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.)
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."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Granted, much smaller company. But after I got an offer I was given a ton of unusual documents to sign. Giving away all rights to my image as one odd ball.
I refused to sign several of them.
Hiring manager was highly confused. But was fine with it. Wasn’t a big deal to them at all.
Surprised me, because I almost walked away because of it.
Yeah, this approach of burning bridges is shocking to me. I work in the video games industry and people very frequently leave...only to return in 2-3 years again. Company hopping is very frequent(for various reasons, main of which is money) but most people seem to understand that you cannot, under any circumstances, burn bridges on either side. The junior leaving you now might come back as a senior in 4 years time. The company that is unwilling to pay you more now, will happily hire you back at 2x the salary in 3 years time. You can't afford to be mean to leaving employees or former employers.
Similar situation in the VFX industry. Post-employment NCAs would devastate this industry and ruin the lives of thousands of individuals with how this industry works. And add more spots on the map of which studios to completely avoid.
> It may make their current employees decide not to leave, but it may also lower morale and make future recruits not join
Based on several discussions I've had with former coworkers and the numerous discussions on Blind and Reddit, morale may be pretty low already, especially for everyone in non-senior roles. Seems to be common knowledge that Amazon has a PIP quota, and people are terrified of it.
The hell of it is that an awful lot of companies would shrug, back away slowly, rescind the job offer, and select a different candidate. I mean, the alternative is going toe to toe in a legal fight with freaking Amazon--what sane person would do such a thing?!
Even aside from the actual legal threats in this case, just the existence of these broad non-competes (or often even a non-compete at all unless, maybe, it's very narrowly drawn.
I worked for a small consulting firm for a number of years and we passed on at least one candidate we'd have been interested in because they were at a big client, had a probably irrelevant NDA, but my management was pretty much "Big nope. Not worth the risk."
Fortunately the one time I had to sign one because of an acquisition, it was actually fairly narrow. (You couldn't go to a competing storage company at VP level or above for x months.) Though it admittedly helped that I wasn't actually in the storage division of the acquired company.
This is what most outside counsel in WA advise their corporate clients. Use non-competes. Even though everyone knows they are essentially unenforceable.
A "venomous separation" is more lucrative for outside counsel than an amicable one where they are not needed.
Attempting to enforce a non-compete would be handled by outside counsel. It is likely that oustide counsel were consulted before Amazon began using non-compete provisions. It is also likly that the "boilerplate" non-complete provision(s) Amazon is using originated from an outside firm.
I wish you and everyone else who has to write these legal replies can open source these letters so that the process of going up against these large enterprises doesn't sound so intimidating.
If you’re going up against a behemoth like Amazon, the last thing you want to do is copy someone else’s letter. There are too many important variables that can completely change the situation which are not immediately apparent unless you are already familiar the law.
To decrease the intimidation, you’re much better off simply calling someone who already understand the nuances of the particular law which governs your unique situation and paying for a couple hours of their time.
While it's most definitely true that most people who want to fight back will get legal counsel, I am talking more about giving faith to fight to those who yield at the sight of the first letter.
If your experiences were more made more public, as to the exact process, people would be less scared about beginning their own process of fighting back.
This wouldn't be able to happen in EU as well. Previous employer can't force you to not being able to offer your services in the job market. They can pay you instead.
It's usually unwise to speak in general terms about the EU. It's 27 different legal systems, after all. For instance, in the Netherlands non-compete clauses are enforceable, though with some restrictions [1].
They mostly can't in the US either. And Amazon has apparently rarely prevailed in enforcing it. But that doesn't prevent them using lawsuits as a kudgel to punish defectors.
Please elaborate, here in Sweden a NCA is only enforceable if the company is willing to pay up to 60% of the full salary to keep the non-compete, limited to 18 months maximum.
in the UK for example, which is still sort of in the EU during the transition period, a non-compete IS enforceable as long as it is reasonable and proportionate.
