Amazon added a non-compete after the employee entered the U.S. on an L1B visa
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Dropping the threshold from 180k to 100k would cause everyone who has maxed out their salary at Amazon to have enforceable non-competes.
I'd be curious what types of jobs at Amazon were immediately under the 100k threshold, and what percent of the total Washington state Amazon workforce has a salary of 100k+?
For example, in our state, teachers and government employees receive a full pension after 20 years of service. That pension pays out 1/2 of some average of their previous few year's salary. Even if you retire making a relatively modest $60K/yr, that pension is still worth north of $50K/yr over those 20 years.
Salaries that don't include pensions aren't nearly as generous as they sound. $100K/yr without a pension is comparable to $40K/yr with a pension.
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1. Including absolutely incredible housing price inflation in major cities like Seattle which typical measures of inflation don't properly capture).
I don’t know the specifics of the examples you are thinking of, but pricing the pension value/cost at $50k a year probably posits some extreme assumptions (e.g., start and retire at lowest age, end with a very high salary, take pension with full value immediately, and live a very long time).
The crazy benefits that people nag about are for uniformed folks only, as they tend to get overtime based on seniority, and don’t have aggressive caps. Most civilian employees like teachers don’t get anything like that.
https://www.immediateannuities.com/information/annuity-rates...
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate how much you would have to save in a 401K over 20 years to have that much at retirement.
I don't know how to square this with 12 percent of salary I was contributing towards the state pension. Care to share your math? I agree that pensions are worth something, but not 150% of salary.
I think with 1.2mn you can get a better annuity than 20k/year
It’s probably more like a 100k job with no pension is comparable to 60-70k with a final salary pension
I'm sorry, but what? Rent or Rent equivalent is absolutely a part of US regional inflation measures.
edit: The BLS publishes a Consumer Price Index published by for Seattle metro area^1. The breakdown^2 quite literally includes housing as part of the basket of goods, listing about a 3 percent increase for that section yoy, and I believe the weighting is typically 1/3 of the total index. Seems like it's capturing it just fine?
^1 https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/consumerpricei... ^2 https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/consumerpricei...
I don't understand - are you saying that Amazon pays nobody in Seattle more than $160k? I can't believe that's true. How are they employing competent senior people for so little? Are they paying their corporate lawyers that low?
I'd guess they have some leeway make exceptions to the cap, and I have no idea if it applies to management track positions.
It's still kind of amazing that so many people go there, I guess it's that great big top line number when you add in stock. I know so many people who left there before 2 years, cause they hated it so much. What are the places that don't suck there?
Year one comp was about $520k (160 base, 320 bonus, 40 RSU)
Year two comp was around $580k (160 base, 280 bonus, 140 RSU)
This year I’m on pace to gross near $700k (160 base, no bonus, 500+ RSUs)
Stock comp wouldn’t be excluded in any kind of limit anyways.
Lobbying is legal in most (all?) of Europe too. It's a slippery activity to pin down, not amenable to banning because it consists of nominally innocuous activities. You can put degrees of limitation on activities that reduce what you'd call lobbying, but I don't see how you could make it fully illegal.
The bad, and frankly unbelievable part, is the whole "money is speech" and the fact that it's OK for lobbyists to just transfer money in many different forms to politicians as a firm of persuasion to vote for/against certain pieces of legislation.
The first term is that it is unenforceable:
• Unless the employer discloses the terms of the covenant in writing to the prospective employee no later than the time of the acceptance of the offer of employment and, if the agreement becomes enforceable only at a later date due to changes in the employee's compensation, the employer specifically discloses that the agreement may be enforceable against the employee in the future
or
• If the covenant is entered into after the commencement of employment, unless the employer provides independent consideration for the covenant.
The second term is that it is unenforceable:
• Unless the employee's earnings from the party seeking enforcement, when annualized, exceed one hundred thousand dollars per year.
The third term is that it is unenforceable:
• If the employee is terminated as the result of a layoff, unless enforcement of the noncompetition covenant includes compensation equivalent to the employee's base salary at the time of termination for the period of enforcement minus compensation earned through subsequent employment during the period of enforcement.
So...if you earn more than $100k, and you were properly notified of it when hired (or paid to accept it if it was added on later), and you are not leaving due to a layoff or they aren't willing to keep paying you while the noncompete runs out, then it might be enforceable.
