Amazon Sues After Ex-Worker Takes Google Job

vortex2.71 (802986) writes Amazon is suing a former employee of its cloud services division after he took a similar position at Google. The interesting aspect of the lawsuit is that Google is choosing to vigorously defend the lawsuit, so this is a case of Goliath vs. Goliath rather than David vs. Goliath. According to court documents, Zoltan Szabadi left a business-development position at Amazon Web Services for Google's Cloud Platform division. Szabadi's lawyer responded by contending that, while Szabadi did sign a non-compete agreement, he would only use his general knowledge and skills at Google and would not use any confidential information he had access to at Amazon. He also believes Amazon's confidentiality and non-compete agreements are an unlawful business practice.

Comments

Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Kenja]

But it is impossible to "not use any confidential information he had access to" without surgery. It's in your brain, you will use it if the situation arises.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

Just scrawl 'I don't agree' on the signature line. Let them enforce that.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[lgw]

He's a sales guy. The confidential information is specific customer lists and future pricing strategy if he knew any. Much like if you're a dev, using your skills and best practices is what you're hired for, but don't take the actual source code or roadmaps from your previous employer.

And of course the non-competes are BS. Wasn't there an Amendment that ended slavery and indenture servitude a while back? Bit of a dispute about that one IIRC - what say we leave it settled?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[ScentCone]

Just scrawl 'I don't agree' on the signature line. Let them enforce that.

And they would scrawl "you can't cash this" on the paycheck you won't be getting, since signing your employment contract in good faith is, you know, part of setting things up so they'll give you money.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[PhrostyMcByte]

Non-competes are BS. But requiring employees to not reveal confidential information, poach clients, etc. for their new competing bosses seems like a reasonable and ethical thing to ask. It sounds like Amazon believes he may have crossed this line, beyond simply working for a competitor.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[SJester]

He won't actually tell them to do anything, just play "hot and cold" while they hold up business plans in front of him. "Warmer, warmer, you're getting close..."

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

If they notice. Have you talked to a HR drone lately? They aren't exactly strong on perception and smarts.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

If what they want is loyalty, they should pay well enough for it to keep their staff - and that goes for everyone, including the US Government.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[i kan reed]

Fraud is a serious crime.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[i kan reed]

Non-compete is just one of the many ways in which the US completely an utterly lacks the free market we love to blab about.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[B33rNinj4]

I agree that these types of contracts are total crap. It just ends up limiting the job market.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[VorpalRodent]

I'm having a little trouble parsing the slavery comment.

"In order to ensure you will not use the valuable cotton picking skills you've acquired here at another employer, we've purchased these shackles so that you cannot help another plantation compete with us."

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

But in many states (including my own) non-competes are basically illegal, as any provision in a work contract that prevents you from performing your job (at the new company) cannot be enforced by a prior employer. Basically, most employment contracts are written with everything the company hiring wants, knowing that much of what it wants will be severed right away by the courts.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

Any employee with access to true trade secrets should be paid well enough that he/she won't bolt for the door at the first opportunity.

That said a 'customer list' is not a trade secret, except in the most legalistic sense. Sales weasels know other people and will try to take 'their customers'* with them, duh. That's the nature of the beast.

* anybody who trusts a sales weasel gets what they deserve. Want to keep your customers? Fucking serve them well. I've happily worked for companies that made their living harvesting underserved, overcharged customers of the likes of EDS. Everybody knew who was getting EDSed...it was just a matter of finding out who EDS had bribed, getting to that person's boss and giving him an option better then continued financial sodomy.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Kielistic]

There should be exactly no legal protection of trade secrets. It is not up to the courts to defend your business model.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

For little people. For big people it's business 101.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Rich0]

Non-competes are BS. But requiring employees to not reveal confidential information, poach clients, etc. for their new competing bosses seems like a reasonable and ethical thing to ask. It sounds like Amazon believes he may have crossed this line, beyond simply working for a competitor.

The problem is that you need specific evidence to sue for this. They're suing for a non-compete agreement, which in theory bars working for Google at all and thus has a much lower burden of proof.

NDAs have been around for decades and I don't think anybody has a problem with them. If you write software for company A, you can't give the source code to company B. What is controversial is saying that you can't do anything for company B.

In my industry non-compete agreements are not common, despite there being lots of proprietary information. When you switch employers you can use your skills, but nobody asks anybody what company foo is using in their secret formula, and there is no conflict of interest.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[jeffmflanagan]

The unethical, and generally unenforceable contract that he signed. You left out that part in your zeal to defend his corporate master.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Nyder]

But it is impossible to "not use any confidential information he had access to" without surgery. It's in your brain, you will use it if the situation arises.

I'm waiting for a Restaurant to sue another Restaurant when the chef changes job.

"He can't boil water without using the techniques he learned at our restaurant!!!"

stupid gits

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You've confused pointing out the situation Zoltan knowingly got himself into with defending his so-called corporate master.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

Not fraud. Bad faith. Bad faith is not a crime but might affect your end of the contract.

Once the paycheck has cleared they will have a hell of a time getting a penny back. If you aren't an employee there is more jeopardy.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

We udderly lack the free market.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[lgw]

Slavery (and indentured servitude) is not the condition of working without being paid, but the condition of having no choice of employer. A contract that amounts to indentured servitude is an illegal contract. How much you think anon-compete looks like indentured servitude is the matter in dispute - if you can't do X, but you can still flip burgers, does that count?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

They are only enforceable in California if narrowly written and for a specific time frame.

Basically, in California a non-compete cannot keep you from working. A non compete that says 'you may not program computers' is unenforceable. A non compete that says 'for one year, you may not program computers for any of our clients or competitors' is enforceable (unless the whole industry is your competitor).

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[dunkindave]

You may still be on the hook. A "signature" is when you write an identifying mark. It doesn't have to be your name, though that is the most common. This is even referenced in movies where people put a big X as their signature. You could sign "Barack Obama" and legally it would still be binding on you. The question is, would the phrase "I don't agree" count as a signature or a statement? If you put it on the signature line when asked to sign, especially as a "scrawl", you may have a problem, while anywhere else you would probably be OK.

FYI - IANAL, though I have filed an won as a Pro Se.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Fraud is a serious crime.

I thought it was a legitimate business model.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, a bizdev guy like this most likely has personal contact with a fair number of AWS's larger customers. This isn't "you might solve the same technical problems that you had at your last job". The moment he gets to the Google job, he's going to tell them all of AWS's big clients and what their big pain points are, and give Google an unfair advantage to market to AWS's customer base. It's the same problem with regulators retiring from public service to join a private sector corporation. They're being hired primarily for their connections, and the only way to prevent that from happening is to bar them from being hired until those connections lose value.

Maybe the US government should look into NCAs for public servants...

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[lgw]

So what legal protections do you believe should exist for trade secrets? Should it be legal for large corporations to steal trade secrets by just buying out employees? Almost everyone can be bribed, and, honestly, no employee should have that much corporate loyalty.

You seem confused by the difference between an NDA and a non-compete. Neither TFA nor the post you replied to disputed NDAs. The issue at hand is non-competes, which seem unnecessary (given an NDA) and possibly illegal. Explicitly illegal in Cali, IIRC, but not in WA.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[pr0fessor]

Wasn't there a recent issue with no poaching employee agreements... and doesn't this do the same?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[TheRaven64]

A contract does not require a signature, it requires a meeting of minds. A signature is one way of demonstrating this. Accepting the pay cheque and showing up for work is another.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Registered Coward v2]

Zoltan Szabadi agreed to the non-compete and in returned was employed by Amazon. Now that Zoltan can find a job a Google he decides to go against the contract that he signed.

A few points:

1. He contends he isn't revealing any trade secrets and thus complying with the non-compete in that regard. To me, and INAL

2. The length of time he is not allowed to work for a competitor seems excessive, especially since the are not compensating him in return for not going to work for a competitor. 18 months of unemployability based on your most marketable skills seems unreasonable, and I would expect a court to throw out that clause.

