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Comment by BaseballPhysics | Hacker News Reader

I'd just say: Careful about non-competes and potential trade secret violations. Regardless of their merits, if Google wants to take you to court, they could bury you in legal costs before it ever goes to trial.

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Given I'm going to take a completely different approach that doesn't use anything proprietary, and non-competes aren't enforceable in California, I'd assume this is ok?

At the risk of repeating myself:

"Regardless of their merits, if Google wants to take you to court, they could bury you in legal costs before it ever goes to trial."

All I'm saying is be careful. It might be worth consulting with a lawyer to see if there's anything you need to do to protect yourself.

And honestly, it could be a non-issue. But it'd be better to hear that from legal counsel.

You should also be aware that as long as you’re an Alphabet employee (read: receiving WARN act salary payments) you’re still bound by any IP agreements you signed to start employment.

The non-compete isn't an issue but the "trade secrets" could well be. At the very minimum, make sure you and everyone who joins you is 100% clean for the past 12 months in terms of never transmitting or storing any work-related content outside of Google corporate devices/emails.

Best of luck, the world needs you to succeed.

It will be ok, after you've spent millions in the court proving that it is ok. Shouldn't happen before you're a threat to them though, so maybe you'll have the money by then.

"Google accused of laying off employees and then suing them for violating non-disclosure agreements". Definitely not a PR nightmare.

Not any worse P.R. nightmare than laying off ten thousand engineers. Nobody cares about engineers man.

Definitely op has no clue about all this else wouldn't have posted in a public forum like this

Honestly, I really doubt Google would care. It's not like people will stop working for them or using their products.

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