Adding some context: as I understood, L1B is a "transfer" visa for "existing" employees, which under "existing" often mean record of employment being outright forged, or being put on very low key position with explicit intent of later L1B transfer. L1B is supposed to be of lesser value than L1A, which opens much more options for an employee/corporate serf to away.
I believe the change is due to the later being a much easier door to US for a lot of people from low income countries where Amazon runs captive outsourcing centres. They didn't want people to scout for another, better jobs around the moment they stepped into US, even if that mean the next hiring company had to do its own L1 for them.
All L1 visas are internal transfers; they require extensive documentation of the role being performed outside the US for an extended period, and tie you to a specific set of responsibilities in the US; and they are not transferable once in the US - you can’t move to an L1 at another company, because you haven’t worked for that company outside the US. THe difference between a and b is just the kinds of roles that are eligible for transfer.
If you are on an L1 and you quit or are dismissed, you lose your immigration status and have to leave the US.
https://www.upcounsel.com/non-compete-california
I remember Apple and Google getting into trouble over non-compete several years back.
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/why-i-dont-sign-non-competes/
If a company isn't willing to negotiate their work agreement (and I understand this is difficult with a legal department; they prefer to have unified contracts for all employees based on their start year), then there is no "meeting of the minds" when it comes to signing that agreement. It's not a work contract at that point, it's an EULA.
I personally know people who were told by potential employers they couldn't be considered because of non-competes. They are unethical and they should be banned national wide in the US and not just in certain states like California.
The most obvious way is to require paying the employee their previous average total compensation, while still allowing the employee to work outside the non-compete. There should also be some form of “as time goes on you need to pay more to prevent them from taking a competing job”. If you don’t want to pay someone to not work for a competitor, then your non-compete should not be valid.
If it isn't paid, the non-compete isn't enforceable.
It also requires a few more limits to be enforceable:
- "reasonably" limited in time
- geographically limited
- a specific activity / role
So they usually aren't ever enforced, because most of the time employers don't find them worth it.
It covers high-priced sales executives, C-levels, and very senior engineers just fine. Those are the positions that might reasonably take sensitive financials or trade secrets with them.
Joe Blow Web-developer? There shouldn't be a need. And if there is, pay him for the duration.
This is similar to the British concept called “gardening leave”.
Noncompetes are not inherently unethical and should absolutely not be outlawed. If a company wants to pay you $500k to not work and you are willing to be paid $500k to not work you should have the right to come to a mutual agreement with them on the matter.
It’s a free country, if you don’t like the noncompete, find some other place to work. No one is forcing you to sign it.
Whether or not they're "inherently" unethical is a matter for philosophers. But in practice, they're clearly used heavily as an anticompetitive measure and to exploit labor. Those are definitely unethical, and contrary to free markets.
Your last line is willfully blind to labor history. Quite a lot of employers have done their best to make sure other options are limited. Employers definitionally have a huge power advantage, and there's nothing wrong with leveling the playing field to prevent exploitation.
The "or else" here is you walk away and seek out an agreement with someone else. You're not forced to sign a contract just because it's not negotiable.
> Those are definitely unethical, and contrary to free markets.
I don't think it's unethical or exploitative to pay someone $500k to sit on a beach and relax for a year. Many non-competes are also industry specific, so you can even double dip and get a job while collecting your gardening leave payout as long as it's not within the same subfield you used to work in.
You can argue that certain low-wage, low-skill employees need a paycheck every two weeks or starve, and these people have zero leverage or ability to walk away from a punitive contract, but highly paid tech workers don't fall into this category. There are plenty of options out there for you if you don't want to sign a noncompete. Some people like the idea of getting paid a bunch of money to not work, just because you don't like noncompetes doesn't mean you are entitled to force your personal preferences on other people against their will by outlawing such agreements.
Sometimes non-competes are so lucrative that employees sue their own employers to force them to uphold them even when the employers don't want to.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/employer-s-waiver-non-c...
Does that sound like exploitation to you?
There is actually a much better solution than this.
The better solution is to sign the contract, and then completely ignore it, afterwords.
The reality is, that in many top tech places it is extremely difficult to enforce non-competes. And it is perfectly possible, most of the time to get away with ignoring them completely.
Company could for example still keep you hired for that time, without requiring you to perform any work for them. I don't believe non-compete ban would apply for that time, since you are technically still their employee so you still have your responsibilities as long as you are being paid.
Instead insist that they include a severance clause that continues to pay you during the term of the non-compete. Either they are serious about the non-compete and will pay you, or they will drop it at that point.
Don't just sign away a deal point for nothing in exchange.