3. Twelve months of not working with previous clients seems reasonable to me. He just needs to not call on any clients he worked with at Amazon so unless Google was hiring him to poach Amazon clients he should be able to do that with no problem. I say that because when I was in a similar situation I had a 12 month no solicit clause and had no problem keeping it. Oddly enough, my non-compete actually only was a non-solicit so I could and did setup shop doing the exact same thing I did at my employer except charge less. Technically, if they called me I could work with them since they did the initial contact. My lawyer found the clause bizarre but also pointe rout they labor law is constantly changing due to court cases and legislation so chances are something written a few years ago would have sections that were no longer enforceable; which is why he suggest companies periodically review and update non-competes.

He also said courts tend to take a dim view of agreements that prevent a person from working in his normal field unless they are getting reasonable compensation for not working. Merely being paid while you worked there is usually not enough, despite what some companies would like you to believe. He also pointed out they can't withhold pay you are owed because you fail to sign something or not return company equipment; despite what they may say. Of course, IANAL and the laws may be different where you live.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Pieroxy]

Fraud is a serious crime.

I thought it was a legitimate business model.

That's another part of it, yes.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[genner]

Last one I got I just turned in blank. Office drones never check that stuff until there's a lawsuit.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[jtownatpunk.net]

Goes both ways. Reminds me of a situation I ran into years ago. The company I worked for shut its doors overnight (Monday was business as usual, Tuesday "we're done"). I was one of the last people out the door because I stayed on to wrap up our last projects. When that was finally done a few weeks later, I did my exit paperwork. One of the documents said that the company owned any IP I had created during the time I worked there (both on the clock and off the clock, even if it was unrelated to my job) and everything I might create for the next 5 years. When I stopped laughing and dried my eyes I said, "You can't be serious." So the accountant who had inherited HR duties read the document. "You're the first person to say anything about this. Wow. That's just... Okay, cross out the parts you don't agree to and we'll both initial the changes." There was hardly anything left by the time I stopped crossing shit off.

I thought I'd been working with intelligent people but I'm the only one who noticed that ridiculousness.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[queequeg1]

Not in situations like this, where it appears regular employees are involved. They're only enforceable when you're dealing with the sale of a business interest or dissolution of a partnership or LLC. But if I just walk in off the street and go to work for someone in CA who makes me sign a non-compete, the agreement will be completely unenforceable no matter how narrowly it's written.

Here's a decent discussion of the law:

http://ymsllp.com/news-and-pub...

As far as I know, CA is the only state that is so restrictive. Most others use some sort of reasonableness test based on time/geographical limits.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[afidel]

Non-competes are BS in almost all cases (if your title doesn't have a C* or *VP you probably shouldn't be asked to sign one), but as you say a non-solicitation agreement and nondisclosure agreement are probably fine for anyone dealing with sales or large amounts of confidential information.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[whoever57]

A non compete that says 'for one year, you may not program computers for any of our clients or competitors' is enforceable (unless the whole industry is your competitor).

Not in California. There is a small set of exceptions where non-competes can be enforced, but none of them apply to a regular employee (they apply to business owners and principals). Furthermore, non-compete agreements from other states cannot be enforced in California courts.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Wootery]

Right. And we're talking about a little person.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Uberbah]

You're pretending the worker-employer imbalance does not exist, to defend his corporate master.

Re: Non-compete agreements are BS.

[RobotRunAmok]

I talk to both HR drones and IT drones all the time, at various companies. And although, unlike you, I am hesitant to generalize, the HR people seem to have far and away more real world smarts and overall life-coping competence than their coding and server-jockeying colleagues.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[gnasher719]

But it is impossible to "not use any confidential information he had access to" without surgery. It's in your brain, you will use it if the situation arises.

That's, in general, nonsense. It's perfectly possible for me not to use information in my brain, if the situation arises. And this would only be about _confidential_ information. For example, anything that is in Amazon's official sales information is not confidential. And any information that is indeed confidential, it is entirely possible for me to keep my mouth shut, don't tell my colleagues, and don't act on it.

There are very few positions indeed where it could be judged that it would be inevitable to use such confidential information. Just because Amazon doesn't trust their employee (or because they just claim they don't trust that employee) doesn't mean he will rat out confidential information.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Wookact]

I don't know about the laws where they are but in many states non competes (especially the form kind) are essentially unenforceable. I know in my states there is a reasonableness test on time period, allowed restrictions, and geographical distances. My state also routinely nullifies entire contracts if it goes against state law, there is no crossing out of certain provisions, the entire thing gets trashed. So a non compete written with another state in mind is most likely completely worthless in my state.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[amicusNYCL]

Did anything ever come of that with other employees? Or is that a case where the company also had no idea what they were giving people to sign and aren't aware that they own all of this IP?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[jellomizer]

Well there is using the stuff you know. Then there is using the stuff you have already built. You can't just take your code that you wrote in your previous job and use it at the new company when there is a NCA. They paid you to give them the code, it belongs to them.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[KingOfBLASH]

The problem is the leverage. Whatever your employer puts in your contract you're basically bound to accept, if most employers do. Same with the terms of your credit card agreements, and all the other little fine print you are legally bound to.

The solution is for our legislature to make it illegal to force people into agreements that put them at a massive disadvantage.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Rich0]

If his NDA is written with the standard terminology used in states that allow them, the wording is probably something along the line of "You agree not to take a position for a competitor in a field that specifically compete with what you were doing here". Even if its not worded that way, its historically how they're enforced in the few tech hubs situated in states that have enforced them.

I've never seen that kind of wording in an NDA. Typically they only prevent the disclosure of actual proprietary info. In my industry people move between companies doing very similar jobs all the time. Granted, it might be from being a direct contributor in one company to a manager of the exact same task in another.

But, I don't work in the software industry.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[KingOfBLASH]

Part of the problem is the appearance of legality. If it's unenforceable, but you think it's enforceable, you will act as if it's valid

Re: Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple in UK. We have some silly contracts that try to have these clauses, but the contract ends when the employee (or company) finishes the employment - hey stop paying there is not contract for a court to enforce.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Triklyn]

that's stupid, and you're stupid for saying it. you've broadened the scope of "duress" to be meaningless.

Re: Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

You should post that someplace where people don't deal with HR idiots on a daily basis. We _all_ know you are full of shit.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Kookus]

Another way to counteract it is to indicate you signed under duress. If you are trying to get a job to put food on the table and you really don't have another option, when when someone tells you sign this or we won't hire you, you're "forced" to sign it even if you didn't want to. Any signature acquired under duress is invalid and doesn't form a binding agreement.
I think it just matters if these agreements are signed after the individual arrives on their first day of work, or before they accept the position and inform their previous business. My assumption is that these agreements are put in front of the person on their first working day... you really have no choice but to sign anything they put in front of you then...

http://www.lawguru.com/article...

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Shados]

Nah you're right, I'm just an idiot. I was replying to a few things at the same time, and mixed up non-competes with NDAs.

My post made no sense when talking about an NDA. Whoops!

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[i kan reed]

+1 funny/actually true

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Obfuscant]

Slavery (and indentured servitude) is not the condition of working without being paid, but the condition of having no choice of employer. A contract that amounts to indentured servitude is an illegal contract.

It would be, but this is not such a case. A NC doesn't mean you have no choice of employer, only that you can't choose some employers in the future. You give up the freedom to choose in exchange for employment now at that specific company, which is also not a case of "no choice of employer". Saying "no" to a NC is expressing your right to choose, which is defacto evidence that you have a right to choose.

How much you think anon-compete looks like indentured servitude is the matter in dispute - if you can't do X, but you can still flip burgers, does that count?

By your definition, it is not even a matter to dispute. "Not being able to choose to work for employer X" is not the same as "having no choice of employer." And, of course, the difference between slavery and an NC is that you can choose not to sign an NC.

Is there any existing NC that actually says that the only choice for someone who leaves employer X is "flipping burgers"?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

I can replace my job in 1/10th the time/cost it would take my employer to replace me.

If you are at your employers mercy, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[i kan reed]

Because it can be easily exploited, yields no measurable benefit to the economy, defies some of our basic principles, and can cause undue strain on the unemployment insurance system.

That enough reasons? No?

