Microsoft Will No Longer Ban Staff From Seeking Roles at Competitors, Plans To Disclose Salaries on Job Ads (businessinsider.com) 44
Microsoft employees will be free to seek jobs at the likes of Google and Amazon after the internet giant announced it would no longer enforce non-compete clauses (NCCs) against the majority of its staff. From a report: The change is one of four updates announced in a blog post on Wednesday, including plans to ditch non-disclosure agreements, conduct a civil rights audit of its existing work policies, and commit to providing salary ranges on all internal and external job descriptions. NCCs are used by firms to stop employees moving to companies considered to be direct competitors. While there's more understanding when they're included in the contracts of c-suite and senior managers, their use against lower-level workers has been criticized as being too restrictive and holding people to unfair conditions.
Microsoft has enforced them in some employee contracts, but effective today, the company is removing clauses from employee agreements, and will not enforce existing clauses in the US, the company said. "We have heard concerns that the non-competition clauses in some U.S. employee agreements, even when rarely and reasonably enforced, feel at odds with our talent principles," said the blog post, attributed to Amy Pannoni, Microsoft's deputy general counsel and Amy Coleman, Microsoft's corporate vice president for HR.
Microsoft has enforced them in some employee contracts, but effective today, the company is removing clauses from employee agreements, and will not enforce existing clauses in the US, the company said. "We have heard concerns that the non-competition clauses in some U.S. employee agreements, even when rarely and reasonably enforced, feel at odds with our talent principles," said the blog post, attributed to Amy Pannoni, Microsoft's deputy general counsel and Amy Coleman, Microsoft's corporate vice president for HR.
Scared of unions? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess they're hoping that now their employees won't want to unionize that badly anymore.
I'm happy I've always been in the position to get NCCs rewritten to be less broad whenever I was confronted with them. But I've seen some incredibly egregiously bad ones..
Re:Scared of unions? (Score:4, Insightful)
But will this new-and-enlightened Microsoft also stop goddamn spying on every little thing I do on Windows, and stop advertising at me, and stop forcing updates on me when I don't want them, and stop making the system configuration so confusing that it is almost possible to even partially turn these much-hated "features" off?
No?
Microsoft can go pound sand.
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There is so much casual recruiting happening now that really good candidates aren't even applying for open positions. They are in one somewhere and get hit up by some LinkedIn recruiter who shows them salary numbers that get their attention, and they make a move. Companies are learning that A) they can no longer be coy about salary if they want to get applicants, and B) if your general increases don't keep up with the market your people will
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As a practical matter, when you employee sees you are seeking to hire a co-worker for more salary than he or she is getting paid, what is likely to happen? I agree that big companies will still work to find excuses to drag their feet, but as a practical matter this change will force a shift.
A significant part of it is a lot of employees who were hired on with what they hoped would be lucrative stock options are now finding that staying a second or third year is not so attractive, because the windfall is no
Re: Scared of unions? (Score:2)
GE management style sucked (Score:2)
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RegistrationIsDumb83 posited:
Yep, turns out when you used to fire 10% of your staff every year, you run out of people who want to work for you. Stack ranking sucked because it was entirely perception driven and very political.
Those are not even the most compelling arguments against stacked ranking.
Let's imagine, for instance, that you head a research department of 10 scientists, each of whom is a winner of the Nobel prize, or one of equal stature. Stacked ranking - which is still crammed down the throats of MBA students - demands that you fire one of them for "not performing up to expectations."
It's basically a mandate to manage by meataxe, rather than employ a microtome ...
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I am not sure, within IT based industries Unionization is going to be difficult. In general the public has little Union support for white collar workers, and especially those who tend to make above average pay, and being that the job market is so competitive now, if you are unhappy with your job, you can quit and find a new one right away. Doesn't really put Unions in a strong area for those like Microsoft.
However NCC do little to stop turn over, and will often just make hiring new staff a little more dif
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I've always just defied NCCs in my contracts if I've had a better offer from a competitor, but then, I live in a jurisdiction where any judge would throw it out if my former employer took me to court anyway. The times I've been threatened over it and told them I'm happy to go to court if they want I've never heard a single thing back from them. They know a court case would almost certainly not end up in their favour because contract terms aren't allowed to be excessive or stifle competition, and would also
Scared of Joe Biden (Score:2, Offtopic)
In another 6 years when the American people inevitably change parties (grass is always greener...) they'll go back to ignoring labor law.
Elections matter, but it's tough to get rank and file voters to understand that. We all talk about money in politics but that only works because voters like
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It is more likely that NCCs are not very effective. Employees ignore them and they require litigation to enforce, so it just isn't worth it. Add in the good PR you can get for removing them, and this becomes an obvious approach.