Courts carefully scrutinize adhesion contracts and sometimes void certain provisions because of the possibility of unequal bargaining power, unfairness, and unconscionability. Factoring into such decisions include the nature of the agreement, the possibility of unfair surprise, lack of notice, unequal bargaining power, and substantive unfairness. Courts often use the “doctrine of reasonable expectations” as a justification for invalidating parts or all of an adhesion contract: the weaker party will not be held to adhere to contract terms that are beyond what the weaker party would have reasonably expected from the contract, even if what he or she reasonably expected was outside the strict letter of agreement."
Trying to negotiate (in writing) and getting it denied makes it abundantly clear it is a contract of adhesion. This significantly weakens the contract's validity on abnormal clauses.
An email asking how much of a salary drop it would take to drop the non compete (thus giving Amazon the chance to negotiate) and them replying with "its non-negotiable" should go quite far, the problem is you have to wait until Amazon sues you to actually see if it'll work.
Your best bet would be to retain a lawyer as soon as you get an offer and tell him to do his best to get you out of the non compete, and the legal strategy will vary greatly depending on the state in which you are being hired.
Imagine if adhesion contracts didn't exist and you had to to have your lawyers negotiate every grocery store purchase.
The non-compete specifically says that I am not allowed to open source any software, and until very recently, I wasn't allowed to even open a Github issue. The wording specifically says that they own anything I conceive of while working for them.
I shouldn't have signed it, I'm always working on personal projects and it's kind of depressing that I only realistically have the option to either donate my project to my corporation so that, at best, they own all rights to it and probably never open source it, OR not-release anything so that I have plausible deniability if/when I quit.
1) Competing with your current company while moonlighting.
2) Leaving your current company and using any knowledge you gained there against them.
3) Leaving your current company and using your skill set at an unrelated company.
Contracts forbidding 1 & 2 are usually defensible both morally and legally. It’s 3 where the metaphorical water gets murky, since overly broad contracts of this type basically deny workers the ability to work and earn money for the duration of the noncompete, if enforced.
Of course, it also required arbitration of anything around that area.
They seemed surprised when I brought it up as onerous!
Edit: This was in the UK where these seem to be becoming the norm.
Careful on that one. A good negotiator will always want you to think that what you want in your favour is surprising, onerous and that nobody has asked for that before.
I don't know which giant tech company is your employer. But at least Google has a very streamlined internal process you can apply for to let Google release the copyright of your side project to you. (disclaimer: I worked for Google, and in particular worked somewhat close with the people reviewing those cases for a few years)
Lots of California-based companies have strict policies about ownership of projects that you do on your own time. And there are certainly companies outside of California that don't have non-competes and which have liberal policies about open source contributions.
Wonder if maybe this is why some companies are expanding in other places like Austin, Texas or Salt Lake City? Like for example Apple is going to the largest employer in Austin, yet Texas doesn't offer as many employment protections... Maybe as things grow, Texas and other states will look into the issue more... I do think in general tech spreading throughout the country instead of being centralized in California is a pro though.
That's quite normal, at least under Dutch labour law. It prevents IP discussions if an employee does anything outside of the 9-5 working hours, or anything they were not directly instructed to by their manager.
Of course there can be exceptions, e.g., we exempt open source software by default, and are open for any discussions on other side projects the employee may have. But the concept that all your programming work belongs to the company is not that strange.
Also note that this is not a non-compete, but simply an IP clause.
It is absolutely strange that they’d think they own anything that I do outside of the 8 hours a day I work for them.
Much of my value is in designing solutions to technical challeneges, not in cranking out lines of code.
This gets even more complex if I get an idea that builds on something I only learned due to my position, but itself isn't directly related to my role. If I could only have ever conceived my idea due to proprietary info, who gets the IP?
That we've acquiesced and allowed the situation to fester means that such clauses are not unusual. They are, however, in the grand scheme of things very, very strange.
- You hire someone and they create something and use it as part of your software. - They leave. - Then they sue you because they say you are using their software that they created in their spare time.
Or any of the other 999 IP disputes that can arise from not being very clear about who owns the IP of things your employees create.
The reason they have this progress is that google does so many things that almost anything could be considered competing with Google.
To me, this is a form of slavery, giving away a life's work for a salary.
https://california.public.law/codes/ca_bus_and_prof_code_sec....
California Business & Professions Code section 16600 makes clear that any non-compete provision between employer and employee will not be enforceable under California law
(Though nothing is actually enforcable in India like you said, simply because you would probably be retired before the case would get a court date)
[0]https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/20945/what-is-...