It causes people to suffer tomorrow because they're desperate for a job today, it overloads the court system with unnecessary lawsuits when violated, it replaces actual earned loyalty with a contract, and needlessly complicated contract negotiations for everyone.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[swb]

I would imagine that in many places, especially smaller ones, non-competes aren't something that anybody actually plans on enforcing.

Either someone who's afraid of getting blamed should something "bad" happens or some lawyer piles on the broadest and most restrictive terms they can come up with and everyone signs it and then promptly forgets about it.

Only when something actually bad happens do they go digging and remember "Oh hey, he signed this".

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[mister_playboy]

You're stretching the meaning of bribery too far to take seriously. A better usage of that term would be to describe interactions between lobbyists and Congress.

Your comment is also rather clueless in light of the wage-fixing collusion amongst tech companies.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[trytoguess]

As my pappy would say, there's a different between smart and diligent. Being able to calculate pi while masturbating? That's smart. Reading a contract cause you're concerned there might be dubious clauses? That's diligent.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Kielistic]

The reason you can't choose to sign yourself into slavery is because it is a non-enforceable contract- not because it's against any definition of slavery.

You are totally free to. The courts just wouldn't (and couldn't) enforce it.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

They are only enforceable in California if narrowly written and for a specific time frame.

Basically, in California a non-compete cannot keep you from working. A non compete that says 'you may not program computers' is unenforceable. A non compete that says 'for one year, you may not program computers for any of our clients or competitors' is enforceable (unless the whole industry is your competitor).

God, can California get any more hostile to businesses?!

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[hubang]

An example involving a chef. Granted, the chef got sued, not the restaurant.


For variety, here's an example involving a hairstylist.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[geminidomino]

That's why the whole concept is bullshit. The reality is that there's a big difference between "confidential information" and "domain knowledge," no matter how many lawsuits the corporate scumholes buy to claim otherwise.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Belial6]

Non-Competes should be enforceable. They should just require the employer that is trying to enforce it to pay 100% of the employee's salary during the time that the non-compete is in effect.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Belial6]

Since the point of them is that you cannot work in the field you have experience in, they essentially all do.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[ottothecow]

That's not duress. That's just a contract.

It is literally saying, if you don't agree to this contract, you don't get the things that this contract says you get. It is like the guy at subway saying "If you don't give me $5, you can't have that sandwich". It's not duress until you say you don't really want the sandwich and the guy says "And if you don't want to buy the sandwich, I am going to beat your face in"

Duress is something that is not part of the contract that is being used to force you to sign the contract. The judge isn't going to uphold a contract that says "we won't kill you if you have signed this"...but they might uphold a contract that omits the death threat if you can't provide any proof of the threat. Some none-violent duress might be if your wife also worked for the company and they said "If you don't sign this, not only will you not get the job, but we are going to fire your wife"

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[lgw]

That's the law in a couple of states, IIRC, as the interpretation there is a non-compete without (ongoing) compensation doesn't meet a requirement to be a contract (both parties must benefit).

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

What you state are the facts on the ground today.

Companies are vulnerable to HR raiders, duh. A well executed raid of key staff can leave deadlines swinging in the breeze.

The same companies are generally unwilling to sign real employment contracts, preferring at will status. More HR raids would improve the situation.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can replace my job in 1/10th the time/cost it would take my employer to replace me.

If you are at your employers mercy, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Careful, you could break a leg if you fall off your horse from that height. I'll bet you attribute your personal success to hard work and not the accident of birth in a Western state which provided you with access to publicly funded education and relatively low violence of pollution relative to the rest of the world.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[jason.sweet]

A contract, by definition, is all the strings written in.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Obfuscant]

The reason you can't choose to sign yourself into slavery is because it is a non-enforceable contract

I'm sorry, where did you see me trying to explain why you cannot sign yourself into slavery? I thought we were talking about non-compete agreements, which are certainly nothing like slavery.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

Been there done that.

I've had them ask me to sign my employment agreement during the exit interview. I LOLed.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Kielistic]

And, of course, the difference between slavery and an NC is that you can choose not to sign an NC.

And

Saying "no" to a NC is expressing your right to choose, which is defacto evidence that you have a right to choose.

Saying "no" to signing yourself into slavery is defacto evidence that you have a right to choose and therefore slave contracts should be enforceable?

The choice to sign the contract has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it is (or should be) enforceable.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

Sure. They could copy Michigan (tax on leaving...really). Or Washington state (tax on gross) or Kansas City Missouri (tax on gross) or Germany (no firing people except 4 days/year).

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

Don't like the facts, attack the messenger.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Russ1642]

Then too bad. Employers don't own their employees and they're free to go work with someone else.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Sq]

well, over here, employer can put it in your contact that you're not allowed to work in competing company for up to two years after you quit, but they have to continue paying you at least 50% of salary you had while you were working there. And that clause becomes null and void if you are laid off (or your ex-employer agrees to pay you 100% of your salary), or if you quit without notice due to employer gross misconduct, or if such ban would unproportionally burden your further work and carrer.

And Croatia is not really the country you would call very protective of the slaves^Wworking class.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[rogoshen1]

What are your thoughts on insider trading by the way?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[afidel]

Lol, I was more referring to actual job responsibility than title per se.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[retchdog]

as i understand, amending a contract in writing (and initialing and dating the changes) counts as a phase of negotiation. it is in good faith to scrawl "i don't agree," although all that really does is void the contract for the moment so it's pretty pointless. if you keep working despite voiding it, you're probably subjecting yourself to a tort.

however, if you make actual written amendments (without bullshit trickery), and they are stupid enough to sign the contract without reading it, i think it counts as an acceptance of your terms. a friend of mine got out of an IP assignment clause this way; he struck it out and initialed and dated it.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[i kan reed]

Dictating that I do not have the right is not that far from dictating that I must

Dictating that I can't sell my children into slavery isn't that different into dictating that I must. I'm saying your freedom to do something stupid and create a de facto standard for everyone else having to do something is stupid is bad. You don't deserve that freedom, and it doesn't help you.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Triklyn]

all contracts will require both parties to give something up that they don't necessarily want to give up.

in this case, the employer gives up money for the employee giving up time. calling the price of a transaction "duress" is moronic. i'm not calling you stupid for disagreeing with me, i'm calling you stupid for trying to make a stupid point.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[organgtool]

I never have and never will sign one of these contracts. The way I see it, everything I do on company time and/or company resources is property of the company and everything I do on my own time and/or my own resources is my property. Few things in life are so simple. When a company places a contract in front of me that even insinuates anything to the contrary, I do not sign it. If they point out that I did not sign it, I simply declare it unreasonable. The HR person usually frowns and lets me go without signing it or by signing a modified version initialed by us both as you did. Companies only pull this shit because people don't read what they sign or they sign it thinking it will never be enforced. The fact of the matter is that the company probably spent over $10,000 finding a candidate for the position. They're not likely to throw all of that away because an employee doesn't sign one part of the contract that most sane people would find unreasonable as long as you decline politely and offer to sign a modified contract that is reasonable.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Obfuscant]

Saying "no" to signing yourself into slavery

Once again, we're talking about an NC, not signing oneself into slavery.

is defacto evidence that you have a right to choose and therefore slave contracts should be enforceable?

You would save yourself a lot of time if you just read what I wrote and stopped trying to make things up. I said nothing of the sort.

The choice to sign the contract has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it is (or should be) enforceable.

What I ACTUALLY said was that being able to choose not to sign was defacto proof that you have a choice, which is what I think they call a tautology. Now, if you read the definition as presented by the person I replied to, you'll see that it requires "no choice". Therefore, if you have a choice it isn't slavery. There, that wasn't that hard to follow, was it?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[david_thornley]

IANAL, but as far as I know that varies by state in the US.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[david_thornley]

I actually have signed the "All your IP is belong to us" agreement. In my state, it isn't worth the paper it's printed on, as it directly contravenes a 1982 statute.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[houghi]

In Belgium, unfortunately each time I left a company they annuled the non-compete part of the contract. Because basically what it means is that if I am not allwed to work for the competition, they must pay me a LOT of money. So as long as I am not going to work for the competition, they owe me.