Overly long time periods or overly broad geography will get it struck out, but 6 months not working for a direct competitor is usually going to be fair game.
How do companies like Amazon track down new employers of individual developers? I can understand tracking VPs, but when you say that they tried to enforce such non-competes hundreds of times I assume the went after random developer scrubs like me. So how does this work? Developers tell previous employer about new one before leaving? Update their linkedin profile on first day on new job?
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.
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.
The main argument for non-competes comes from banking/professional services (thinks accountants or lawyers). It's to stop you taking all your clients with you when you jump ship. It's typically only enforced for partners or really senior managers and the theory is, it allows the company time to cement their relationship with the client while you're out of the market.
I have often seen it enforced as, you can go (after your notice period/gardening leave) but you have to stay away from a set of clients for the period of your non-compete.
That's a reasonable argument, however, without strict legal restrictions that gets stretched as far as fast food employees being prohibited to go work at another restaurant, which is ridiculous on one hand and very understandable on the other - they have little bargaining power to refuse the clause, and a non-compete means they'll be less likely to leave so it allows the employer to keep wages low.
Yes, companies can have non-solicitation agreements which are IMO quite reasonable so long as they cover a reasonable time period and AFAIK are generally enforceable.
> 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.
Technically yes, but to play devil's advocate: it's easy for someone to provide trade secrets to a new employer without leaving a trail of evidence behind, and it's a lot easier to prove someone worked for a competitor than it is to prove someone gave a competitor trade secrets, so there is a valid argument for why employers might want to enforce non-competes.
Whether that justifies their enforceability or not is a different question.
> Look at Anthony Levandowski as a high-profile example of someone who stole trade secrets in California and got nailed.
I'm reading his Wikipedia page:
> While working at Google, Levandowski established other companies as side projects,[17] including 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots, which were later bought by Google.[18]
tl;dr: he certainly has some balls! Any idea why he even left Google? It sounds like they paid him a total comp of some 120 mil, and he worked there for just 9 years, that's an average of 13 mil a year, not small change by any measure (although I guess that might include the price they've paid for the companies he founded).
I guess he wanted them to keep buying his new companies again and again?
> 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).
> 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.
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?
That’s the stick way. The carrot way is to offer a bonus if the employee stays for a year. Even more effective is to give the bonus immediately, but require they repay it (or forfeit final wages) if they leave earlier than a year.
> 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.
Pay higher than others and employees won’t leave you.
Make delayed payments part of compensation, so employees get the money only if they stay long enough.
Don’t hire employees who change jobs too often.
There are many ways to keep employees from leaving without damaging their careers.
> 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.
If you train me and I get better at my job, I deserve more money. If you don't give it to me, I will work for someone else who will pay me more.
Good companies train their employees and also do what it takes to retain them. It's a two-way street. Why should you get to extract more labor value from me without paying me more?
When Oracle hired a good chunk of experienced AWS engineers to build their new cloud platform, they retained lawyers for each candidate to smooth the transition. They went in to it with their eyes open and played it safe.
It amounted to little more than lawyers talking back and forth for a little bit, and coming to an agreement about what the engineers could and couldn't work on for OCI, and for what time period. I hate to think how much it was costing both companies in terms of legal fees given how many made the jump.
I would imagine Google was doing the same thing, but presumably this time couldn't get to an agreement, or Amazon decided it was time to make some noise again (it seems to happen every year or so). Amazon never seems crazy enough to let it actually get to court and risk judgment going against them / their non-compete.
> I hate to think how much it was costing both companies in terms of legal fees given how many made the jump.
A former professor of mine once said... If there's one laywer in town, they drive a Chevrolet. If there are two lawyers in town, they both drive Cadillacs.
> When Oracle hired a good chunk of experienced AWS engineers to build their new cloud platform, they retained lawyers for each candidate to smooth the transition.
When somebody else pays for your lawyer she's not your lawyer.
Google is surprisingly naive at many aspects of business. It’s quite possible they didn’t even consider doing something Oracle would have found routine.