This is only true of Amazon. As far as I'm aware, none of the others have non-competes (Google certainly doesn't).
So maybe the more succinct advice is, just don't work for Amazon.
Please have some empathy for people like me that can't waltz into any job and don't say things like this.
I'm not sure what happens if you're hired in California and then transfer somewhere else.
Since it's Washington State we're talking about: Googlers who join in WA state do not have a Non-compete in their contract (at least the "rank and file" engineers), even though Google could add it and Amazon/Microsoft have one.
In fact Google took it a step further and tried to lobby to get non-compete banned in WA State:
There was an almost full-ban on non-compete that was proposed a few years ago in Washington State. Google came to the public hearings with full support for the law as it is (which make sense given the status for non compete in California - and how it had gotten sued by Microsoft over one employee, and now again by Amazon). The law would have made it that non-compete are void if laid-off, and void if over 1 year max or if you're not an executive employee.
But Microsoft, Amazon, and the hospitals lobbied hard against it. (Hospitals are using those non-competes on both nurses and doctors apparently)
So the bill got rewritten where it only applies to people with a total comp less than 185k, and where student debt could be subtracted to that 185k. This, again, got fought more by opponents.
Now the ban on non compete only applies to people whose yearly salary (total comp as listed on W-2) is less than 100k, So doctors and tech workers at those companies get nothing out of it, except the clarification that non compete:
- cannot be for longer than 18 months
- if employee is laid off and non compete is enforced, the company must pay base salary for the duration of non-compete.
Geekwire had a good coverage of it over the years:
https://www.geekwire.com/2016/non-compete-bill-stalls-washin...
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/effort-kill-non-competes-washi...
https://www.geekwire.com/2019/tech-leaders-sound-off-washing...
And the original bills: http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2015-16/Pdf/Bills/Hou...
http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2017-18/Pdf/Bills/Hou...
final bill: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1450&Initiativ...
Seems a little overzealous if you are a rank and file
But, then again, for some roles a public presence is needed, like public speaking. You can't temporarily have the role of "janitor" and go out and speak authoritatively about AWS at a conference with that role. Maybe people will get the joke after understanding the true state of these agreements.
Wait, do we even have conferences anymore?
Though, it's really up to Amazon whether they want to keep you unemployed for 18 months, which is (in my mind) totally unethical to even have in the contract in the first place.
Has anyone here had a company try to enforce their non compete, and can share their insights?
If a business can get even a small fraction of its labor to follow unenforcable/essentially illegal requirements, they've made significant headway, even if they don't ever choose to attempt to litigate. Over time, those practices can become normalized and set industry standards where they become more and more successful.
I think it should be illegal to even stipulate such requirements in contracts to begin with to prevent businesses from eroding labor rights over time. There should be massive fines in place that penalize even stipulating those sort of clauses to make sure businesses only include reasonable language/requirements.
1: Yes, I am aware that there are a few software engineers out there with specialized skills who have successfully managed to negotiate some non-salary terms out of their employment agreements. Congratulations, you are not representative of the general employee population.
And the ironic thing is all these politicians talk about wanting to turn some place into "the next Silicon Valley", when much research had been written on the fact that the unenforceability of non-competes in CA is one of the biggest factors in the rise of SV. The tech corridor near Boston had lots of the same "base ingredients" as SV, but non-competes made the startup scene there much less dynamic.
Sorry, but that is nonsense. California's primary law against non-competes, section 16600, was passed in 1872. In many ways California was just lucky. An intensely dynamic entrepreneurial hotspot grew up due to the environment in CA at the time, not the other way around.
Yea we live in a bit of a bubble in the Bay Area, but frankly having lived and worked outside it bit - I find the lack of insight that everyone has into the bubble is why they will never succeed at copying it. The attitudes too sour, ambitions too small, and people too anxious to take any risks.
And David says he joined as one level about entry level! It's not like he was a VP, which makes Amazon's actions even more egregious.
Basically I don't put anything in an employment agreement that I wouldn't sign myself.
not saying non-competes are straight up good, but it's not that they exist in a vacuum because every employee is the evil guy from monopoly.
I like the solution that we have here, non competes without monetary compensation are immediately void. so if they want to handcuff you, they have to pay for it after employment for as long as they want the non compete to be enforceable.
it's a minor simple thing, but haggling on the non compete handout is much easier than trying to get the non compete removed.
