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Amazon's non-compete is overly broad and sweeping, and arguably stops anyone from going to a company that even uses cloud technologies. It's written in a way th

Amazon's non-compete is overly broad and sweeping, and arguably stops anyone from going to a company that even uses cloud technologies. It's written in a way that allows the court to decide just how far it can actually be applied. As you'll notice from the article, Amazon seems to try to enforce the non-compete every few years, I'm guessing mostly as a message to existing Amazon employees. All I've every seen it do is piss off their employees. That said, it's totally possible to leave Amazon and move on to an actual competitor. You just have to get lawyers involved. Oracle's Bare Metal Cloud org, that I work for, is made up of roughly 75% ex-aws staff (Amazon has been hemorrhaging staff to Oracle because better pay, and way better working conditions) Lawyers on both sides end up negotiating back and forth and you just end up not working on anything related to what you were working on for AWS.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Absolutely - I cannot emphasize enough how damaging these policies are to the organization. Not only does the noncompete piss off existing employees and stifle creativity, it turns off the better class of potential hires. People absolutely decline to sign these, and hiring is hard enough as is. And they don't even win when they bring it up in court; iirc, last time they tried this they wound up having to pay a full salary for the time that they wanted to prevent the ex-employee from working. I don't like to generalize, but business lawyers are soulless asshats.
- 1024core 9y ago
  > it turns off the better class of potential hires Definitely. Hearing such stories, even if Amazon came calling tomorrow to recruit me, I'd stay away. No one wants their former employer holding a veto over future employment.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    I was offered a DevOps gig in Amazon's AI division several months ago, and asked their recruiter to never call me again (workplace treatment anecdotes, draconian employment contract requirements, etc).
    - DesiLurker 9y ago
      worst is the 2 year cliff vesting of stocks. essentially you need to survive 2 brutal reviews before you see any of that money.
      - praneshp 9y ago
        Actually not even 2. You'd need to do 3 years for a reasonable amount of those stocks to vest.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - lukeschlather 9y ago
        I don't get this criticism of Amazon. They give cash-based bonuses in the first 2 years, and then after that the cash bonuses transition to equivalent amount of stock grants. If you really want Amazon stock you're free to buy it with the cash bonus.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - Jach 9y ago
      I only get emails sometimes, but I end up ignoring them all because when I think about composing a reply that sums up to "bug off" I can't decide whether it'd be more effective to send all my complaints or cite just one of no free snacks, no personal side projects including games, no normal 40 hour weeks, presence of stack ranking, aggressive non-compete, or now being (at least internally) worse than Oracle. It's still surreal how I could enjoy a company so much from the customer side and yet have so much resistance to even entertaining the idea of working there...
- smokey_the_bear 9y ago
  My four year old's soccer coach was leaving his organization, and I asked him if he was interested in doing private lessons in my neighborhood. He said he was, but he'd signed a non compete with the local children's soccer organization. It demolished my opinion of the soccer group that they are making 22 year olds sign non competes. (I did tell him the non-compete was void in California, but he still didn't want to deal with it)
  - pm24601 9y ago
    Please step up and complain to the soccer association. Tell other parents, etc. You have more bargaining power than the coach who needs the reference and the income. Please help make life better for the next coach. You can't be threatened or retaliated against.
    - brianwawok 9y ago
      He also had no power. His chance of an impact are near 0. What's his bust case, convinces one person to quit with him and costs the soccer co 32.99 A month ?
      - pm24601 9y ago
        He has more power than you seem to think. I say this based on my experience with civic activism. A surprisingly small number of people who are willing to speak up can have a large/oversized impact. Power is not granted - power is demanded/taken. One person who tells the other parents can make change happen. Your answer is the answer of learned helplessness.
- BrandoElFollito 9y ago
  Having to pay someone during the time of a non-compete is normal practice in France. The law states that if they're is a non-compete and payment details during this time are not part of the contract then that part is void and not enforceable. A company may decide not to enforce a non-compete (when resigning) and therefore not to pay, but it has to be done right when someone quits, not afterwards.
epistasis 9y ago
>(Amazon has been hemorrhaging staff to Oracle because better pay, and way better working conditions) I may not be totally tuned into Oracle's reputation, but this seems incredibly damning to Amazon.
- Twirrim 9y ago
  > I may not be totally tuned into Oracle's reputation, but this seems incredibly damning to Amazon. I can't speak to the rest of Oracle, my only experience is from here in the bare metal cloud org, but it's: 1) Better pay. 2) Better hours (you don't keep having to work ridiculous hours to keep afloat.) In over a year I've done barely a dozen late nights, and at least half of those were totally unavoidable. In every case management has strenuously forced me to recoup my time. One thing I really hated was watching staff just constantly burn out in various teams across AWS (I was lucky, my team in AWS was actually one of the good ones.) 3) An obsession with the operational burden (easier to operate == more resilient platform, happier staff and happier customers). 4) Middle management who actively push back, and a senior management tier who both listen, and juggle staff around as appropriate to ensure things get done on time. AWS is a constant feature mill, and it comes across in the marketing language etc. This is only fuelled because middle managers right across the org are either unwilling to say no, or have no authority to do so. From the differences I've seen with managers there, it really seems like the former. Some managers really do make a huge difference (and indeed, the only reason I entertained the possibility of joining Oracle was because I knew several good managers who'd moved across)
  - dopamean 9y ago
    I must be pretty out of the loop on things but I had no idea (though probably should have suspected) that Oracle had a competing product. Is it successful? Who uses it?
    - Twirrim 9y ago
      https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal, launched last year. Full IaaS Compute platform with both bare metal and VM offerings, LBs, VPN, DBaaS (complete with full RAC and Exadata offerings), and so on. I'm not sure what I can / cannot say regarding customers we're picking up. Don't want to mess things up for the marketing team :) Some public material, of which more is bound to be forthcoming: https://www.oracle.com/uk/customers/yellowdog-1-iaas.html https://www.oracle.com/uk/customers/yellowdog-1-iaas.html
metaphorm 9y ago
how successful has Amazon been, historically, in enforcing these clauses? I've had Amazon recruiters trying to bring me in for an interview for several years now but keep avoiding it because of their reputation for sledgehammer management style. Am I on target here or is this unfounded?
- vkou 9y ago
  They don't have to be successful at enforcing them. The threat of a potential lawsuit scares employees, and - more importantly - scares their competitors from hiring Amazon employees. If you were an employer, and you had two candidates - one from Amazon, bound by a mountain of non-competes, and one from Google, who isn't - which would you choose? Maybe the Amazon person is a bit better, but they also come with the possibility of six figures in legal fees.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Not very. They typically either lose, lose so badly that they are forced to rewrite their contracts, or claim victory after being forced to pay the employee for the time they'd be prevented from working. The problem is, if you're an individual, it's a huge pain in the ass to duke this sort of thing out. You might even get unlucky in a cut-and-dry case, simply by virtue of not having much money to spend on it.
ivanstojic 9y ago
Another 4 year ex Amazonian here who moved to OBMC. Totally standing by everything Twirrim said.
- wand3r 9y ago
  Not that 2 anecdotes is enough; but between both and the media it really sounds as if AMZN is internally terrible.
  - ivanstojic 9y ago
    I honestly don't think it's terrible as such. I'm sure that there are people in the company who enjoy the environment and the acceptable attitudes, I just realized I'm not one of them. My feelings are that I learned a lot there, but not quite what I thought I'd learn, and I did make a pretty penny in stock price. I make much more money in Oracle, but I wouldn't go back to AWS for a 50% more than what I make now.