Many people do not know this and think that they must pay the company if they do. That is only half of it. The other half is that they pay YOU for not being able to work for the competition (for a reasonable period). This can sometimes mean a doubleing of your income over a peiod of a few years.

What more often happens is that they are ok with you working for the company, but forbid you to take secrets with you. That for obvious reasons and it is clear for most but the stupid what secrets are and what not.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[jxander]

No. I want the right to decide to do something for pay.

Looking into the oldest profession, are you?

Just because you WANT to do something for money doesn't mean that it's legal to do so.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[gnasher719]

A contract does not require a signature, it requires a meeting of minds. A signature is one way of demonstrating this. Accepting the pay cheque and showing up for work is another.

Accepting the pay cheque and showing up for work means you agree to do work for the company in exchange for payment. It doesn't demonstrate in any way that you agreed to anything beyond that in your employment contract, especially if you didn't sign it.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[whoever57]

What about my freedom to accept the money in exchange for signing one?

How about because it is good for society? WIth the high cost of living, overcrowding, etc., why is it that tech startups happen so often in the SF Bay Area? Perhaps because of the pool of talent that is available because non-competes are not enforcable?

You cannot sell yourself into indentured servitude either. Do you really want that "right"?

And, as for the $5k, you are hopelessly naive. Non-competes depress wages, so that $5k is probably less than you would get in increased pay if non-competes were illegal where you live. Basically, you are saying that you should have the right to be screwed by large corporations. Good luck with that right.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Darinbob]

I wonder if they actually keep all those forms that are signed so that they can be retrieved at a later date?

(Then the judge gets the document and says "it looks to be signed by an individual named 'Yur Mama', is there anyone named 'Yur Mama' in the court today?")

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Darinbob]

I think you meant "standard business practice."

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Darinbob]

It helps to have the digits of pi put to music, as in Camptown Races. "3 point 1 4 1 5 9, doo dah, doo dah".

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you sign _anything_ restrictive on the way out the door?
You might do it to get hired, but there's no upside to agree to any such thing at the end, unless they're paying you a bunch of cash for the rights.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[luis_a_espinal]

If they notice. Have you talked to a HR drone lately? They aren't exactly strong on perception and smarts.

You are talking bullshit here and waving your hands at a hypothetical based on a biased perception towards HR workers. Granted a lot aren't bright, but that is true in all professions, even among STEM workers.

People actually go through the pages in the contracts to see everything has been filled. In 18 years, I have not seen a one HR worker that has not done so meticulously. Scrawling "me no like it" like that will not fly either during review or in court should the near impossible (they not catching it) were to happen.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Livius]

If you are trying to get a job to put food on the table and you really don't have another option

Sure it feels that way, but how often does that happen for real?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[rtb61]

So that brings an interesting point to that 18 month non-compete clause. You sign the contract, you haven't been paid yet, does it come into force. You work one day, earn one days pays and they own you for 18 months unpaid. What proportion of your salary pays for that 18 month non-compete clause and over what period does it come into affect. Non-compete clauses logically have to be paid for to be valid, if they failed to stipulate how it's payment is accrued, then it was never really paid for and never really valid. In the suit they can claim repayment but really only for the value of the non-compete, the actual damage as a proportion of his salary, the value of the work, excluding all other value accrued to the firm by his work. They can not really deny the job they could however recover contractual damages against the salary they paid him, putting a value on that as a proportion of his salary would be really tricky.

Re: Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Migity]

If only I had mod points

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Smerta]

OK something here doesn't make sense. The company "shut its doors". Maybe we define things differently, but to me that means filing for dissolution; not Chapter 13, not in hibernate mode - "shut the doors". I've personally been screwed over by a company that owed me a significant sum when they dissolved the company... at that point, you can go pound sand, the corporation is the equivalent of a dead body -- scream at it all you want, nothing's going to happen.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[TheGratefulNet]

wait until you are over 40 and in the software field. you'll find that you MAY get one offer in 6 months of searching.

ask me know I know... ;(

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[shutdown -p now]

Tax on gross income is not necessarily business-unfriendly. It all depends on what the tax rate actually is.

In fact, you could say that it's a "tax on failure", since it disproportionately affects businesses with small margins.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[GrunthosThePoet]

On no less than 3 separate occasions, I have managed to freak out the HR departments of companies I was joining because I actually reading the contracts. It appears that most people are just willing to sign their lives away. The most recent example was where the company holiday year was January-December. I joined at the start of July and so was entitled to half the years holiday allowance (thats the way it works in the UK). My contract said that I wasnt allowed ot take any vaction in the first 6 months of employment, but that all vacation had to be taken by the end of the holiday year - no carry over and no recompence for untaken leave. So I was entitled to 12 days leave but was not allowed to take it and would get no recompence for the loss. When I pointed this out, HR said that it wasn't enforced, but refused to remove it from the contract. A lot of HR departments just use previously approved legal boilerplate text without thinking through the implications and have no idea what to do when someone calls them on an anomily.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[L4t3r4lu5]

This will likely end in their favour; You have no contract, you can be fired at will.

Then again, I hear that there's parts of the US where this can happen anyway. Boggles the mind...

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[coinreturn]

I'm glad someone here has a brain.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[coinreturn]

I was not making a stupid point, and your failure to understand the point, does not make the point stupid. Anything can be considered "the price" of a transaction. The fact is that if all (or even most) employers use these tactics, the signing is under duress. You must work to eat. I assure you that "under duress" would not be considered stupid in court under these circumstances. I suppose you don't mind working for company scrip which can only be spent at the company store - the price of transaction.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[BVis]

That's almost everywhere in the USA. "At-will" employment is the law of the land. You can be fired at any time for no reason whatsoever, and if you think you've been fired for an illegal reason (for example, racial discrimination), good luck proving it without a stack of documentation, a "smoking gun", and a lawyer willing to take a chance on a case he/she is likely to lose. Most of the time your former employer's lawyers can beat up your lawyer. The only time your former employer has to provide a reason for termination is if you file for unemployment assistance and they fight the claim, in which case they'll invent something plausible that can't be disproved, or they'll just flat-out lie (knowing it's their word against yours, and you're the unemployed slacker that wants something for nothing, while they're job creators.)

The only time an employee is entitled to any process at all before termination is when there's a collective bargaining agreement in place, e.g. you are part of a labor union. And the USA views labor unions with about as much contempt as child molesters.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[BVis]

You're confusing "protecting employees" with "bad for business". It's a common mistake to make. Keeping someone from earning a living if they ever quit isn't reasonable.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[BVis]

When your job description includes the dreaded "other duties as assigned by management" that becomes meaningless. Job descriptions are basically there to con you into taking a job.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[BVis]

You were talking about yourself ("I can replace my job in 1/10th the time/cost it would take my employer to replace me."), then you made a value judgement against others ("If you are at your employers mercy, you have no one to blame but yourself.") Attacking your value judgement and your privilege is reasonable in that context.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[RivenAleem]

TIL I'm smart.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[queequeg1]

The governing law is not necessarily the key issue. CA courts have declined to enforce non-competes even when they specify another state's governing law. Instead, as another post indicated, venue will be key. If Amazon gets the case heard in WA and obtains a judgment against the former employee, it can seek to enforce the judgment in CA. Successful enforcement of an out of state judgment might depend on the nature of the judgment. If it consists of an injunction (generally the easiest remedy to obtain in these sorts of cases), there might be problems. However, if the judgment is money, Amazon would have better luck. However, getting a monetary judgment would require a specific showing of damages, which might be difficult. Here is a decent discussion of the issue:

http://www.shawvalenza.com/pub...

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Kielistic]

That's not what you said at all. What you "ACTUALLY" said was:

And, of course, the difference between slavery and an NC is that you can choose not to sign an NC.

You were clearly saying that the fact that someone can choose not to sign this contract is somehow relevant. Which is why you kept going on about choosing to sign a contract.

A slave or an indentured servant has no choice of "employer". Their employment is at the discretion of their employer. A slave owner can choose to free a slave or give/sell them to someone else. Just because unruly slaves have the "choice" of being sent to the mines does not make them any less a slave. That an indentured servant's employer might agree to let them work for another does not make them any less an indentured servant. This is why people argue that an NC is not ethical and similar to indentured servitude.