Almost everyone (except the shareholders) benefits from employer-employee noncompetes being banned outright. Almost everyone suffers from having business-business nonsolicitations being banned outright. Why the studio's lawyer didn't include it in the contract is beyond me...
Happy to be proven wrong.
Even if it took 2/3rds, Jeff would still be one of the most wealthy individuals in the world.
Jeff could make a real change and set and example. Yet he doesn't and I for one can not understand why after you have more than a billion in wealth you would need any more.
Do you think he's spending his net worth on a yearly basis so if he refrained from spending 2/3 and redistributed it would make Amazon amazing ? Or are you saying he should kill profitability and let his shares tank by 2/3 ?
I don't really like Amazon but I don't be see what your comment means in practice (I hear it often tho)
Political and cultural shift needs more than just fixing one small place. It needs political and cultural action, simple example won't suffice.
I.e. transforming Amazon could be a small facet of such a campaign as a template and example but mostly worthless without that other work.
You can be an entrepreneurial genious and still not understand how to create political and cultural shifts. So... the program you are suggesting would be quite remarkable and would require remarkable skill and vision. Redistributing profits wont suffice.
It's not like Jeff has a bank account with 100b in it.
That being said, I think the real question here is "could Amazon become the best place to work without losing money?"
My guess is yes. But shareholders wouldn't like it.
This is unfortunately not true, at the very least in Spain and the UK (that I know of) they are legal - although more regulated in written and in practice (to certain extents) than the Wild West that seems to be most of the US.
I find this position reasonable, non-competes are an extra burden on the employee so they should be paid for.
It can be paid "while you are employed", which becomes a notable point of friction in contracts where part of your negotiated gross salary suddenly appears assigned for that purpose instead.
Things may get funny because at termination the company may have in fact paid only a part of the compensation that the agreed period would require. What happens then? Is the period reduced proportionally? Is the non-compete voided entirely? Moreover, the contract is binding both ways, which means at termination the employee might require the employer to honor their side and pay for the entire period regardless if the employer never intended to enforce it. Most of those quirks have not been tested to my knowledge, but it would be fun to watch.
You can write anything you want into a contract. Even that you are obligated to give BJs until the end of your life to your previous employer. Good luck trying to enforce this in court. A shitty non compete? I would tell my previous employer "go sue me". A friend actually had this problem and he met with his previous employer and told them: "Look, I don't care what you want, I will keep working for my new employer. If you don't like that you can pay me the same amount of money and I sit a home and do nothing." They passed.
The enforcement is them dragging it out in court for as long as it takes to bankrupt you.
Amazon has a large vested interest in retaining these clauses and wielding them as a weapon. To the extent that only a few upper employees may have the resources to fight back long enough to avoid being destroyed.
Do you? Does your new employer like you enough to pay for attorneys?
Since law firms often have multiple offices, a common trick is to be officially employed at a far-away office while mostly working at home and sometimes "visiting" the nearby office. For the first 12 months.
Mentioning that the reason you left might have been because you were being sexually harassed probably deflects some threats, but these things rarely get as far as a public court so it's anyone's guess what gets mentioned in private in such cases. I have absolutely no idea how the damages would be calculated if enforcement of a restrictive covenant did get as far as a court. It's certainly an interesting question. Perhaps for an ensurer if people need to ensure against it.
You can still sue for wrongful termination but the total amount you are able to recover is limited to 1 month salary for each year worked at the firm?
I did sign it, as not doing so meant termination (I know one or two others that chose termination). I have no idea what the terms of their termination were (like if they got a pat or a kick in the butt).
I also had determined, by then, that I would be doing different stuff, afterwards (which I am).
It was a bad NCA. It explicitly stated that, if they laid me off, or fired me, I still couldn't go to another company that fell under their definition, and it was a very broad definition. If I had gotten a job as a clerk at a drug store, it could have been construed as a "competitor or customer," because of the photo-processing lab.
Probably unenforceable, but that's beside the point. It still would have required me to hire a lawyer, and would probably have poisoned me to potential employers.
A lawyer near you just had a delighted vision of profits. Amazon can afford a $XX,XXX-$XXX,XXX legal battle over your non-compete, can you?
Tech companies are not sending private detectives to follow every engineer that left the company.
This fantasy world, where major tech companies are preventing random engineers from leaving to work for other big tech companies, is just not true. It happens all of the time, and almost nobody gets sued.
Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like half of the engineers that I know, have job hopped, sometimes multiple times, between these top tech companies. They aren't being sued.