That's fairly common in investment banking and is called "gardening leave". My understanding is that in banking you get your salary but not your bonus during the gardening leave period.
I have never seen Gardening Leave used in this manner.
Usually (and I know this from personal experience) if you are senior enough you have a notice period of 3-6 months and under normal circumstances you are expected to do a proper handover before leaving. Sometimes they don't want you to come in to the office or have access to the corporate network/data but they still want access to you in case they need it.
Non-competes are usually 18-24 months and I don't think anyone is going to pay that for you to sit on your butt.
Two Sigma regularly pays people 12 - 24 months to do nothing after they leave in lieu of them taking an offer with anothing trading firm, if they were working in strategy or research roles.
Not in the US but in Sweden a NCA is enforceable only if the employee is being paid (up to 60% of the former salary) during the whole period of the NCA that can last up to a maximum of 18 months.
The employee would just have a very long notice period - so they are officially employed under the same contract as before, but the employer might revoke their access and say they don't need to show up. (And of course the contract would prevent them working or consulting for another company without their employer's agreement during the notice period, just as it did before.)
Not going to happen since Amazon is 100% not doing this to protect any proprietary knowledge, but rather as a threat to other employees who may be thinking of leaving.
This is not uncommon in FinTech and big funds/banks. You basically take a 3-6 month vacation, all paid, before actually leaving. Yo do not engage, and are not allowed to engage, in any meaningful work in the meantime.
edit: amusing, people downvoting labor liberation and freedom, amazing shit; votes for labor captivity by trillion dollar corporations then eh
This is a terrible idea.
You may be a lot more valuable vs what they were previously paying you. Perhaps you were being undervalued, or the new company has a need for you that places a high premium on you. So now the former company can veto your future and hold you at your previous income.
The new opportunity also may far exceed the past opportunity in potential compensation (in your estimation, even if it's a wild-eyed thinking), or the opportunity is one you want to take and it's not the money driving you. That veto that is holding you in place, is a potential economic straightjacket and is also a veto over a choice to pursue a quality of life improvement by taking a better / more fulfilling job.
Hyper rich corporations like Amazon will hold talent hostage just to deny them (and their expertise) from another company, which is entirely unfair to the employee in question. The tech giants already frequently roach motel talent as it is and they've been doing it for decades, I'd hate to see this practice further entrenched (and particularly against the will of the employee).
I think the bigger issue is the ambiguity of what constitutes a violation. As written in the article, this guy was under the impression that what he was doing was acceptable.
If it's perfectly clear what it covers, then the employee can decide whether it's acceptable, try to negotiate it, or decline the terms, just like any other provision in a contract.
I think there are some talented people who Amazon would gladly pay a salary to in order to stop competitors hiring them. A top-end salary is tiny compared to the value a good employee can bring to a competitor. Amazon would be stupid not to take that deal.
That sounds abusable. You get some company (possibly owned by a friend of yours) to offer you a massive salary, then your original company has to pay that massive salary for 3 months or whatever. Then as soon as you start at the new company, they fire you.
Noncompetes are terrible, and you should be prepared to pay out of your nose if you want to keep an employee off the market.
As long as you're not forced to pay that money, it's all good. It just means that the employee can actually switch jobs immediately (for a better pay or not) unless you're willing to pay them however much they're willing to stay out of the market for.
Say I make $100k today. I get an offer at a place I really like, for $150k. I'd really like to go there, but they're also a competitor. I offer to stay home for $200k, and if you don't want to pay that much, then I go to work for $150k.
Ok, so what you're saying is you want the employee to be able to optionally enter a non-compete at quitting time at a price the employee negotiates to, as long as that price is at least the employee's previous salary. That sounds like a reasonable proposal.
Then just be open about it and say you want to remove non-competes. Nothing bad about it, but inventing clauses which makes them effectively forbidden, but not really just clogs up courts.
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.
> 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.
