Comments on: Google screws over its DoubleClick employees

By: Bill White

Bill White — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:19:00 +0000

FWIW, non-compete clauses are enforceable in MA. It’s said to be one of the reasons we have not had the kind of high tech growth that CA has had. I don’t know, but that’s what the paper’s say.

By: Bill White

Bill White — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:15:54 +0000

I don’t understand how Google made them do anything. Did the Google HR people pull knives, or threaten to make them listen to Maurice Chevalier recordings for hours on end? Seems unlikely. It seems more likely that Google offered them a package, and in return asked for a non-compete agreement. If the Double-Click soon-to-be-ex employees wanted to compete with Google, they could have skipped the package.

It’s not like one expects loyalty or fair dealing from an employer. We are all short-term employees, even the ones who have been at it for many years. We all serve at the pleasure of a supervisor who may not know an elbow from an asshole. In fact, after a decade at a job one is still less valuable to the organization than the new VP of engineering who showed up last week.

By: Cyndy Davis

Cyndy Davis — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:55:17 +0000

Non competes are very hard to enforce in most states.

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:19:17 +0000

it’s hard enforcing them except in high profile cases.

I’m not a fanatic about unions, but this would be a case where a labor union would play a constructive role.

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:43:32 +0000

I understand the logic behind non-compete contracts, I just find them dirty in general because they restrict the mobility of lower-level employees.

By: Hoo Hoo Nick

Hoo Hoo Nick — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:07:16 +0000

I’ve had jobs here and there, and on some of them this non-compete deal was a part of the regular contract. So you sign a contract for a job and get this with it. Fair enough I suppose, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to accept the job. I never thought of the risk of a buyout when signing one of those though.

But what google did here was just plain dirty. And unneccesary. I’ve been a google fan for a very long time, and I’ve never been under the impression that they need dirty tricks to eliminate competition, just doing what they do really really good seems to have gone pretty well for them so far.

Who knew.