You clearly stated that the choice to sign the contract was the most important part that made this not indentured servitude. Stop trying to back-track and deny that now.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[HornWumpus]

Not all business's with small margins are failures.

A uniform gross tax would be a terrible idea. The only worse idea is a localized gross tax.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Ol Olsoc]

If they notice. Have you talked to a HR drone lately? They aren't exactly strong on perception and smarts.

But they do notice your nice shoes and well manicured hands.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Ol Olsoc]

One of the documents said that the company owned any IP I had created during the time I worked there (both on the clock and off the clock, even if it was unrelated to my job) and everything I might create for the next 5 years.

The first place I ever worked for - a cable television equipment company, in the seventies had everyone sign an IP statement saying anything we ever invented was their property.

I figured that they would only come after it if I invented something that brought in billions. Then they'd fight it out with whoever I was working for that demanded I sign my life away the second or third times.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[lgw]

If you're wondering why responses seem like non-sequiturs, it's because you are blindly and repeatedly asserting that a NC is nothing like slavery. You're not actually arguing for your position, so all anyone can do is simply assert the contrary.

A NC is very much like an indentured servitude contract. Sure, it's not identical, as you can still flip burgers, but it's pretty close: you can't earn a professional living in your field.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Obfuscant]

You were clearly saying that the fact that someone can choose not to sign this contract is somehow relevant.

It is, and I've already told you why. The definition of slavery as presented earlier included "no choice" as a significant requirement. Since you can CHOOSE not to sign an NC, it cannot be slavery. Why is that so hard to understand? Why do you keep making things up?

A slave or an indentured servant has no choice of "employer".

And if signing an NC is a requirement for a job at employer X, then you won't get the job BY YOUR OWN CHOICE, and thus the job is not slavery. Slavery means "no choice". You choose. This really is that difficult?

Their employment is at the discretion of their employer.

No, that is not the same thing as slavery AT ALL. Ad arbitrium employment is common. It means the employer can fire you at will. They cannot force you to work for them. You can still choose not to work for them. That's why it isn't slavery. Slaves don't get that choice.

A slave owner can choose to free a slave or give/sell them to someone else.

Yep. And this is related to a non-compete agreement exactly how? A non-compete means your employer can sell you to someone else? I don't think so. A non-compete means you cannot chose to leave their employ? I don't think so. In fact, I know otherwise. All a non-compete says is that you promise not to work in the same kind of business for a certain amount of time after you leave your current employer. It doesn't say the employer can sell you to someone else, it doesn't say they can keep you from leaving.

The FACT is that you can choose to sign a non-compete or choose not to. It's up to you. That's why it isn't slavery.

You clearly stated that the choice to sign the contract was the most important part that made this not indentured servitude.

Actually, slavery. You quoted the statement and you can't even get it right.

Yes, if you can choose not to work for someone then you are not a slave BY DEFINITION. Slaves have no choice.

Stop trying to back-track and deny that now.

Stop trying to put words in my mouth and I won't have to tell you I didn't say what you are pretending I said.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[rk]

Assuming there's not a business process patent on it, in which case you'll have licensing fees to work out first. There is the prior art argument working in your favor though.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[lsatenstein]

But it is impossible to "not use any confidential information he had access to" without surgery. It's in your brain, you will use it if the situation arises.

He may have had brilliant ideas that Amazon refused to consider, or if presented to Amazon, he would endup with a handshake. Ergo,
move to another cloud vendor where you can present ideas that were held private.

Can Amazon sue for things you thought about, but decided to implement with a competitor? Prove the employee had the ideas before leaving.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[romons]

Cisco made me sign a 'MUST COMPETE" clause when I took their retirement package. They gave me a year's salary, 2 years of health care, and said I couldn't come back, or work for a contractor on cisco contracts for 2 years. So, in order to work, I had to work for a competitor.

Very clever of them. They offered that to every employee over 50 that had 5 years or more of service, other than 'distinguished engineers', who were deemed indispensable. So, much of their intellectual property (such as it is) was transferred to their competitors.

I started getting calls from prior managers the week the 2 year time limit was over. Not a bad paid vacation, hey?

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[dgatwood]

That doesn't actually make any sense whatsoever. There's nothing even remotely suspicious about a person trading a one-time benefit in recompense for an extended benefit he provides to another.

It is dubious when that one-time benefit can be taken away at any time, as a job can be, or can suddenly turn sour like a job can.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[genner]

This will likely end in their favour; You have no contract, you can be fired at will. Then again, I hear that there's parts of the US where this can happen anyway. Boggles the mind...

Of course I could be fired if they ever checked it but I could go to work for whoever I wanted.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[niftymitch]

Just scrawl 'I don't agree' on the signature line. Let them enforce that.

Better to scrawl -- "non compete and other limitations on employment post separation or termination must be compensated."
i.e. If they enjoin you from working at a $500,000.00/year job they must compensate at that level.

Or scrawl "below signature is without the advice of legal counsel".

It is interesting that in a divorce it important to pay for legal advice for both sides.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[niftymitch]

wait until you are over 40 and in the software field. you'll find that you MAY get one offer in 6 months of searching.

ask me know I know... ;(

Lucky you... six months just wait till you are 50 or 60...
There absolutely is a bias.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[Uberbah]

I can replace my job in 1/10th the time/cost it would take my employer to replace me.

So you're going to engage in wankery, to defend his corporate master.

If you are at your employers mercy, you have no one to blame but yourself.

When there's five other unemployed people for every job opening? Best hope you never fall out of elitist bubble of rarefied air, Randian.

Zoltan

[Anonymous Coward]

Zoltan sees money in your future.

Aren't non-competes unenforceable anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't sign away your rights.

Re:Aren't non-competes unenforceable anyway?

[Sarten-X]

Actually, yes, you can. That's pretty much the basis of contract law.

Re:Aren't non-competes unenforceable anyway?

[thaylin]

Tell us that the next time you wanna file a class action suit against any service provider you use...

Re:Aren't non-competes unenforceable anyway?

[Shados]

You can't sign away your rights.

Depends where you are. I think they're unenforceable in California? I don't know about Washington.

A big chunk of Amazon's AWS division also sits in Cambridge, MA, where they can be enforced for certain high profile positions or something very meaningful in related businesses...so a senior software architect who designed key infrastructure, or a salesman with a list of customer, could get slapped for moving to a related business 2 blocks away to Google.

I just skimmed the article so aside for which journal published it as a hint, I didn't see where the employee was located, Seattle or Cambridge...so it really depends, and even if the former, what exactly is that state's stance on non-competes?

Re:Aren't non-competes unenforceable anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on which rights, and what jurisdiction. Some rights can never be signed away, some can.

Counter-suit

[mfh]

Amazon has deep pockets and they could be bullying an employee here. Many non-competes are thrown out when court challenged. This case could come down to how poorly Amazon may have treated this employee. A non-compete is not a writ of slavery.

Re:Counter-suit

[sribe]

I'm going to be surprised if Amazon wins this one, even in the People's Democratic Republic of California.

??? Apparently you do not realize that CA has some of the strongest laws in the nation restricting non-compete agreements. CA is actually the least likely state in the country for Amazon to win this.

Re:Counter-suit

[jeffmflanagan]

>I'm going to be surprised if Amazon wins this one, even in the People's Democratic Republic of California.

You seem out of touch with reality. Civilized people do much more to protect the little guy, so non-competes do not fly in California. It's the employer-worshiping conservatives (all hail the job-creators) that you have to watch out for.

Re:Counter-suit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great, but you didn't rebut his argument that California, having a liberal slant, is just like North Korea. That means he's right and you're wrong!!!!! even if you have things he doesn't care about, um, facts or whatever you OBamabots call em, Libtard!