Noncompetes are only about preventing talent from working for the competition. They aren't really about protecting secrets, because those are already protected. There are laws against stealing trade secrets, and NDAs in addition to those laws.
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.”
I'd be OK with non-competes if the departing company had to pay 150% of salary during the non-compete duration if they elected to invoke the non-compete.
In contract law, this is known as "consideration". California has decided that "sign this or you won't get hired", isn't a valid form of consideration because it inhibits future earning potential, it's not (normally) mutually negotiated, nor is it negotiated on equal terms.
If companies really want it, they should pay for it.
Alternatively, if Amazon wanted to protect its market strategy, it should have made sure there was no ambiguity in this term. For example, if they had a narrow non-compete that says, you can't do cloud marketing or marketing strategy for Microsoft, IBM, or Google, it would hold much more standing because it's not overly broad.
As its written, where could he have gone and known for sure that that business wasn't a competitor? You can argue nearly every business is a competitor of Amazon. That's what makes it invalid.
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.
Even just base salary, if that's not something they'll stop paying the second you land a job somewhere else that could be completely reasonable. That'd be an extra 50% on top of whatever other job just to avoid direct competitors for the next year or so. I'd take that deal, and not just because an offer was contingent on it.
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.
>I don't see what Amazon is really afraid of if some random developer leaves and goes to a competitor
I don't see what's not to see. Preventing someone from going to a competitor is generally not so much the goal as the means of discouraging someone from leaving at all.
Yup. When I was a recruiter, everyone was fully aware that the second we told our bosses we were taking another position was the second we would be asked to say our goodbyes and leave the premises. They definitely did not want us touching any system that contained details of clients or consultants.
17 years later, I've since been back to that office several times to visit friends without objection.
I get that sales would have lots of relationships with customers, but why marketing? Doesn’t marketing’s relationship end once the lead becomes a customer? Are marketing executives an exception?
Something to point out here: the guy Brian reported to is based in California, where non-competes are held to be unenforceable.
If non-competes are truly as strategically necessary as Amazon says they are, why on earth would they hire such a senior executive in a jurisdiction that wouldn't uphold them?
They're not completely unenforceable in California. And the company can make your life miserable by suing you because you have to hire and pay the lawyer to win the case.
However, you generally have to be someone at this guy's level before non-competes can even have a chance of being enforceable. And there are lots of weird restrictions--you have to have access to data that would be damaging to the business, the lockout time needs to be relatively short, probably has to be in your contract before signing, etc.
> And the company can make your life miserable by suing you because you have to hire and pay the lawyer to win the case.
This is the part that I can not understand about United States. How is this even allowed? It is literally bullying someone to submit, even if what you do is illegal.
One of the main reasons I choose to immigrate to EU instead of US
There are some restraints on the ability for someone to sue you just to give you a headache, such as dismissing a case with prejudice or anti-SLAPP laws.
The EU has it's own systemic issues. However, they are different because it is mostly based on a Napoleonic Law basis rather than Common Law basis.
The problem in the US is that judges don't throw around the "this was pretty obviously frivolous and you lost so you have to pay for the court costs" card anywhere nearly enough.
Another problem is that the lawyer doesn't share in the penalty even when it gets applied.
A final problem is that the lawyers and judge are all buddies and see each other for lots of cases, so they're unwilling to actually slap each other when one of them is being stupid.
I feel like it comes back down to the ethics. A lawyer should not accept the case, because they should know the case is not valid, but they do it regardless. If there was a repercussion for accepting too many invalid cases or suing people for not legal grounds, they would stop doing that.
I don't know, as long as lawyers are allowed to defend murderers, you cannot really argue why they wouldn't be allowed to defend companies in such a case.
There is a big difference between defending a basic human right (e.g. a murderers right to be judged fairly) and a company explicitly putting illegal clauses in a contract to bully their current and past employees. An ethical lawyer would (and should) pick up the first case, and advise the company to remove that clause in the second case, because its illegal and not enforceable, with its only purpose is to bully people.