leggomylibro 9y ago

Absolutely - I cannot emphasize enough how damaging these policies are to the organization. Not only does the noncompete piss off existing employees and stifle creativity, it turns off the better class of potential hires. People absolutely decline to sign these, and hiring is hard enough as is. And they don't even win when they bring it up in court; iirc, last time they tried this they wound up having to pay a full salary for the time that they wanted to prevent the ex-employee from working. I don't like to generalize, but business lawyers are soulless asshats.

1024core 9y ago
> it turns off the better class of potential hires Definitely. Hearing such stories, even if Amazon came calling tomorrow to recruit me, I'd stay away. No one wants their former employer holding a veto over future employment.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  I was offered a DevOps gig in Amazon's AI division several months ago, and asked their recruiter to never call me again (workplace treatment anecdotes, draconian employment contract requirements, etc).
  - DesiLurker 9y ago
    worst is the 2 year cliff vesting of stocks. essentially you need to survive 2 brutal reviews before you see any of that money.
    - praneshp 9y ago
      Actually not even 2. You'd need to do 3 years for a reasonable amount of those stocks to vest.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lukeschlather 9y ago
      I don't get this criticism of Amazon. They give cash-based bonuses in the first 2 years, and then after that the cash bonuses transition to equivalent amount of stock grants. If you really want Amazon stock you're free to buy it with the cash bonus.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jach 9y ago
    I only get emails sometimes, but I end up ignoring them all because when I think about composing a reply that sums up to "bug off" I can't decide whether it'd be more effective to send all my complaints or cite just one of no free snacks, no personal side projects including games, no normal 40 hour weeks, presence of stack ranking, aggressive non-compete, or now being (at least internally) worse than Oracle. It's still surreal how I could enjoy a company so much from the customer side and yet have so much resistance to even entertaining the idea of working there...
smokey_the_bear 9y ago
My four year old's soccer coach was leaving his organization, and I asked him if he was interested in doing private lessons in my neighborhood. He said he was, but he'd signed a non compete with the local children's soccer organization. It demolished my opinion of the soccer group that they are making 22 year olds sign non competes. (I did tell him the non-compete was void in California, but he still didn't want to deal with it)
- pm24601 9y ago
  Please step up and complain to the soccer association. Tell other parents, etc. You have more bargaining power than the coach who needs the reference and the income. Please help make life better for the next coach. You can't be threatened or retaliated against.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    He also had no power. His chance of an impact are near 0. What's his bust case, convinces one person to quit with him and costs the soccer co 32.99 A month ?
    - pm24601 9y ago
      He has more power than you seem to think. I say this based on my experience with civic activism. A surprisingly small number of people who are willing to speak up can have a large/oversized impact. Power is not granted - power is demanded/taken. One person who tells the other parents can make change happen. Your answer is the answer of learned helplessness.
BrandoElFollito 9y ago
Having to pay someone during the time of a non-compete is normal practice in France. The law states that if they're is a non-compete and payment details during this time are not part of the contract then that part is void and not enforceable. A company may decide not to enforce a non-compete (when resigning) and therefore not to pay, but it has to be done right when someone quits, not afterwards.

