
Amazon sues former AWS marketing VP Brian Hall after he takes Google Cloud job - erict15
https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazon-sues-former-aws-marketing-vp-brian-hall-accepts-google-cloud-job/
======
bcantrill
Ugh, this garbage again. AWS came after someone I had hired trying to enforce
the same non-compete, under more or less the same circumstances (Washington-
based employee, working remote out of California). In the process I learned a
bunch about this non-compete, and in particular about Amazon's behavior with
respect to it: as of 2012, they had tried to enforce this non-compete
"hundreds" of times -- and to the knowledge of the outside counsel we used,
had never prevailed. (It's used as a tactic to terrorize their own employees
-- and it works wonders.)

As for us, we responded to their nasty letter with a nastier letter that told
them that we didn't view the employee in violation, that the non-compete was
absolutely unenforceable in California and essentially unenforceable in
Washington -- and that we were prepared to draw pistols at dawn over it. That
was more or less the end of it, but it was traumatizing to the ex-AWS
employee, turning an otherwise amicable separation venomous; it's despicable,
cowardly behavior.

(Also, if anyone needs counsel on the ground in King County to fight this, I
have a great recommendation for you; DMs open.)

~~~
tuna-piano
It's quite an interesting strategy and for all Amazon's "long-termism", it's a
strategy that seems quite short-term focused.

It may make their current employees decide not to leave, but it may also lower
morale and make future recruits not join.

Talk to decision makers deciding which database to buy and see their thoughts
about Oracle. Many have been around for decades and have worked for or with
the company and refuse to buy their products. This feels like a great way to
cement your company as a new Oracle.

Your short-sighted mean-spirited moves helped inspire your most dangerous
competitor[1].

From Jack Welch - "I have a phrase: love them on the way out — I teach this to
my school — love ’em on the way out the way you love them on the way in. And
I’ll tell you another one: a severance dollar is the cheapest dollar you’ll
ever spend. Those two things, if you practice that religiously, you’ll stay
out of trouble, you’ll be perceived as fair. Maybe not loved, initially, but
people will come to respect you. That’s why I have an army of friends. Many
people who I let go are some of my closest friends."

[1][https://observer.com/2019/07/walmart-ecommerce-strategy-
amaz...](https://observer.com/2019/07/walmart-ecommerce-strategy-amazon-ceo-
george-patton/)

~~~
radioheads
Amazon's non-compete was the deciding factor for me not to join the company.

I went through all steps of the recruitment process, but bailed out after
receiving the offer. I've had a chat with the hiring contact and I did tell
them that I was concerned about the NCA, but they simply waived those away
telling me "it's not a big deal". Funnily, even though they were asking if
they could change something in the offer to convince me to join, the NCA was
something that they wouldn't budge on.

Since me joining Amazon meant moving all the way from Europe, I was really
uncomfortable with the prospect of potentially being stuck at Amazon because
of that NCA, so I wished them luck and rejected the offer.

~~~
chii
> Amazon's non-compete was the deciding factor for me not to join the company.

i would ask for, in advance of signing the non-compete (that lasts for X
years) the equivalent of X year's of salary. I'm sure there's room to
negotiate this so that the company has to pay out the approximate cost of a
non-compete.

~~~
nraynaud
that's the way the law works in France. That's why I always receive a nice
letter at the end of my contract: "we hereby release you from your non-compete
agreement".

Basically you have to write everything about the end of the employment in the
employment contract, otherwise you'll get shafted.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
In France you do not have to write it, the law regulates this anyway. If you
have a non compete, you have compensation.

The good thing with contracts on France (and when buying a house) is that
everything is regulated and there is actually little space for any enforceable
changes.

------
jedberg
You know you're cool when you need a lawyer to change jobs.

I think it would be reasonable to allow non-competes, however, the company
should have to keep paying you your full compensation (salary, stock, bonuses,
etc) for as long as they keep you from being employed.