They go work at microsoft, and then leave for Facebook, or uber, or "insert rando prestigious tech company here", and I don't know of a single one, of all of my friend that I know, who has ever been sued for job hopping between top tech companies as an engineer.
It just does not happen, for the average tech employee, outside of weird, extreme, egregious cases.
as far as your comment goes: nope. Amazon cannot afford a legal battle for each and every one of their employees. Also Amazon knows they’re going to look really stupid if they do go the route of suing you. Only case where I have seen NCAs trying to be enforced is in case of high profile executives where they are actually trying to send a message more than enforce the NCA. It’s a stupid posturing game that rarely works.
These companies like Amazon, Apple, etc. really screw the L1B people. Not only are they terrified of loosing their jobs, but now even if they get sponsored for permanent residency they cannot work for someone else? Freaking everyone "competes" with Amazon.
I don't believe this is legal in California, but I could be wrong.
A "Proprietary Information and Assignment Agreement" is about protecting proprietary information. It is illegal in all 50 states to use trade-secret information at a new employer. See Anthony Levandowski.
A Non-compete is about labor market, wage, and competition suppression.
"In the past, it was commonly believed that out of state non-compete agreements may be unenforceable if the employee is first to file an action in a California court asking that the court declare the non-compete agreement unenforceable."
"Thus the employees [...] argued that the enforcement of the [Washington non-compete agreement] would violate California’s policy of not enforcing non-compete clauses. The California court disagreed [and upheld the non-compete"
http://www.carr-mcclellan.com/insights/why-assuming-out-of-s...
I know HN leans anti-union, but think if you actually had the power to stop companies from doing this to yourself, your friends, and coworkers. Think if it was part of the very basis of employment that such intimidation was not allowed and that people were at the ready to come together and stop anyone who tried. The point of organizing is to give workers this parallel, durable form of power, that persists beyond any one negotiation.
That just sounds bad. I've also heard of contracts that essentially prohibit side projects or moonlighting. Are software developers not aware they don't need to accept these restrictions to make a living? I guess maybe companies impose the restrictions under duress like in this story. Still, I'm surprised companies with such unethical employment practices can manage to hire anyone.
The US, on the other hand, cracked down on unions and prevented them from gaining political power in the same way that they did across Europe, and the rest is history.
As far as the US: noncompetes are broadly legal. California is notable as being a state where they are not.
There is a history section on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause
If your employer is sufficiently broad, the California Labor Code basically prohibits side projects or moonlighting:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
For example, Amazon and Google both have cloud services. If I'm working for AWS, would my non compete prevent me from working for Google, or just Google cloud?
Yes. You nailed it. Exactly. That's why these non-compete agreements are unconscionable.
[0]https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/why-i-turned-down-an-aws-...
If you live in a country/state where this is legal, that doesn't really matter, because practically every company has non-compete clauses, and your options are to agree or be self-employed the or unemployed.
I've had 100% success rate negotiating having it removed at companies <50 employees so far (and 0% success rate at companies >500 employees)
Thankfully these clauses don’t work in California
Has anyone tried doing so already?
I think NY would have a harder time doing this without losing employers in finance. A lot of IP in algorithmic trading can't be protected by patents since they only work if they are kept secret. Non-competes are essentially the only mechanism for IP protection of trading strategies.
Especially since Bezos is a strong advocate for long term thinking and that annoying mantra "still day one".
Can they not see the fallacy of these policies? Burning bridges and thinking short term?
They might have a prospective pool of talents regarding fresh graduates, but more and more people are actively trying to avoid AWS and companies with similar "reputations".
What was he thinking? "Yeah that stuff happens all the time in the US, but surely when I move there it won't apply to me" -- and if they did believe they were owed this protection, on what basis?
Who was going to protect his employee rights for him? That US corporation he works for which has to be forced to provide such rights when they are operating outside the US? Hahaha
This sounds like someone who could move to work in Qatar and be upset they end up working to support a system of slavery.
"An L-1 visa is a visa document used to enter the United States for the purpose of work in L-1 status. It is a non-immigrant visa, and is valid for a relatively short amount of time, from three months to five years, based on a reciprocity schedule. With extensions, the maximum stay is seven years. L-1 visas are available to employees of an international company with offices in both the United States and abroad. The visa allows such foreign workers to relocate to the corporation's US office after having worked abroad for the company for at least one continuous year within the previous three prior to admission in the US...."
