Critics say Amazon noncompetes are unfair, could hurt recruiting - Business Insider

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Amazon's lawsuit against a former exec is shining a spotlight on its use of noncompete agreements — a practice that critics say is unfair and will scare away talent

Amazon makes new corporate employees sign a noncompete agreement saying they won't work for competitors for 18 months after they leave the company.

The employee, who asked not to be named to protect current and prospective employment, worked as a Level 4 software engineer for the company's Amazon Web Services cloud computing business – the lowest engineering level at Amazon. Her colleagues frequently moved between engineering roles at Amazon and its competitors without incident, she said.

— the third high-profile lawsuit of its type filed by Amazon in recent memory, following the company's lawsuits against a sales executive who took a job at Google Cloud, and a former technology vice president who left to work at Seattle-area collaboration software company Smartsheet. "You can check into the Hotel AWS, but you can never leave," Charles Fitzgerald, a Seattle angel investor, former Microsoft general manager, and critic of noncompetes, said. Amazon has a history of suing over noncompete concerns.

Before that, Amazon sued another former vice president, Gene Farrell, who left AWS in June 2017 to take a job at Seattle-area collaboration software company Smartsheet. AWS sued over a noncompete agreement signed by Farrell, but dropped the suit a week later after the companies agreed on undisclosed "temporary restrictions.

Even in this most recent case, Brian Hall noted that his own former boss at AWS, Ariel Kelman, left to take over as chief marketing officer at Oracle earlier this year — a move that apparently didn't trigger AWS to file a lawsuit against Kelman. To Hall, this reinforced the idea that AWS would not enforce his own noncompete agreement, per the filing.

"PSA: AWS claims that it would suffer 'immediate and irreparable harm' if their former employee was allowed to edit slides for the upcoming Google Cloud Next conference," Google Senior Vice President of Engineering. "clearly, AWS's lead over GCP is hanging on a very thin thread."

 

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Love Amazon and respect JeffBezos , but I totally disagree with non-compete agreements for former execs.

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