There is a difference between defending someone who is indicted (the lawsuit is going to happen no matter what, and the defendant has a right to a lawyer), and initiating a lawsuit.
An NDA is practically unenforceable in this situation, which is the entire point a noncompete is a thing. Who is going to snitch on them for revealing AWS secrets to Google and violating the NDA? Another Google exec?
> I mean, I can sue you for stealing US nuclear secrets. Now if only I had some evidence...
#1 - No you can't, because only government officials can prosecute "crimes", as opposed to civil causes of action. (I think this distinction is stupid; it is not part of anyone's view of the world and it doesn't have any useful effects. But it will definitely stop you from prosecuting someone for espionage.)
#2 - No, you can't, because you don't suffer any injury if em-bee steals US nuclear secrets.
i am not saying that doing that is always a good idea, but we are talking about amazon vs google, to competitors who have more resources than sense, so yes, absolutely.
They aren’t suing someone random. Google would surely back the legal fees for the person if Google themselves aren’t somehow sued. What would be the point of this then?
> An NDA is practically unenforceable in this situation
As we shall see, the non-compete is also unenforceable in this situation, it just costs more to show that it's not. Non-competes are for the "small" people.
The bigger question is, why are you carrying water for them? Enforceability of this BS is not in your interest unless you're a major shareholder, and even then non-competes are ethically dubious at best. If what's in his head is so valuable (which I'm almost certain it's not), Amazon should offer to pay him his previous comp for the duration of his non-compete, at the very least, so that he sits it out for a year. What are his options? To not ever work anywhere else again? To radically switch careers upon departure?
Trade secrets law is the stick that keeps people from sharing former company secrets. People don't want to go to jail or have a felony on their record.
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.
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.
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?
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.
What a software engineer union would be like depends on who you ask. Thus the risk as no one agrees and thus the result would be a crap shoot. Worse, it'd become a political situation so even if it starts aiming for A the movement may be hijacked to cause B. For example, many people mention preventing things such as unexpected PIPs and firings which sounds a lot more like teamsters than a guild.
Most people don't find it reasonable to sabotage yourself based on the belief that things could be and probably will be worse some day. If some people do, then they inherently tend to get marginalized.
My dad was an engineer who I was told tried to organize a vote to form a union at GE pre-Jack Welch. It failed, but was close. Probably over 30 years after he died it occurred to me that might have something to do with why he retired early.
I always figured any company that has a union deserves it - but that doesn't mean I want to be a part of a company where management and labor has that bad of a relationship. Now I belong to a public sector union - and everybody hates those - so I tend to take a nuanced perspective, but there are some mundane drawbacks. For instance, before covid, work-from-home was pretty restricted, and because the exact amount and rules were in the contract, it wasn't easy to change.
So you're advocating for a union that pays a premium for those employees who have seniority but whose skills are no longer in much demand? At the cost of salary for those whose skills have remained in demand or who have kept up to date with trends? After all, otherwise what advantage does a a union have in your scenario?
I doubt many well performing SEs would be happy to have coworkers like that in the future.
The ones worried about future marketability have many options including saving a lager percentage of income, investing money in passive income sources, moving into management, etc.
What does one have to do with the other? And to save time in the event it goes this direction, why would a union prioritize non-competes in their contract (re)negotiation with the employer? Are there examples of industries that commonly have non-competes where unions have successfully eliminated them?
Cooperative bargaining is a positive-sum game. If you and I work together to negotiate a contract, we can get better terms than either of us could get individually.
The first sentence is true. The second sentence can be true but often isn’t. If 90% of the workers at a firm are worth $50,000 a year and 10% are worth $200,000 a year a union will represent the average worker, screwing the top 10%. The closer you are to the average of the members in your union the better they represent your interests. If you are far from a representative member the degree to which they will fight for your interests is markedly less.
That's assuming the union represents the workers. In practice, many represent the union bosses, politically-savvy union members, and otherwise. The political cesspools can hurt everyone.