Really it sounds like this is a Visa for a US company to temporarily bring in someone from outside the country, a person who is already an employee of the company.
I’m the person in the tweet, and now a permanent resident and soon US citizen.
Instead they'd offer people to work for a year in Canada or Europe and then import them on L1. Advantages: it's not subject to quotas and lottery like H1B, and (a plus from employer perspective:) ties the person to the employer, so they ain't job hopping anywhere for a while.
The other visa in a similar category is L1A but the employee needs to be of managerial grade. However, the green card approval process is quicker (subject to various factors including country of origin etc).
All this from some various discussions I've been in so I may be not be entirely accurate.
H1B is valid for a maximum of 6 years. Then you need to leave for a set period of time.
This seems like exactly the sort of thing I'd want a tech union (or guild or association or collective bargaining unit) to be out fighting against.
US employers are getting pretty shady with all these post-job “agreements”.
In retrospect I should have known worse things were to come from those assholes.
It should be illegal to add terms after the initial contract is signed. The only reason they do it is because they know once you’re in the door, you already turned down other offers and therefore have less leverage.
- Other FAANG companies vest 25% of your initial grant every year. Amazon works on a 5/15/40/40% vesting schedule. Actually it's unclear if this is now 10/20/30/40. Either way, it's weighted towards the end;
- Amazon will argue you get a starting bonus to cover you. Other companies give you a starting bonus and typically pay you in a lump sum, not over 2 years;
- Other FAANG companies use a fairly simple formula of Initial Grant Value / Initial Share Price [1]. Amazon's grants are valued assuming the share price goes up at a certain rate.
- FB and Google at least--possibly others--have no cliff. Up until a few years ago, you'd typically get no stock vest in the first year. Not so now. I can't find a definitive answer on this but I fully expect you'll be waiting the full year for your 5% (or is it 10%?)
- Amazon has a 50% match on 401k contributions... capped to 4% of eligible earnings, which I assume is salary + bonus [2]. So at $150,000 eligible compensation, you'll only get the first $6,000 matched at 50% (so up to $3,000). Google has no cap. Facebook has a cap of 7%.
- Amazon 401k matches are unvested for 2-3 years. Each year you work 1,000 hours or more counts as 1 year so join mid-year and it might only be 2 years. This means if you leave Amazon before those 2-3 years are up, Amazon will take back your match. Neither FB nor Google does this.
- Amazon PTO for US salaried employees starts at 6 paid holidays and 10 days of PTO [3] with 2 weeks (IIRC) of paid sick leave. In year 2 this goes to 15 days. In year 6, it's 20. Google and FB have 10-12 company holidays a year with pretty much unlimited sick paid leave. Google starts at 15 days vacation going to 20 in the third year and 25 in the fifth. FB has 21 days.
To this list we can no add 18 month noncompetes. If you're capable of getting a software engineering job at Amazon, you're capable of getting much, much better benefits elsewhere.
Side note: attempting to put long form content in a series of Tweets is a trend that needs to die. It's so awful to consume. Just post it somewhere and link to it.
[1]: Different companies use a different formula for this but it's typically approximately the closing price at or before the time of joining.
[2]: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us
[3]: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/pto-overview-us
I’ve studied for hundreds of hours but the best company I’ve cracked is a hedge fund. It’s comments like these that make me wonder if I should just end it all.
The problems with your thought process:
1. Believing Google/Facebook/Amazon/any company's hiring process to be a representative of your ability. It is well known that companies like Google have set up their process to minimize bad hires, and that rejecting qualified applicants is the side effect of this. If you got rejected, it means nothing. Look up Type I vs Type II errors in statistics (or Alpha vs Beta testing).
2. Since when is getting hired into any company a badge of honor? It's not an accomplishment. Doing/building something that has impact is an accomplishment. And if you look around, you'll find most SW folks who had an impact are not in these companies. You'll also find that the average Google/Facebook employee has not, and never will, achieved much (which, BTW is totally OK!)
3. Similar to 2 above, you'll always be miserable if you allow others to set standards for you. Set your own standards!
4. In my opinion, if you're using your career as a major factor in self worth, you are setting yourself up for all kinds of psychological problems. The purpose of your job is to get paid. The purpose of acquiring money is to help you achieve your goals - it's not a goal in itself. If you happen to find a job that gives you meaning beyond just the paycheck, that's great. But it's not the norm, and even when you do find one, in most cases it doesn't stay that way. Things change at work, and that meaningful job could easily become a meaningless one overnight due to senior management.
