But I guess I see the problem as more than a sex scandal… Sure his trying to cover up an affair led to his firing. But he also chose to ignore his contract when he hired on with Oracle – and that had nothing to do with sex… That just shows that he thinks rules don’t apply to him. You know he had some legal type or HR type make sure he understood the rules he needed to abide by when they were getting signatures for his fabulous parachute. He knew he was breaking the rules.
I guess I just get annoyed by powerful people who think they’re above the rules… and Hurd seems to fit the bill.[/quote]
I look at it a different way….Let’s say you’re company tomorrow decides for whatever reason to fire/layoff/outsource you tomorrow. At the same time you find a job at a competing firm. They come back and threaten to sue if you join..If it were me, I’d say screw you, company x….The company let you go, you have to make end’s meet. Provided you’re not taking documents/IP/source code/ from previous company (which in itself is theft/corporate espionage/etc), if the company was so concerned that you would have been such a threat and so valuable to the company, you wouldn’t have been let go in the first place.
Are you really going to pass up on that job offer because your previous employer that didn’t think you were important enough to keep around (for whatever reasons) nevertheless wanted you to find a job elsewhere?…Did that previous firm help you find a job elsewhere that wouldn’t be considered a non-compete, with identical comps to what you were getting before when they let you go?
I think the only difference between Hurd’s situation and everyone else’s, is for most everyone else, the company wouldn’t do anything because as much as one would like to they they are important, the majority of employees aren’t really valuable enough to merit doing anything.
The entire firing, but then trying to enforce an non-compete is completely hypocritical. If the company felt that the value extracted from the employee was important enough to keep the person around versus the potential of the person working elsewhere, then a pro/con assessment would have been made, and the company wouldn’t have fired the person to begin with.
And it is quite the common practice for this employees to hop around (whether the hopping was voluntary or involuntary- as in the case of layoff)…When Apple was just starting to build the iPhone, where do you think all those top notch ex-Motorola brass ended up after MOT decided to can key teams and outsource the rest to india/china?
Obviously, by letting you go, they are stating the value you provide is not enough versus everything else. HP obviously thought the it was far more important to hush hush this harassment claim than to keep the dude at the center of attention, and it obviously didn’t think that Hurd would have walked across the street. Hurd, on the other hand, I’m sure is going to make HP feel the pain. Hell, if I was in his shoes, I’d ask Oracle to give me a sign on bonus and tell HP they can keep their golden parachute.
From what it appears, HP is asserting that Hurd has the potential of violating confidential agreement, and hence that’s the premise of why he shouldn’t be allowed to join Oracle. That sounds a lot like presumption of guilt without proof…
Some of the employment laws in CA are there for a reason. And in this economy it’s a good thing.
