Amazon sues former AWS marketing VP Brian Hall after he takes Google Cloud job

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.

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.

Considering how much they paid out in age discrimination lawsuits under his tenure, it’s a surprising part of his management philosophy.

> 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.

This is factually incorrect

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.

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].

[1] https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Onderwerpen/Concurrentiebeding

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.

Employees make your business. An employee Amazon is willing to fight to keep away from you is probably worth fighting to keep.

Would a company like Amazon not have full time lawyers retained on salary instead of relying on outside counsel with that conflict?

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.

Can’t be a fraction. Full comp. That’s what you were worth to them, that’s what you’re worth to not go somewhere else.

It should be whatever is highest between your current salary and the new job offer.

How does it work if the former employee is on work visa? Do they still sign a no-show contract with the former employer?

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> In fact, noncompetes are probably one of the biggest reasons Silicon Valley was able to take off...

Just noting a typo for anyone confused by the wording, I'm sure you meant "the unenforceability of noncompetes is..." or something along those lines.

> 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.

> 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 tech industry in California does just fine without noncompetes.

For years, they (led by Steve Jobs) "did just fine" because they (Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel at least) illegally acted as a no-poach cartel:

https://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/

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.

> 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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

If that stuff is so important and unique, why don't they just patent it? Didn't they get a one-click purchase button patented?

>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.

If you’re working on something truely secret, you don’t need a non-compete. Corporate secrets are a thing.

> non-competes are held to be unenforceable

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.

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?

see: anthony lewandowski

Wow, that is absolutely insane.

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

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)

It's interesting how many successful, creative people seem to be incapable at imagining themselves not being so successful one day.

What you perform well at today won't necessarily be valuable in the future.

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.

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.

> 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.

Software engineers are hard as heck to replace.

> 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".

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.

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.

That depends on what Amazon's motives were.

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.

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....

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.

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

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.