Find purpose in life that is not tied to your job.
> If you're capable of getting a software engineering job at Amazon, you're capable of getting much, much better benefits elsewhere.
which I think says the opposite of what you're implying. I'm saying you're capable of getting a much better benefit package as evidenced by the fact that you got a job at Amazon.
Amazon is (IMHO) short-changing you. Don't sell yourself short. If that was the best offer you had out of college, believe me I get it. And if you're happy there now then I'm happy for you.
But pointing out how Amazon falls short of competitors with a roughly equivalent hiring bar is not intended an attack on you or your choices.
I've been with Amazon for about 15 years. There are a lot of employees who choose to be at Amazon and not Google/FB. There are pros/cons with each of the FAANGs and really any job. I find the problem space of Amazon's physical business to be fascinating to work on whereas I couldn't give a hoot about online advertising. With regards to benefits -- I've made enough in RSU appreciation for those differences to not matter. But I encourage people to carefully consider their own circumstances and look closely at long-term growth potential of whatever companies they're considering.
Do you best, be aware of your worth, and if/when you find a better opportunity, grab it!
It’s not good to beat yourself up for “failing” to get into Google or some more desirable company. Anyone who is familiar with the process knows that these companies (including Amazon!) frequently reject qualified candidates. They’re tuned to avoid bad hires at all costs. Basically if any interviewer has a bad feeling about a candidate, they’ll get rejected.
One thing to note is that Amazon is the easiest of the FAANGs, so I don't think the idea that "if you can get into Amazon you can get in anywhere" is true.
Quick correction: Netflix works completely differently.
I'm not sure this is true. My friend had no trouble getting one (good amount in cash), and the rationale was precisely due to their vesting schedule "Since not much of your stocks will vest in the next 2-3 years, here's a cash amount to compensate for that."
You did forget to point out one other key difference between Amazon and the others: Although the interview process is still demanding, it is somewhat easier than Google/Facebook.
Of course California exposes the deep hypocrisy of the way these clauses are sold. If non competes were truly critical to company success, they wouldn’t hire anyone in CA.
Is everybody scared to stand up to your employer in those cases?
Sure, you have to pay for it, but you have to pay for it indirectly if it's a union anyways. It's unfortunate that the costs aren't spread over the entire organization, but getting the opinion of a lawyer is not that expensive for a software engineer.
Personally I suspect that if he refused to sign this and they fired him for that he could have recovered significant damages under promissory estoppel, but that's something you'd need to check with a lawyer before actually doing it.
We have them in France as well, but enforcing one means that you have to pay someone for the time of the enforcement.
It easily validates your cv out of a handful of other candidates.
Not like you have to stay there long.
I know many Amazon employees and the following is the norm: - Multiple manager changes after joining within months - Moving teams and offices within six months - Lifetime survival of 18 months On average - Intense pressure to hit high goals
For whatever reason, they got away with running a white collar sweatshop for a decade.
These Non compete changes and lawsuits Like the recent one against a former exec who defected to google signal a shift. Their model of thrashing their employees is now under pressure as Google Cloud have opened offices literally across the street and talent is streaming over there.
Likewise, Microsoft has done a MUCH better job at managing and balancing forces of diversity, government, political pressure as well as local citizenship and international relations.
Hate to say it but people get old and have kids. They can’t deal with the pressure. Microsoft and google offer better work life balance.
Compared to Microsoft, Amazon has been making mistake after mistake with the government. Buying the Washington Post, for example, was an extremely political maneuver, it certainly was not to “support the news” as Bezos claimed and annoying trump resulted in the loss of the JEDI contract. Another four years of Trump and Amazon will be lucky to ever see another government contract ever again. Same with the bungled campus II in New York.
I think they must be under pressure for talent now to be resorting to and enforcing Non competes, my experience with them is they have hired everyone that is not nailed down. Don’t get me wrong, the talent level there is extremely high.
Competition for talent is a good thing. Their response to try to use force is going to get them in trouble.
The issue is the states that allow this to happen. Capitalist America.
Edit: don't get me wrong, I'm not saying what Amazon did is OK, I'm saying it's probably legal, it's the employment laws in the US that are unethical.
Someone at Amazon put a paper on his desk and said that unless he signs it, they would not "authorize my employment". Whatever that means.
So I signed. Because what
other options did I have?
If you let people scare you by saying something, they will continue to play tricks on you. Stick to what is written.
That puts a lot of extra pressure on someone to keep their job.