They don't have to hurt everyone -- there are definite good unions -- but there are bad ones too.
This seems to presume that the members of this group have common interests to negotiate on (they dont) and to ignore group psychology.
If I have high individual negotiating power and I want to, say, work from home then I do not benefit from unionizing with a majority of people with low-power who do not want to work from home.
it's quite plausible that the minimum common interests the group has are already satisfied by the employment terms, and then, the negotiation is an opportunity for "union reps" to game the system to the advantage of some over others.
You iterate this over a large number of negotiations, thrown in "union" as now a group and not a mere negotiating block, and you get the police union.
Prohibiting non-competes means you can't make a contract with a non-compete provision. Allowing non-competes is less of a restriction on people's freedom to contract.
(Personally I think prohibiting non-competes makes employment work better in practice)
But by being able to give your employer more (the non-compete), you might be able to negotiate more in return. Removing the ability for you to sign a non-compete might limit your benefit.
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?
> the hiring team has always led me to believe that the non-competes are a standard clause and are not likely to be enforced.
My policy is: "Hey, if you don't plan on enforcing it, let's remove it from the contract... oh, you're not allowed to remove it? I guess we're done talking then." Fortunately I live in CA where they're not legally enforceable anyway.
> On a separate note, anybody knows if Google would help with legal defense of Hall or ignore this as a private matter?
It's certainly in Google's best interest that the suit goes well for Hall, so I imagine Google's legal counsel would represent him. The only way I'd figure they wouldn't get involved is if doing so would make it more likely that there'd be a bad outcome for some reason.
> My policy is: "Hey, if you don't plan on enforcing it, let's remove it from the contract... oh, you're not allowed to remove it? I guess we're done talking then."
As a former lawyer, this is a very good policy to have.
Alarm bells should be going off if someone tries to browbeat you into accepting "standard terms" on the basis that "they're not enforced".
> 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.
It's not just him that you're getting. It's the goodwill and confidence you're giving to every single other potential future hire. If you refuse to defend the person and leave the person unemployed in the ditch, future candidates will be much less likely to want to join your company.
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.
Could you go into more detail or provide any resources/blogs on this? We're lightweight users of EKS and I'm interested in avoiding the issues you mentioned.
A lot of what I know is second hand, but I have personally had trouble scaling out a large cluster. AWS's (non-public) limits (# of nodes, API rate limits etc.) fall WAY short of what Kubernetes can support. There is also a lot of configuration and manual work involved to setup and manage the cluster compared to GKE or Azure which are both close to one-click.
I feel the same way. I know that GCP has lured me away from AWS, though I would like to say that has been due to a more simple model for managing resources and exposing documentation, and not much marketing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of course there are certain exceptions, but usually you’re still on the line for getting in trouble in another state. Being in another state doesn’t make you immune.
I would be surprised if that’s true even across EU country lines if you’re still within the EU.
i didn't mean immunity, but i assumed that california law would always override here. turns out it is very much a case of it depends.
in the EU non-compete clauses are quite limited and usually require compensation. unreasonable clauses can be invalidated.
in germany for example a clause covering the whole country is unreasonable. therefore i think it's unlikely that a clause covering multiple member states would be acceptable.
in general there is a mutual recognition of judgements from other states.
thinking about this some more, this obviously must be the case, otherwise working across state borders would be difficult. the same must hold true for the USA as well.
>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".
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.
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.
Why would the number of companies in a given space affect the possibility of job hopping without violating a non-compete? If you're a chef with a non-compete against working at any other restaurant, that's probably more limiting than a tech non-compete.
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.
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.
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.
There is certainly no rule against linking your own stuff, it's just a personal preference by ctvo. The bandwagon down-voters joined in as they often do.
> 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).
They probably don't expect to win. They just want to throw as much sand in the competitor's faces as possible, and also pay their key staff as little as they can get away with, made easier if there are higher switching costs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.)