Re:Counter-suit

[Anonymous Coward]

You're citing reality, and reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Re:Counter-suit

[EvilJoker]

Non-competes have a lot of established case law. Part of it is the usual contract law (which is VERY well established as to what can and cannot be done), but there is more beyond that. Some questions that will be raised:
1) Reasonableness of the terms (e.g. not stealing customer lists, vs. not working in the industry)
2) Impact to the employee. Courts have generally ruled that a non-compete cannot ever interfere with the employees' right to earn a living. IOW, if Amazon wants him off the market for a year, they need to pay him a year's salary.
3) Jurisdiction. Amazon famously avoids a presence in CA (to avoid CA sales tax), so presumably the non-compete was signed in WA. The job with Google is presumably in CA, which forbids such restrictions. This could mean it falls under federal laws regarding interstate commerce.

It also seems to bear resemblence to this case
Source

Re:Counter-suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how these Job Creators profit the most from higher unemployment rates.

Re:Counter-suit

[Darinbob]

California is also a very conservative state. Split down the middle. The current composition of the legislature doesn't matter much as the case will be tried in the court system instead.

Re:Counter-suit

[Darinbob]

This is not a conservative vs liberal thing. It's about who writes the checks for the politicians.

Re:Counter-suit

[Darinbob]

Liberals tend to be more for workers because they're often funded by the unions; conservatives tend to be more for employers are they a relatively larger share of donations from big companies. But overall, both parties get funded by both types of groups. Actual ideology doesn't really figure into this much, especially with murky issues that don't clearly fit into party platforms.

In this case, a "business-development" employee is not a typical union style worker. In fact anyone with a non compete clause in an employment contract isn't a typical union style worker.

Re:Counter-suit

[thaylin]

Please point out the hate speech. Nothing there I stated was hate speech, it was fact, but keep up with that red herring, while letting the person who actually did use name calling free..

Re:Counter-suit

[supersat]

... except Amazon is based in Seattle. While his location wasn't disclosed, I would bet it's in the Seattle area. Hopefully this case will shut down some of the non-compete clauses used in Washington State...

do they want him to take an unpaid time off?

[ConstantineM]

So, they want him to take the time off for 18 months? How much are they willing to pay for such a vacation? Surely if they never intend to pay anything, then such an agreement is indeed excessive and completely unreasonable.

Re:do they want him to take an unpaid time off?

[Shados]

Those agreements are silly and shouldn't be allowed...but in this particular case, if he went to Google doing the same job, but in a different department, he'd have been fine, even if you take his non-compete agreement verbatim...

The guy really pushed the limit there.

Re:do they want him to take an unpaid time off?

[TheRaven64]

Enforcement of non-competes varies a lot between jurisdictions, but there is some precedent for requiring the company that demands the non-compete to pay the employee's salary for the duration. This also provides a good incentive for non-competes to scale with employment time.

Amazon's on thin ice here

[aaron4801]

Non-compete agreements are on shaky legal ground to begin with. But pile that on top of the silicon valley lawsuits about employee poaching, and how badly that has gone for the companies involved, and you would think that Amazon wouldn't be quite so tone deaf about the issues this brings up. It's illegal to agree not to hire other employees, but if you do, they'll still sue over it? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Re:Amazon's on thin ice here

[Darinbob]

Companies think everything they have is confidential, including phone numbers of its workers. In only a couple months, any business development data this guy had will be outdated and irrelevant anyway.

America has a rich tradition of this

[nimbius]

Robert Parker and Anthony Johnson in 1654 was possibly one of the first documented cases of this. One of Johnsons servants, John Casor who was brought over from Africa, claimed he was under a 'seaven or eight yeares' contract and that hedd completed it. Thus, he asked Johnson for his freedom. Johnson didnt see things this way, and denied the request. Despite this, according to Casor, Johnson eventually agreed to allow him to leave, with pressure supposedly coming from Johnsons family who felt that Casor should be free. Thus, Casor went to work for a man by the name of Robert Parker. Either Johnson changed his mind or he never said Casor could go, because he soon filed a lawsuit against Parker claiming that Parker stole his servant, and that Casor was Johnsons for life and was not an indentured servant.

Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[sandbagger]

The purpose of a non-compete clause is primarily one of ethics. However, you cannot say 'We want to hire you for X skill and never have you use those skills for anyone else ever again.'

It's unrealistic.

The only way that's sustainable is if they compensate you for never being able to make a living again. I believe that when the hammer is brought down for non compete clauses, it needs to be at the end of a process and not done in principle. Amazon and Google have no end of jobs and bazillions of products. As long as you're not using inside knowledge, and competing directly in products, the former employer needs to make some evidentiary claim.

They do serve a function and need to be there.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[sanjosanjo]

Alternatively, a more realistic/fair situation would be to force any employer to continue paying the employee during the non-compete duration. This would be fair to the employee, and at the same time, reduce a company's desire to implement a non-compete in the first place.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[Shados]

I absolutely agree there simply shouldn't be non-competes, and in some states, that's the case.

That said, if you have a case of someone working for company A, in a very specific division, and maintains a customer/contact list, then goes to the #1 or #2 competitor of that company, in precisely the exact same division of a fairly narrow field, physically across the street, that's definitely pushing it in term of ethics.

I still think you should totally be allowed to do that. But at least it isn't a case of "Tech worker goes to another tech company and gets sued over non-compete". Its a fair bit narrower than that.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[jeffmflanagan]

>The only way that's sustainable is if they compensate you for never being able to make a living again.

Correct. A non-compete is only ethical if it comes with enough cash that you don't have to work in your field for many years. The alternative is having a former employer continue to control the employee without compensation, which is slavery.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[wisnoskij]

Hardly sounds fair for the employee. Your career is still stopped cold. And it is never easy to restart a career with a multiple year jap in the middle.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[EmperorOfCanada]

Actually in Canada there was a recent Supreme court decision where they said that you could even contact former customers as long as it was reasonable for you to have naturally remembered their contact information. So I couldn't leave with a list of 100,000 contacts, but 40-100 would potentially be reasonable.

Basically how this broke down was that it was against the charter to tell you where you can and can't work. Also it was against the charter to tell you who you can and can't contact. Thus any contract clauses that violate the charter are void.

I was blown away with the contacting former customers being allowed. Oh and this particular decision also cleared pillaging former employees.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[HornWumpus]

You use the time to quietly start your own thing. Preferably competing with the company paying you not to work for someone else.

If you can't make something positive out of a year+ of free time, I don't want to hire you anyhow.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[scamper_22]

Yeah, but really you should be allowed to poach all customers and what not.

If the company values you, they should be making your life 'nice' so you stay. The problem is most employees don't even value their own knowledge base. Many still think in terms of only being paid when I am working.

When in reality, you should be paid heavily for what you know.
Know key customers... you should be being paid not to leave and take them with you.
Are you the only one who knows how to setup the work VPN? You should be being paid for that knowledge ...

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[EmperorOfCanada]

I find that under modern management structures there is a near hatred of highly skilled technical employees. Over and over I see MBA types desperately eliminate the fantastic programmers by replacing them with a room full of mediocre programmers. Then when the project ends up smashed on the rocks, the same MBAs will baulk at paying a top notch programmer a multiple of what the mediocre programmers would get.

My favorite personal experience was years ago I had a ready to go solution for a finance company but I demanded some serious coin for it. The MBA in charge of the recently failed project walked into the next room and said, (when he thought I was out of earshot) "I won't pay any nerd more than someone who went to business school. So they said, no, and did the Indian outsourcing thing. Then around a year later, after it blew up, they offered me exactly, to the penny, half of what I asked. I said, no. Then they slowly worked their way up, halving all the way up to my original price. When I said no even at that price they got angry. That is when I told them that a week after they turned me down a year earlier, that I had exclusively sold the system for about triple what I had asked them for and had it up and running at one of their competitors in under a week. The funny thing was that they laughed and said, "Well your system can't be that good if it only took a week to get it running."

Two other funny things were that they sent a letter from a lawyer demanding that I tell them which competitor was using the system (keep in mind I had never signed anything with them at any point ever) and they then did a Russian outsourcing that royally blew up about a year after that. So here was a company full of MBAs who spent more than 3 years without a system that was fairly critical to their business simply because they refused to give a non MBA real money.