Sure, give the old employer veto power for a new job as long as they keep
paying them for the lockout period.

~~~
twblalock
The tech industry in California does just fine without noncompetes.

In fact, lack of noncompetes is probably one of the biggest reasons Silicon
Valley was able to take off in the 1950s-60s when people were constantly
leaving their jobs to start new chip companies, starting with the original
"traitorous 8" who founded Fairchild Semiconductor.

There just aren't good arguments for noncompetes. People often bring up trade
secrets, but that's not convincing -- there are already laws against stealing
trade secrets, so you don't need noncompetes for that. Look at Anthony
Levandowski as a high-profile example of someone who stole trade secrets in
California and got nailed.

~~~
edanm
> There just aren't good arguments for noncompetes.

I think the standard argument isn't trade secrets. The standard argument is
that you want to incentivize employers to train employees.

If I, as an employer, train you for 6 months, then you leave at month 7 for a
higher salary (which you can demand cause you have more training/experience),
I lose out. So I have no incentive to train you. So training or hiring of
people without experience never takes place (or does so at a lower rate).

If you are someone without experience, and there was a way for you to credibly
commit to _not_ moving to a new job (e.g. by signing a non-compete), then you
might want to make that bargain - it's worth it for you to sign away some
freedom in order to get some advantage (which is kind of the basis for all
contracts).

That's the theory, anyway. I have no idea how much it holds up in the real
world.

> The tech industry in California does just fine without noncompetes.

Obviously, the counterargument is that it could be doing even better, we just
don't know it.

Note that if the standard argument is correct, then there's a chance that the
biggest group of people hurt by lack of noncompetes are people without
experience. You might not necessarily be feeling their pain, depending on your
social circle (e.g. if you're a working developer in an SV company, you're
surrounded by the people who _did_ make it, not by the possibly numerous
people who faced closed doors because of this).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The standard argument is that you want to incentivize employers to train
> employees.

Charge tuition for training and offer "student loans" with no payments or
interest while you're working for the company which are forgiven if you stay
for five years or whatever. Then if somebody wants to poach you right away,
that's fine, they can just pay off your training loan.

~~~
CathedralBorrow
This sounds like the most American solution I've ever heard. Incentivize
employers to train people by charging employees money for training and letting
them pay off their debt by working?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
It's exactly the same system the government uses for teachers.

You could also just forget about the loan forgiveness, charge "tuition"
unconditionally and then pay more to make up for it.

------
simonebrunozzi
There is a chance that some people with a history worth sharing might not be,
and never be, in a position to talk.

I personally think that non-compete agreements are a strange beast. On one
side, you want to avoid people "switching sides" and bring important secrets
with them, possibly the reason why they've been hired by a competitor.

On the other side, you want a competitive job market, so that people would get
the salary they deserve and the position they deserve.

~~~
myalphabet
Agreed. I'm generally uncomfortable with noncompetes and especially with
Amazon's practice of making _every_ employee sign one. Unless it's a really
special case where a team is working on something truly groundbreaking and
secret, I don't see what Amazon is really afraid of if some random developer
leaves and goes to a competitor.

However, I do have to say that their argument as stated in this article _does_
seem like a valid case for a noncompete. From the article:

>“Virtually every day, Hall worked with Amazon’s most senior cloud executives
to create and execute those plans. As a result, he was entrusted with an
unusually broad view into Amazon’s cloud product plans; its priorities; and
its competitive strategy.”

~~~
anarazel
I think cases like this can largely be dealt with by allowing non-competes,
but only as long compensation continues. Without that the power imbalances are
just too extreme.

EDIT: rephrased to make clear I wasn't just referring to base salary.

~~~
tonfa
A large part of compensation is probably not in base salary, that'd be asking
for like a 50% compensation cut.

~~~
skinnymuch
I was assuming the person meant what you take home. Not just base salary.

~~~
anarazel
Correct. Edited comment to clarify.

I think there's some possibly quibbling around the edges around what exact
would be included, or not. E.g. a rule that bonus / commissions don't have to
be included, as long as that doesn't lead to < 75% of previous year's comp
would still be ok with me.

