Going to be hard to say you didn't want him and so offered him a severance package but then complain on where he landed. $325K is not very much money for someone agreeing not to go to a competitor for 18 months? Weird stuff.
The ability to earn a livelihood is an inalienable right, and I don't understand how it's legally enforceable to have a contractual clause that negates that right.
A clause that one does not reveal confidential information though, is another matter.
>The ability to earn a livelihood is an inalienable right, and I don't understand how it's legally enforceable to have a contractual clause that negates that right.
If I pay you $325k to sit on your hands for a year and you take a job requiring you to clap all day, you're in breach of contract.. the fact is that the employee is violating the terms of the severance package, not the employment contract. I think there is a meaningful distinction here.
Yeah I can see where you pay someone not to go to a competitor. I can see where you don't care and don't let someone go to a competitor. I don't see where you pay someone the same or even less than they would make over that 18 month period AND expect they don't go to a competitor. Of course, this guy signed it too so maybe it's equally shared.
How are those two easily distinguishable, when the major selling point of your skill set is that you worked on and designed a system whose workings are the confidential information.
Non-competes don't negate a person's right to earn a livelihood. This guy could have found a job at a million other companies that aren't directly competing with Amazon on cloud services, and he wouldn't have been given any problems from Amazon.
If he didn't agree to the non-compete then he shouldn't have signed the contract.
Very true. Although the answer can be "both". In this case it sounds like there was some specific severance package negotiation and I suspect there was a more specific non compete put in place for the exchange of $$'s