BTW during the original negotiations they tried every which way to rip me off. They tried to make offers where they would cut me in for a percentage of profits, they tried to "lease" the software including source code with the option to terminate with a weeks notice, they tried to have their people do a "code review" before they bought. All this after I was able to run the system right in front of them doing exactly what they wanted. The company that did buy it had economists not MBAs running it and the only complication with their contract was the faster I installed it the more money I made and they wanted the source code in escrow (after the offer they made I gave them the source, which ended up being a win as their internal programmer loved my code so much they got me to do other things).

So that is my long winded way of saying, that trained economists are able to analyse value and thus have a high chance of recognizing value. But MBAs are trained to extract/exploit value, so if they think they can work an angle they will try to work an angle even though in the long run all that sleaze will generally end up biting them in the long run. But I think the MBA mentality is similar to a casino addict. They point to their stupendous wins and say, "Look at me, I am the man." But in the case of MBAs the are at the casino playing with other people's money. Whereas economists look at the casino and say, "Unless we are the ones running the casino the math is terrible."

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[scamper_22]

Yeop, most definitely agree.

However, maybe I'm just jaded, but the fault is not with the MBA, it is largely with us (engineers/developers). The MBAs think highly of themselves and value themselves and attempt to maximize their own power.

That is no different from any other group of people (doctors, teachers, lawyers, accountant, trades people...).

Most engineers/developers don't seek to maximize their power and value themselves quite low. In a sense, we (as a collective group) don't respect ourselves, yet we somehow think MBAs should respect us? The world sadly does not work like that.

Be it unions, professional organizations, credentials, or just having high alpha type personalities in your profession, you need that respect.

While you held your ground and acted in a way that demands respect, 95% of engineers/developers don't. MBA types are right to think "I wouldn't pay some nerd X money".

Most developers/engineers are either push overs or uncooperative grumps. They're not assertive professionals (me included)

Do you think they'd treat a lawyer or doctor like that?

It has more to do with the lawyer or doctor, than it does with the MBA.

Re:Non-competes should not make you unemployable

[EmperorOfCanada]

So (and I am not completely joking) maybe to get your P Eng you have to work a month as a New York cab driver and you don't graduate unless you get into the top 25% of driver complaints for aggressive driving and abuse of pedestrians.

Basically some sort of assertiveness training. Where the moment an MBA says, yes lets split this bonus evenly 90/10 that the engineer will basically dangle his career over the balcony until the MBA signs over the entirety of the bonus.

Just pay him not to work

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reasonable non-compete I've ever signed was limited to 2 years. If the company believed I held confidential information they reserved the right to pay me to not work for that time. I believe it even had a clause that said they'd pay me what I was offered by the new company as long as it was in a comparable range to what I was previously paid.

Re:Just pay him not to work

[Trepidity]

That's common in finance, but seems not to be common in tech. Many investment banks have a clause giving them the option to keep you from working for a competitor for 6-12 months after leaving the company. But if they exercise the option, they have to pay you to not work, usually some percentage of your previous salary.

Re:Just pay him not to work

[wisnoskij]

That sounds pretty easy to take advantage of.
"Ya, my brother is starting up a finance firm that is doing the exact same thing as you, he says he will pay me 150% of my current salary to go work for him.
According to my contract this means you now have to pay me 50% more than my current contract and I can sit at home and do nothing, or maybe take on a little work on the side under the table"

Re:Just pay him not to work

[KingOfBLASH]

In many jurisdictions that is the only way a non-compete is enforceable. For instance, in the EU this is the ONLY legal way to have a non-compete.

Re:Just pay him not to work

[rsborg]

That sounds pretty easy to take advantage of.

"Ya, my brother is starting up a finance firm that is doing the exact same thing as you, he says he will pay me 150% of my current salary to go work for him.
According to my contract this means you now have to pay me 50% more than my current contract and I can sit at home and do nothing, or maybe take on a little work on the side under the table"

Clearly in this case, the employer would look at your brother's company and simply chuckle - unless your brother happens to be running a real threat, in which case, you've just painted a target on yourself and burned bridges before you crossed them.

Re:Modern day indentured servitude

[pla]

No, we don't need a union...

Or, we could just all refuse to sign overly-broad non-competes and NDAs. I do (refuse), and manage to do so entirely without needing to fork over a cut of my weekly paycheck to group that would then use it to lobby largely against my personal beliefs.

If you choose to sell your soul, don't cry when the Devil demands his due.

LOL ...

[gstoddart]

Good luck with that ... you don't mess with the Zoltan. ;-)

Do they own him?

[EmperorOfCanada]

I love how this makes sense to the corporate minds at Amazon. This guy worked for them and thus they can now control his life? Employees leaving is a part of life. Oddly enough a specialist in such an industry is going to go to a competitor. Any contract that somehow demands that they get to control you after you quit is absurd and should be thrown out with extreme prejudice. And before anyone says, "Well he signed it." Can you list 4 consecutive words from the terms and conditions of Slashdot? Did you know that Clause 18 section B allows slashdot to demand that you donate any or all compatible organs if they need a transplant for any of the executive?

If you look at a recent Supreme court decision in Canada involving RBC, you will find that they basically struck down most of the concept of an employment non-compete as violating a charter right to live and work where you chose. While this might seem irrelevant to the US courts, I went to a talk given by a supreme court justice who said, that due to the nature of many western countries having a British based legal system that they do look at the thinking of the highest courts in other former British colonies. Not only to see what they were thinking at the time but to see if there were unintended consequences to similar decisions.

Re:Do they own him?

[whoever57]

If you look at a recent Supreme court decision in Canada involving RBC, you will find that they basically struck down most of the concept of an employment non-compete as violating a charter right to live and work where you chose

Maybe you are looking at a different case to me, but in the case I looked at, as long as an employee gives proper notice, once the notice period is over, there is no actual or implied non-compete agreement.

Re:Do they own him?

[mu51c10rd]

Did you know that Clause 18 section B allows slashdot to demand that you donate any or all compatible organs if they need a transplant for any of the executive?

Congratulations on doing a better job than Slashdot at getting people to read their terms and conditions...

Re:Do they own him?

[EmperorOfCanada]

Yes I suspect that it prevents a massive blindside. But seeing that proper notice is very short, it would be wildly different than the years that some companies tried to demand.

Re:Do they own him?

[Sabriel]

Well, the 13th Amendment of the United States constitution reserves the power to make and keep slaves to the government; combine the latter's oligarchic aspects with the "revolving door" and it's obvious the poor little executives are just confused and forgetting which side of the curtain they're currently on ;p.

Re:Do they own him?

[metamarmoset]

Yes, I'm sadly disappointed that my search for 'organ' came up blank :(

Unlucky him. He doesn't work in Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada the non competitive clauses are strictly regulated. ANY fault in them void ALL of them. This is to avoid vague all inclusive clauses that can be "expanded" later with layers.

The requirements are:

1 -Specifies the actions that cannot be taken. Such action must be very specific since non-competitive clauses cannot be used to prevent someone from working in his field of expertise.
2- Specifies the area (city, state) where those clauses applies. The whole world or the whole country are almost guaranteed to be found at fault.
3- Specifies the time lenght of the restriction. Once again, the time has to be reasonable or the clauses are void. One year plus for technical IT related ... Cannot be reasonable since by the time you can work again, you are obsolete.

Almost all corporation go too broad with 1 and 3 and just forget about 2 thinking that an "obvious" clause can be used. Wrong. Failing to address a requirement voids the whole thing.

Here is a good example: Mr. X, Marketing expert, is banned from working as a marketing expert in the state of New York for a year. He is specifically barred from creating marketing studies, interacting with any client or supplier related to corporation Y primary product, bottled soda.

In this case Mr. X could legally sell cars next doors to Corp Y. And still operate as a marketing agent (his field of expertise) or work in the bottled soda business in Texas.

So far I ran into a single corporation with the anti-competitive clauses rights in 15 years.

In the US? Well you can patent rounded corner for a handheld device and win. Regardless of the absolute obviousness of it. So maybe he can get banned from working for almost 2 years. This is an excellent tool to lower salaries.

