If my employer laid me off tomorrow (which could happen…) and my severence was tied to a non-compete – I’d either forfeit my severance or find a non-competitor. As an engineer – there are lots of fields.. I’m not in defense now – I could go get a defense job… or medical equipment, or some field that I’m not currently in – but that still uses my skillset.
As I mentioned – I made the mistake of signing an employment agreement with a non-compete clause in it ONCE. The way it was worded I could not go back to work for my previous employer, because they were a former client. I took advantage of a corporate name change to get the former employer specifically excluded when I signed under the new corporate name. (I rehired with the former employer a few months later.)
At the time – since I was considering going back to my former employer – I consulted a lawyer. I was unwilling to make the move while contractually prohibited from it. But that’s just me. I try to follow the rules.
I forget that contracts are pretty much ignored by a lot of people. That got us in trouble when we were building our granny flat. We had trouble getting multiple contractors to follow the letter of their contractual obligations… they felt free to ignore the contract when it suited them.
From the cnn article I linked above – Hurd had specific data about Oracle’s market weaknesses and how HP was going to utilize that. In other words – he has knowledge of the strategy HP is planning on using to compete against Oracle. That’s pretty darn proprietary. To put it in cell phone terms – Lets say I worked at Apple and had the full strategy for how we were going to compete against the Droid phones – what features Apple can offer that droid phones don’t… Marketing plans, new hardware plans, etc. Then I get “resigned” because I do something stupid. I’m offered a sweet package if I go away quietly. And instead I take that marketing and strategy knowledge to Motorola or HTC… that’s a conflict. Period.
