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Comment by MeNotLawyer | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious then what people do when they leave AWS. Do they just not work for 18 months?

They hope AWS won't enforce it. If you aren't very important (L7+, senior management), and you don't work on the _same exact_ project at a competitor, Amazon will probably not attempt to enforce it. Is it right that Amazon are doing this? Hell, no: they're awful for doing this. But that's not even one of the top-five awful things they do to employees.

Or they live in California where non competes are not enforceable.

Does that include non-competes signed before you moved? Could your plan be to quit and move to CA?

The law applies to where you are, not where you were, so IANAL but yes, this would work. However, if you moved purely for this purpose, it might be interpreted as fraud. Also, Amazon may sue you in their home venue (Washington, or perhaps Delaware if they are incorporated there). If someone has access to Lexis Nexis it'd be interesting to see how many such cases Amazon has brought, and what happened.

I think it's based on where you are when you sign the agreement, not where you are when you leave. When you say the law applies to where you are, this is all in the action you're taking. The promise not to compete is the action in this case.

I am also NAL, but I don't think moving to CA gets you out of non-competes and I've seen evidence of this (one well covered story involved an Amazon exec going to a Bay Area company and getting sued).

It’s very possible you will not ultimately get the next job. Most competent firms that are near competitors will ask if you are bound by a non-compete as part of the recruiting process. Even if ultimately unenforceable, a “yes” could stop you right there. A “no” could be something problematic with the new employer down the road.

I don't think this can be emphasized enough, it's something I saw a few times in my career which was outside of California. Just having a non-compete that might apply with a former company is enough for many companies to hire someone else who's not got such entanglements. If that company is known for litigating them all the worse.

How would your previous employer even know what you are working on in your new company? It's not like you are going to report back to them.

If you're important (VP+), it will be in the news. Otherwise, maybe blog posts. They very rarely enforce this. They mostly try to pressure employees into staying at Amazon with these shitty tricks.

I am genuinely curious -- what _are_ the top-five awful things in your mind?

I think #'s 1 & 2 have to be 1) stack ranking & forced PIPs, and 2) comp policies overall (the stock vesting schedule being part of it, the bonus program covering the first two years being another, and the [until this year] low base salary cap being a third).

For office workers, yeah. And disregard to work-life balance on many teams.

For warehouse and delivery workers... There's probably a chapter in the Bible just covering that.

The bonus program for the first two years seems like a good/balanced thing for Amazon and the employee (to cover the “missing triangle” of comp while RSU grants begin to stack).

I’m not now and never have been an Amazon employee, but the bonus plan just seems sensible to me.

I'm not sure, but I feel there might be companies that are not selling cloud hosting solutions ;)

Also, once again, do check the law where you live. It's very possible that non-compete only apply on stuff you worked on. For example, maybe if you did not work on S3 specifically, you might even be able to work on Google Cloud Storage if all you are considering are companies that make public clouds.

> I'm not sure, but I feel there might be companies that are not selling cloud hosting solutions ;)

> It basically limits me for working for a competitor of ALL of amazon for 18 months.

Amazon have an incredible long-tail of badly-made products across the entire software market. They do a lot more than cloud hosting & book delivery.

Notice it doesn't say AWS, it says Amazon. That covers a lot more than cloud hosting solutions!

They just ignore it, probably. It’s like those agreements that prohibit you from having other jobs. Forget about it.

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