------
yashap
Non-competes should be completely killed. Disclosing confidential trade
secrets should be a legal issue, but getting a new job with a competitor
shouldn’t be, as long as you don’t share confidential info with them. If you
build up a tonne of domain knowledge, and become an expert, you should be able
to leverage that expertise by continuing to work in that domain, as long as
you aren’t sharing legit secrets.

~~~
Lukas_Skywalker
I once started a job where the contract contained a very weird clause: I
wouldn’t be able to use any programming-related knowledge I gained at the job
for my future jobs. Obviously that‘s not enforceable, but it led to a
ridiculous discussion where I tried to explain to them that if previous
employers did this, I could only use the knowledge I gained before being
employed - effectively programming like during highschool. They agreed in the
end that I should be allowed to transfer knowledge and the clause was removed.

~~~
dehrmann
Two lessons here: read the employment contract, and employment contracts are
negotiable.

------
JoshTko
It's ironic seeing so many people in this thread being against non-competes,
yet seeing so few people for unionizing in other HN threads.

~~~
marcinzm
The perception seems to be that unions hurt well performing employees more
than they help. Non-competes are perceived as hurting well performing
employees. Why is it surprising that the same group, which perceives itself as
well performing employees, would oppose both?

~~~
snowwrestler
It really depends on which unions you look at. When people hear "union," they
think of Teamsters and autoworkers and elementary school teachers.

But Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Lebron James, and Tom Brady are all examples
of union members too.

~~~
mrep
Those unions aren't specific to one company/team though and are mainly to set
pay floors because they work in a glamorous industry that people are desperate
to get into and so they are used to raise the people outside of the
competitive spotlight pay in the industry. If you want to start an non-company
specific union for developers, by all means, start one but I see no reason to
join it considering the only reason people are desperate to be developers is
because it pays well.

------
hm8
It's interesting to see one of the basis of defense is promises made during
offer stage. Anecdotally speaking, and I am not remotely close to Hall's
position or responsibilities (an engineer) and in the past, the hiring team
has always led me to believe that the non-competes are a standard clause and
are not likely to be enforced.

On a separate note, anybody knows if Google would help with legal defense of
Hall or ignore this as a private matter?

~~~
Infinitesimus
Google likely considered legal defense as part of the hiring cost when taking
someone _that_ high profile.

> the hiring team has always led me to believe that the non-competes are a
> standard clause and are not likely to be enforced.

Your average engineer is likely easily replaceable. Directors and VPs are hard
to replace and a huge win for any company that successfully hires them.

~~~
peterkos
> Google likely considered legal defense as part of the hiring cost when
> taking someone that high profile

Stuff like this is always so fascinating to me: the idea that someone's
ability to do their job is worth fighting over in court -- nevermind the
cultural costs of bringing someone new into a executive position at a company.

~~~
dboreham
This is a very old tradition in the valley. I forget but I think the law in CA
was changed sometime because these suits were almost always dismissed.

~~~
QuinnyPig
Non-compete agreements haven't been enforceable in California since 1872.

------
ineedasername
This makes me think Amazon it starting to worry a bit more about Google Cloud.
Have they been gaining a lot on Amazon recently?

~~~
wegs
I would never, ever, ever use Google Cloud for anything other than education
(e.g. students working on the free tiers). Google's general culture is to
randomly kill partners' businesses with automated algorithms, and then not do
anything about it unless it explodes on social media.

That includes multi-million dollar partners sometimes.

I'd work for Google, but I wouldn't use their systems outside of Google. I
wouldn't work for Amazon, but I definitely use AWS.

~~~
lance_klusener
After working for Google for short duration, i second this opinion.

The engineers simply want to do cool complicated things. They dont give a damn
about enterprise world, requirements, and deadlines.

------
bradj
The tech industry just needs to take a cue from the finance industry and
standardize garden leave.

~~~
Forge36
Interesting concept. Would that have prevented the problem here?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
That depends on what Amazon's motives were.

------
pradn
Standard employment contract clauses stipulate that "we're hiring you for your
talents, not your proprietary knowledge". I wonder how much that even matters
in court.

------
adrr
He should have moved to a California first. Quite easy with covid19 and remote
work being required.

~~~
kelnos
I doubt that would have helped, given that he signed the agreement while a
resident of a jurisdiction where it was valid.

Regardless, I wouldn't uproot myself (and my family, if I had one) for
something like this.

Non-competes are an abomination and need to go, everywhere. The only
alternative I'd accept is what's done in the finance world: you basically get
a paid vacation for the term of your non-compete.

