Bradley Horowitz Leaves Yahoo For Google | Hacker News Reader

Bradley Horowitz Leaves Yahoo For Google

techcrunch.com

13 pointsraghus11 comments

The article's picture goes great with the current top story (the mimicry one).

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

> Don't these people have non-competes?

Welcome to California! :-D

explain

"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

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?

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.)

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.

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...)

Because of California's settled public policy in favor of competition, it is questionable whether any covenant not to compete which restrains a partner, member or director from engaging in a competing business that is not expressly authorized by statute or designed to protect a trade secret will be held enforceable in California. Moreover, because of this strong public policy, it is unlikely that a California court will apply the law of another state in interpreting a covenant not to compete based upon a contractual provision or the internal affairs doctrine. Therefore, caution must be exercised in California whenever attempting to limit a partner, member or director from entering into a competing business through a contract.

http://www.pircher.com/resources/article.php?i=329

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

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