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

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

#201

Post by derivativethrow »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #128
psanford wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-co…

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.

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

#202

Post by csunbird »

auggierose wrote: post #187
csunbird wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. But, that is not going to happen obviously.

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.

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

#203

Post by em-bee »

skinnymuch wrote: post #39
em-bee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause

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.

here is one interesting point:

https://www.incegd.com/en/news-insights/recast-brussels-regu...

The basic rule is that a defendant should be sued in the courts of the EU Member State in which it is domiciled.

this would mean if someone were to move to a state where non-competes are unenforceable, then they should indeed likely be able to escape that clause

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

#204

Post by psanford »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #128
psanford wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-co…

My understanding of gardening leave mostly comes from how Matt Levine talks about it: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-28/take-t...

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

#206

Post by 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.

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

#207

Post by sukilot »

QuinnyPig wrote: post #116
bcantrill wrote: post #65

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 knowled…

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?! I can't abide a bully.

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

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

#209

Post by paxys »

whatthesmack wrote: post #164
paxys wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that AWS's Kubernetes offering (EKS) is plagued with bugs and scaling challenges, while Google's is top tier.

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.

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

#210

Post by nnt38 »

nraynaud wrote: post #182
chii wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Same in Germany
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