Re:Good luck with that

[Safety Cap]

Some of the stupid interviewing criteria that my colleagues and me [sic] had to deal with boggles my mind.

Ahh, reminds me of the Angry Aussie and his response to pointless interview questions:

For instance, there was the putz I had to see this week who thought he was being really clever. It seems as though someone gave him the book of Microsoft interview questions and he was eager to show off his new "knowledge". This style of interviewing gives you abstract questions that have no relationship whatsoever to the work you'll be doing. Or to the real world.

Proponents say they're trying to see how creatively you can think. Normal humans say it's a waste of time.

business-development position?

[gatfirls]

I think they might have a leg to stand on here. He's probably taking all of his contacts with him so to speak. That's not like some C++ developer taking his learned experience it's a person who can directly and immediately affect their business by poaching customers. I'm sure they're all going after the same "big fish". And those are multimillion dollar contracts.

My guess is that they are basically trying to block him from doing that.

Non-competes are usually completely useless HR drivel, but in this case it seems like it's a necessary evil, otherwise every employee can obtain and then resell (by proxy of employment) customer information.

there was a movie where they did some thing like t

[Joe_Dragon]

there was a movie where they did some thing like that to remove info from workers. It was called paycheck.

Re:Mind slavery?

[HornWumpus]

And people who think like you are why people avoid union shops like the plague.

Re:Mind slavery?

[mark-t]

You'd have to prove to unemployment that what they were asking you to was to actually break contracts. Clearly, if actually doing any work for them at all would violate contracts, you would probably have to first prove that those contracts even existed, whereupon it would probably be determined that those aspects of the contracts are unenforcible or inapplicable, and your claims are void. The onus is upon you to determine which aspects of any contracts that you signed with a previous employer are valid/invalid *before* you sign on with a new employer

It's a show

[melchoir55]

Amazon's suit will obviously fail here as CA will never allow this kind of restriction on a regular employee. Tech industry giants are in trouble for agreeing not to compete with each other. What better way to make it seem like they are competing than to toss a few hundred thousand away on a meaningless but high profile court case which is decided before it began?

They gain billions by not competing for employees. They've been doing it for a long time, and they can continue to do it as long as people don't put a stop to it. This case is a marketing ploy.

Re:Correction

[geminidomino]

I am not normally a grammar Nazi, but when I am right ....

This isn't one of those times. "My colleagues and me" is not the object of the clause, it's the subject (The colleagues and poster are the ones dealing with things, not the stupid criteria).

Having been sued on a non-compete....

[bobbied]

I can tell you they are a royal PAIN to get out of once you sign it. However, they do have specific limits and processes that must be followed in order to be valid. What are these limits? You are going to have to check with a local lawyer to find that out, because every state has their own laws. In my case, the law clearly limited non-competes to 24 months and with in a reasonable geographic limit and a few other things, like being unique to the employee's job and have to be accompanied with some kind of compensation to the employee. All but the term of the contract where at issue in my case.

I know that in California non-compete agreements are seen as an unfair constraint of trade and generally are found to be unenforceable, at least for employee agreements. So there is something good about the left coast if you are trying to get out of a non-compete. Move to Cali for 2 years and you will be golden, because they have to sue you where you live.

If that's not an option, then I would highly recommend you get yourself a lawyer if you find that you simply MUST violate a contract like this. But you had better know that in most places, if your previous employer actually did have a lawyer draft their document, you are in for some serious pain and legal fees and your chances for success are pretty slim.

Now In my case, they dropped the suit before trial. I had already demonstrated that they had been acting in bad faith on a number of issues related to my employment (failure to pay overtime, failure to pay due wages and bonuses when due) and saying untrue things to prospective employer who called to verify my employment. I had a defamation case that my lawyer was begging to file for me and a wage claim for the bonus money they failed to pay. I think that they just wanted to punish me for defying them and quitting abruptly, then getting unemployment from the state because I quit with cause. No matter, I let them off the hook for dropping their suit, mainly because I was SO done with them.

SO, My advice is GET A LAWYER! Do it before you sign one of these things so you know what you are signing and what it says. Have your lawyer rewrite it if they think it would be better for you. KEEP A COPY of every thing you sign. Don't count on the HR files to have it, you keep a copy. Finally, DON'T give them an occasion to sue if you can help it. Going though the civil process is frustrating and expensive for all involved. It is best to keep it out of court if at all possible. Do mediation, draw straws, ANYTHING but get drawn into a legal fight you really don't need and cannot afford.

Re:Correction

[wonkey_monkey]

I am not normally a grammar Nazi, but when I am right ....

What about when you're think you're right, but you're actually wrong? Perhaps you should have followed the advice on the page you linked to, which states:

An easy way of making sure you’ve chosen the right pronoun is to see whether the sentence reads properly if you remove the additional noun:
Some of the stupid interviewing criteria that me had to deal with boggles my mind

See? Doesn't work. Whoever wrote it should have said "my colleagues and I," therefore the GP's "[sic]" was correct.

In fact there should have been a [sic] after "boggles" too, since it was the criteria (plural) which were boggling.

Never tell them where you're going

[gelfling]

Rule #1 is never tell your former employer the name or industry of your future employer. You don't have to tell them so don't tell them. It's on a need to know basis and they don't have a need to know. If pushed, lie and tell them you're just quitting with no job lined up.

non-compete agreements

[nurb432]

Have time and time again been proven to not be worth the paper they were printed on.

Let them sue, then counter sue for damages and smear the event on every news service that is willing to print...

Amazon loses this one...

[erp_consultant]

Non compete agreements are practically unenforceable in California. So we get the pleasure of watching a bunch of overpaid lawyers battle it out in already overcrowded courtrooms. The only justice will be if they both lose and are forced to donate the attorney fees to a homeless shelter.

Never work for this shithole of a company

[iamacat]

Nobody who worked for Amazon ever had anything nice to say about it. It's their stated official policy to put employees last and they are so stingy they don't even pay for office parking. Regardless of legalities, why enter into any contract with this kind of people?

Re: Modern day indentured servitude

[pla]

Which personal beliefs would that be? That people who create wealth should be compensated accordingly?

Okay, I'll bite - That the most productive creators of wealth should receive the most compensation. That seniority doesn't equal value. That the state shouldn't pay four people to stand around watching one dig a hole.

Or how about simply that the "right" candidate doesn't always have a "(D)" after his name? And before you get any ideas, I would point out that he rarely has an "(R)", either.


I'm super glad you're such a special snowflake that you never need help with anything

Thank you. As long as you can admit that, we can move the conversation forward. Because...

you might want to consider that constantly falling wages affects your bargaining position

Oh, absolutely! It makes my position better every year, make no mistake! Because while Joe Programmer gets his 2% COL increase every year, I have commanded - and demanded - and gotten - an average of 9% per year since entering the workforce. Yet you seriously wonder why I don't want a union "representing" me? I find the USSC's stance on that outright hilarious - Unfair that some "benefit" from collective bargaining without chipping in??? Thanks, but you can have your contractually-extortionate 3.5%, I'll take the higher rate that I earned, thankyouverymuch.

Unions keep the week employed, and drag the strongest down to the average. Nothing more, nothing less. Once upon a time, I'll admit that they did some good; today, they amount to welfare-for-the-employed, and have long since burned up any karma they earned in the post-industrial-revolution days.

How to make termination stick ...

[CaptainDork]

Write a technology policy that is comprehensive regarding logging off at night, securing passwords, prohibiting Facebook and other non-productive activities.

Insist that all emails are for business use only, etc.

Tighten that puppy up and have the employee sign it the first day while they are wading through other, more relevant (to them) documents, and you're in.

!.) Like some of the other documents, they didn't read it and 2.) It's so comprehensive they are bound to over-step.

In one case, the terminated employee said, "Well, everybody knows that everybody was doing all that stuff."

I said, "Please add another violation, 4.1.a wherein it states, "You must report all violations or suspected violations."

Non Competes

[pebear]

The long short is 90% of all trial judges will side with the individual because they don't want to keep a person from gainful employment. What else you expect this guy to do bag groceries?

WTF

[NewYork]

You're a Wage Slave. Be it Amazon or Google.