epistasis 9y ago

>(Amazon has been hemorrhaging staff to Oracle because better pay, and way better working conditions) I may not be totally tuned into Oracle's reputation, but this seems incredibly damning to Amazon.

Twirrim 9y ago
> I may not be totally tuned into Oracle's reputation, but this seems incredibly damning to Amazon. I can't speak to the rest of Oracle, my only experience is from here in the bare metal cloud org, but it's: 1) Better pay. 2) Better hours (you don't keep having to work ridiculous hours to keep afloat.) In over a year I've done barely a dozen late nights, and at least half of those were totally unavoidable. In every case management has strenuously forced me to recoup my time. One thing I really hated was watching staff just constantly burn out in various teams across AWS (I was lucky, my team in AWS was actually one of the good ones.) 3) An obsession with the operational burden (easier to operate == more resilient platform, happier staff and happier customers). 4) Middle management who actively push back, and a senior management tier who both listen, and juggle staff around as appropriate to ensure things get done on time. AWS is a constant feature mill, and it comes across in the marketing language etc. This is only fuelled because middle managers right across the org are either unwilling to say no, or have no authority to do so. From the differences I've seen with managers there, it really seems like the former. Some managers really do make a huge difference (and indeed, the only reason I entertained the possibility of joining Oracle was because I knew several good managers who'd moved across)
- dopamean 9y ago
  I must be pretty out of the loop on things but I had no idea (though probably should have suspected) that Oracle had a competing product. Is it successful? Who uses it?
  - Twirrim 9y ago
    https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal, launched last year. Full IaaS Compute platform with both bare metal and VM offerings, LBs, VPN, DBaaS (complete with full RAC and Exadata offerings), and so on. I'm not sure what I can / cannot say regarding customers we're picking up. Don't want to mess things up for the marketing team :) Some public material, of which more is bound to be forthcoming: https://www.oracle.com/uk/customers/yellowdog-1-iaas.html https://www.oracle.com/uk/customers/yellowdog-1-iaas.html

metaphorm 9y ago

how successful has Amazon been, historically, in enforcing these clauses? I've had Amazon recruiters trying to bring me in for an interview for several years now but keep avoiding it because of their reputation for sledgehammer management style. Am I on target here or is this unfounded?

vkou 9y ago
They don't have to be successful at enforcing them. The threat of a potential lawsuit scares employees, and - more importantly - scares their competitors from hiring Amazon employees. If you were an employer, and you had two candidates - one from Amazon, bound by a mountain of non-competes, and one from Google, who isn't - which would you choose? Maybe the Amazon person is a bit better, but they also come with the possibility of six figures in legal fees.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
leggomylibro 9y ago
Not very. They typically either lose, lose so badly that they are forced to rewrite their contracts, or claim victory after being forced to pay the employee for the time they'd be prevented from working. The problem is, if you're an individual, it's a huge pain in the ass to duke this sort of thing out. You might even get unlucky in a cut-and-dry case, simply by virtue of not having much money to spend on it.

ivanstojic 9y ago

Another 4 year ex Amazonian here who moved to OBMC. Totally standing by everything Twirrim said.

wand3r 9y ago
Not that 2 anecdotes is enough; but between both and the media it really sounds as if AMZN is internally terrible.
- ivanstojic 9y ago
  I honestly don't think it's terrible as such. I'm sure that there are people in the company who enjoy the environment and the acceptable attitudes, I just realized I'm not one of them. My feelings are that I learned a lot there, but not quite what I thought I'd learn, and I did make a pretty penny in stock price. I make much more money in Oracle, but I wouldn't go back to AWS for a 50% more than what I make now.