
Bradley Horowitz Leaves Yahoo For Google - raghus
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/12/yahoo-exec-bails-bradley-horowitz-leaves-for-google/
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foonamefoo
The article's picture goes great with the current top story (the mimicry one).

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tocomment
Don't these people have non-competes? You'd especially think Yahoo and
Microsoft would even explicitly list Google on their employment contracts.

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icky
> Don't these people have non-competes?

Welcome to California! :-D

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tocomment
explain

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drubio
"California law voids any provision, contract term or purported "agreement"
that prevents them from working for a competitor or to work for him or
herself. In other words, restrictions on an employee's right to work for a
competitor or to operate a competing business are illegal and cannot be
enforced"

Source: <http://www.employlaw.com/noncompete.htm>

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tocomment
wow, I wish all states did that.

but wait, Microsoft is in WA, so you sign the contract in WA. Can CA really
say a contract signed in WA is void?

So in that case anyone in the country can work at any job in CA they want
regardless of what their non-compete says?

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RyanGWU82
Well, in this case, Mr. Horowitz worked for Yahoo, in what was clearly a
California job. The California laws would most certainly prevail.

If you work for Microsoft, in Washington, then there's likely to be a tight
non-compete clause. Washington courts are very permissive toward employers
regarding non-compete provisions. I can't speak to the specifics, although
there was a high-profile case a year ago involving a Microsoft executive who
was sued and ultimately was prohibited from working for Google.

Finally, many companies don't enforce non-compete agreements strictly unless
you do something wrong, i.e. stealing information from your employer to help
someone else directly compete against them.

(IANAL, and I don't even play one on TV.)

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aston
The case you're talking about, I think, was that of Kai-Fu Lee, who actually
was allowed to work at Google, but wasn't allowed to work in the areas he
worked in at Microsoft for a year. Instead, he did general recruiting.

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RyanGWU82
Ah, good point. But in that case, Microsoft still put their foot down, and it
was decided in a Washington state court.

(I just did some research about this a few weeks ago. Had Google filed a case
first, asking for a declaratory judgment, they likely could have gotten it
handled in California courts, and the decision would have gone the other way.
Seems like a rather screwy system...)

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simianstyle
I'm guessing that post-IPO Google stock is looking really good now compared to
Yahoo.