~~~
em-bee
i don't think that matters. what matters is the jurisdiction where he works
now. california doesn't want its employed population to be limited by
noncompetes. they certainly won't be interested in honoring noncompetes from
elsewhere.

~~~
treis
Virtually all contracts will specify a jurisdiction for any disputes. In the
case of employment contracts it's almost always where the company is
registered. Moving to California likely doesn't help at all.

~~~
xref
What if you’re not violating the non-compete in a jurisdiction where the
contract is enforceable, like by moving to California?

~~~
NonEUCitizen
The old one still applies in the previous contract (and is enforceable in the
old jurisdiction).

~~~
Chris2048
what does "enforceable in the old jurisdiction" mean? They send out bounty
hunters to drag you back?

------
stevage
>awyers for Hall say Amazon executives repeatedly led him to believe the
company would not enforce the non-competition provision of its “boilerplate”
confidentiality agreement, in discussions before and after he signed the
contract in June 2018.

After, sure. But anything they say _before you sign the contract_ is totally
void, because every contract explicitly says "this is the only contract,
anything beforehand is overruled by this".

~~~
wegs
After too. Almost every contract of this type explicitly says that it can only
be changed in writing, signed by both sides.

Early-career, you'll likely get f-ed by "boilerplate" contracts, since you
don't have the negotiating leverage to push back yet. Expect it.

Once you're established, push back or don't join.

These kinds of litigations don't make the news often (it's to no one's benefit
they become public, and everyone signs an NDA at the end), but they're pretty
common.

------
seibelj
When there are only 3 companies that compete in a given space, how can job
hopping not possibly violate a non-compete? Tech companies should stop using
non-competes. Trade secret laws already cover the theft of IP and it just
makes the rank-and-file support breaking up big companies.

~~~
dragonwriter
> When there are only 3 companies that compete in a given space, how can job
> hopping not possibly violate a non-compete?

There are more than three public cloud firms, and in any case you can job hop
outside of that space.

------
julianeon
Here's some Tweets about it, the news story + commentary + Hall's humorous
response ("some personal news").

[http://www.mediazed.com/aws-sues.html](http://www.mediazed.com/aws-sues.html)

disclaimer: this is my own site.

~~~
ctvo
Don't appreciate you linking your own property that offers little new
information except the rehash without an explicit disclaimer.

~~~
julianeon
Ok; I can see people are displeased.

I've added a disclaimer, since that was requested.

I'd like to take a moment to ask then what is appropriate here, after checking
the etiquette guidelines, which I read beforehand and which are linked below.
I read them line by line in advance and I didn't see a conflict; to be clear,
they don't disallow what I did. However, I'm open to being told what I could
do that would be better.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Ple...](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Please%20don't%20submit%20so,find%20interesting%E2%80%94not%20for%20promotion.&text=Be%20kind).

I can accept not using my own domain name, I can always use another one (that
I do not own).

In this case, I spent about 15 minutes looking up the tweets around this, and
then rearranging them, narrowing it down to just a few that can be a window
onto other, better ones.

I'll defend that as a value-add. It's not nothing. I quoted the guy at the
center of the story, I quoted a couple of people he retweeted, and then I
quoted someone who I think has a good perspective on non-competes. I mean yes,
with even more effort, I could have summarized him, and the non-compete guy,
and written a whole essay about it all, but that's too much, and this was a
compromise - not a whole journalist-level article, but a useful, defensible
amount.

Now, let's look at different ways I could've done the equivalent, using other
methods.

I could've posted in the raw links, which I guess is the closest solution I
know of, which I'd then need to comment on - not ideal, and people would've
needed to click like 5 times to get the same functionality of 1 page, but
okay.

I could've created a Twitter moment, which would then fill my timeline with
this (not my preference), and then posted that - still seems like self-
promotion, but that way at least it's all reflected on Twitter, and after all
I need some method to organize it.

To be honest, to me, this seems like an overly restrictive definition of
'self-promotion' which ends up pushing out to objectively worse solutions
(boring my followers with this, looking like a lazy dump of plain links, etc.)
My perspective is this is the web and remixing content isn't a bad faith
action, it's fundamental to what it is.