Poaching is not any different than any form of hiring. You offer market rate if they are excited enough about the role to move, or you offer over market rate if you need to use pay as a significant motivator. They may have specific knowledge which helps you because of their previous
???WTF is going on? (Score:2)
Add this to the list of things I never expected to see happen
Re:???WTF is going on? (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe 'Be Less Evil than Google' is their new motto?
I believe that motto is actually Satan's...
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Too informative to be Funny? You weren't supposed to reveal that secret.
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Current Tech industries are no longer the new hotness, but well established industries.
We no longer have people waiting overnight to be the first to get the new OS, or Smart Phone. Nor do we awe at someone with a cool new Laptop of Phone. When Google or Amazon offers a new service we are no longer feeling like we are looking into a new future.
Computer Tech industry is no longer the big darling cutting edge.
I think right now the new Darlings are in Electric Cars, and robotics with AI being the Computer Scie
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Which part?
The non-compete part? Or the employee right to a livelihood and the right to discuss your salary / offers?
Re:???WTF is going on? (Score:4, Informative)
Washington State passed regulations which require public salary disclosures on all job opportunities, and they destroyed the validity of non-competes (NCCs) with the only exception being that the current/former employee must be paid their wage for the duration of any NCC beyond-date (so if they want a 90-day NCC, they must pay you for 90 days after termination in order to enforce the validity of any NCC).
Microsoft is also pushing for state-wide business practices around employer/employment ethics -- and funding studies to gather data. These other actions are in alignment with those advocacy claims.
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They probably found they would lose an expensive lawsuit if they keep this up or something like it. They most certainly did this not in order to do something _right_.
Alternate headline (Score:3)
I mean the alternate headline here is "Microsoft publicly states that it plans to comply with law" so I'm not too surprised.
Don't be too surprised to see future lawsuits against them for breaking these laws, though. I mean, this already implies that they did forbid employees from seeking other jobs, which means they look at you as slaves, so... yeah.
Colorado (Score:2)
It seems that... (Score:2)
... they are having trouble getting good people. Given how easy it is to switch jobs in the US (if you are good at what you are), this change probably makes MS much more attractive than before for many ones.
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Being able to get a solid offer and asking your employer to counter is the second easiest way to get a raise. Asking is easiest of course but you have little leverage at that point.
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I believe it is the third easiest way. The first one is accepting the offer from the competitor :)
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That's not the easiest because then you have to actually start over at the competitor. New processes, rules, organization, people, hell, you might even have to move.
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Being able to get a solid offer and asking your employer to counter is the second easiest way to get a raise. Asking is easiest of course but you have little leverage at that point.
This is only the easiest way when you are underpaid by an employer who underpays their employees as a rule. This doesn't always mean it is a poor employer; not all companies can afford market rates for exceptional employees. In this case they tend to only pay employees well when they are forced to. You also need to be a stellar employee, both to get a good offer when interviewing and to be worth a good counter-offer. I have seen a few coworkers who expected a counter-offer but did not get one, and ended up
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Being able to get a solid offer and asking your employer to counter is the second easiest way to get a raise. Asking is easiest of course but you have little leverage at that point.
This also shows a company that you have no loyalties to them (not saying you should) and that there is nothing stopping you from doing this multiple times.
Generally, they either reject the counter or match it to buy time to make you irrelevant.
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Well. maybe. They still have no patch out for their latest bad zero-day vulnerability after 11 days and the thing being actively exploited. They must really have lost control of the mess they made.
Kinda has too (Score:5, Interesting)
Or that is what I understood.
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Second, CONTRACT LAW is the basis behind most employment contracts. In the quid pro quo (employment for compensation), there's clauses which contextualize and/or spell-out the exchanges of independent freedoms/obligations for compensation. Often times (and regardless of the "default" framework that states adopt which is more relevant for public employees rather than private employers) it's a series
Salary != Pay at Big Tech (Score:2)
While I don't work at Microsoft, I expect it is similar to other large tech companies in that salary gives only a rough idea of total compensation. Equity compensation and bonuses can make an enormous difference in total compensation for all but the most junior employees at large tech companies. It's great that they're disclosing salary range/expectation as I think that will help candidates know whether a certain role is worth their time applying for, but it's not quite the same thing as transparency on p
Not in California (Score:4, Insightful)
Just checking in to say that such non-compete clauses are generally unenforceable in the State of California. In some cases, yes—but you'd probably need to be a high-level executive with some kind of personal financial stake in the company. For regular workers? No.
So what companies are in California? Google. Facebook. Oracle. HP. Intel. A few others you may have heard of.
What I'm sensing is that Microsoft is figuring out that it's going to be plenty hard to entice talent to move to Washington to work at Microsoft when doing so might mean a non-compete clause might totally derail their whole career.
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I promise not to compete (Score:3)