Imagine you’re a top-notch HP employee. What’s your next career move? Maybe it should be selling hot dogs on the beach. That may be the only way to avoid the company’s practice of leveling non-compete lawsuits at employees who move on to other companies. After all, since HP is in just about every corner of the tech industry: servers, personal computers, networking, software, even mobile–just about any technology company could be viewed as a competitor.
Enough! says Cisco in a blog entry. Apparently the company hired an ex-HPan who moved to California for the job and believed state law there would protect him from legal action. When HP sued anyway, Cisco contacted its legal counsel, it says, to try and work things out and offer an assurance that no HP secrets would change hands. HP responded by requesting an emergency hearing in Texas to block the employee from starting his new job.
“In an unhappy work environment, it’s a strange decision to try to achieve employee retention by litigation,” the Cicso blog declares. It certainly seems like something for prospective HP employees to consider before accepting a job offer–they might be signing on for life.
Read more at NetworkWorld.