But I understand the concern, and if people want to suggest what is
appropriate, I will listen. If you want to make a suggestion for recommended
solutions, I'll listen also.

~~~
niyazpk
I didn't downvote you, but since you have written a wall of text about this:

Generally speaking, in these kind of situations, "Analysis" type links would
be more appreciated than something that could be more "Gossipy".

The twitter links feel more like "reactions", and I am not in HN for those. I
saw this news in twitter, and came here to read more in-depth discussion.

------
swyx
i'm honestly just curious about the legal strategy at this point. Has Amazon
won _any_ of these suits?

~~~
txcwpalpha
From the article:

> Amazon similarly sued Philip Moyer, a former Amazon Web Services sales
> executive, after he took a job with Google Cloud last year. A judge
> ultimately agreed to limit some aspects of Moyer’s role at Google for the
> term of the agreement.

IIRC they've also won others in the past, yes.

I also imagine it's not just about actually _winning_ but also about the fact
that even if they lose every suit, it would still discourage employees from
making the switch if they suspect they will have a legal fight ahead of them
(even if the employee knows they'll win).

------
mathattack
It seems to me that AWS/Azure/GCP/OCI is highly incestuous. They all hop
amongst each other. Strange to try and block it.

------
jaworrom
I am no lawyer, but I am pretty sure an NDA is unenforceable unless damages
can be confirmed or confidential information is provably exposed.

Then again, this is the case in Texas. I had to deal with this from a previous
employer, met with labor law attorneys, they sent a nasty gram back to said
previous employer, and said employer backed out.

------
jonstewart
Noncompetes writ large are terrible policy. However, I do think at a given
level of seniority/responsibility, they’re reasonable, subject to the usual
limitations of time and place. He worked for AWS for ~18 months and then
shopped himself to a direct competitor.

~~~
NonEUCitizen
Californians do not consider non-competes reasonable at all, even at that
"seniority" level. Search for "Mark Hurd Oracle HP" \-- HP was not able to win
that case in California.

~~~
dehrmann
They're not enforceable in California, so reasonablility doesn't even factor
in.

------
chartpath
And yet they don't pay living wages to their non-engineering employees. Greedy
scumbags.

------
eugenekolo
Standard operating procedure whenever big wigs move to competitors. Sue so
they can't work for some amount of months/years, any information they know is
now dated. Win either way no matter how the lawsuit goes.

------
ezoe
Better not be hired by Amazon.

------
mytailorisrich
What usually happens if your new employer wants to keep you (if you're a top
executive) is that they cut a deal with your previous one and pay for a
settlement.

------
sukilot
Ironically, Amazon recruiters tell candidates "Amazon is great for your
resume."

------
lorec0re
fuck you amazon

------
david-cako
Good luck with this wiffle-ball strategy. :)

------
say_it_as_it_is
Amazon, everyone knows you monetize open source. It's not a huge secret. Brian
Hall hasn't stolen any secret magic recipe that he's now selling to Google.

~~~
dehrmann
If you don't want your open-source project used in for-profit projects,
license it that way. Amazon is playing by the rules these projects set out,
and not by a technicality. That, and the reason some of their services (let's
say RDS) are popular is the open source projects backing them were already
popular, in part because their licenses are permissive enough for for-profit
use. Arguably, this popularity _helps_ the projects. What Amazon is doing with
RDS isn't any different from a for-profit company hosting Mysql themselves.

They're also not really monetizing open source, at least not any more than a
consultant does. What you're really paying for is Amazon to manage it for you
--that's their value-add.

------
sg47
"One of those Amazon HR executives, Paz Patel, responded with this message,
according to Hall’s filing: “Congratulations, I had a feeling that you would
land there. Very happy to hear this news.”

Would be surprised if Paz Patel is still employed at Amazon.

~~~
QuinnyPig
I'm not so sure. That's not quite AWS's brand of "needlessly vindictive." They
aim that in other directions mostly...

------
ponker
The text of the contract is unambiguous. If you didn't like it, you shouldn't
have signed it.

~~~
anonuser123456
That's not quite how the law works.

~~~
ponker
It does in Washington State especially at Amazon VP-level positions. This
isn’t an entry level clerk who can’t say no to abusive contract language. This
is someone making $1m+ a year who could easily walk away from a bad bargain.

