would not want to give you notice of a lay off and instead say thanks for your service. However, a reputable company would give you at least two weeks severance pay... which is kind of like a two weeks notice, but better: You don't have to work for the company, they are paying you not to work, and you have two weeks (or more) pay to hunt down a new job.
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Frankly, if someone gives notice, you want them gone as soon as is possible. They've cut the relationship, and your work is no longer their top priority.
And frankly, even from a moral point of view do you want someone walking around talking about how much better a job they are moving too?
A policy that requires people to stay 3 months is idiotic and self-defeating. Granted their may be extenuating circumstances (hard to fill position, very arcane knowledge, etc) but a blanket rule like that isn't a great idea.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
So, just because you don't have any work ethics, no one else should have any ?
What about temps ? Do you want them gone asap after hiring because they may be looking for their next job already ?
May be if would not be such a cynic if you read some of the articles by Robert Axelrod of Univ of Michigen on "Evolution of Cooperation", "Complexity of Cooperation", and BBC shows like "Nice Guys Finish First" by Richard Dawkins.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think it really depends on the person and how professional they are. As one of the senior guys in the group I was in, I gave notice months in advance. I then worked really hard to finish up the projects that I was working on, and transition as much of my knowledge as possible over to other employees. Even over a year later, I still do contract work for them. I'm an engineer, and I expect engineers to behave like the professionals that they are supposed to be. If you work at Taco Bell, then yeah, notice probably isn't in anyone's best interest.
Even if I were purely motivated by self-interest, wouldn't I want a source of good references for the future? Why burn bridges?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
I've quit three times, and given three weeks notice each time. Each time I spent the first week tying up loose ends, and the second week not doing much. (In fact, on monday of the last week at a big office, my boss told me "Don't do anything important".)
Now, each time I've moved to a new job that was in a substantially different field than the one before, so there was little danger of either taking secrets or other employees with me. I feel like it worked out pretty well both for me (I got a chance to say goodbye to everyone I wanted to personally) and the company (they knew I wasn't leaving anything unfinished).
Coincidentally, we've got a guy here who's last day is today (he gave notice weeks and weeks ago, he's rather senior). He's still working, which makes me very nervous, because it shows it's going to be a big scramble when he goes. I feel a week's salary is a small price to pay for the assurance the transition is going to be smooth.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
I left a job once that I hated, and though I wanted to burn the bridges and give them a big middle finger, I took the mature route. I did my two weeks, and helped to close out some of my projects and give some training on specific knowledge I had.
Two years later I found myself unemployed with a low bank account and a couple of mouths to feed. The job market was crappier then than it is right now. They took me back in. I have no doubt about what would have happened if I had acted like an asshole.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
It depends on the business and the individual. It's about managing costs (risks) and benefits. If the business can get by fine without the employee, you might be better off letting them go home after they give their notice. If you need to continue to use them for a few days, or a week, or the full two weeks, and it's worth the risks, then it's perfectly appropriate to do so.
Some large companies make it a policy to release people as soon as they give notice, maybe because large companies are less personal and are at a greater risk of having people leave on bad terms. Others may not. It depends on how you want to run your business. There are good reasons in either direction and a good manager balances those with the needs of the business.
Being a professional and finishing up your projects is a good way to encourage goodwill should you choose to come back, and also to get good references. It would be nice if things really worked like that. I have been dropped into somebody else's half finished project plenty of times after that person left for another job at short notice. I suspect that in this case the guy would not have been sued if he hadn't gone to a direct competitor. I don't live in the USA but over here companies have also used lawsuits like this, or threatened to do so, to intimidate their employees into not switching jobs. Of course they reserved the right to fire the employee at a moments notice, after all, what could be more natural than expecting complete loyalty from the employee but at the same time reserving the right to treat him/her like a commodity? When this issue was finally tested in court in this country the employee was backed by lawyers form his trade-association/union and the case was shot down in court even though the employer had put a clause into the guy's contract. The clause apparently violated laws about freedom of employment. The former employer had to pay the costs of the proceedings so this threat has lost a lot of it's terror value on this side of the Atlantic. Of course laws may differ in the USA.... Personally I will treat an employer with no more respect I get from him. The better the employer the nicer I will be about quitting...
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If you feel you can't trust them after they give notice, how can you trust them the day before? The only thing that's changed is that the you no longer have the threat of termination to use against them. If that's the only basis you have for "trusting" them, you've got bigger problems with your business management than employees who've given notice.
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