Dell EMC in bid to clap trade secrets injunction on staff now at Rubrik Dell EMC has tossed a trade secrets sueball at two ex-sales employees who left for Rubrik, alleging that they solicited other EMC staff to jump ship and approached Dell EMC customers. Rubrik competes with Dell EMC in the data protection business. Complaints were filed against Ryan Baker and Louis Ferreira, who respectively …
Is that sort of action from Dell EMC tantamount to taking hostages and thinking to use such prisoners as human shields?
Do Dell EMC offer a juicy job for life package which would render leaving for greener pastures a non-starter no-brainer?
I can't imagine any other department that is more constantly accessing and requesting sensitive data than the sales teams.
After a few years, usually 3 - 5, they jump ship with up to date or almost up to date figures, stats, client details etc ...
It always amazes me how they consider themselves over and above other employees in relation to the fact that they consider it normal to constantly hold on to so much data..
Those higher up on the tree should also have a second look as to why so much information is available to second or third tier staff...
1) Over promise
2) Under deliver
3) Charge usurious license fees to use the hardware
4) Ramp up support costs as the hardware ages, driving up cost of ownership exponentially
5) Slander competitors with FUD during sales presentations
I'm sure I've missed some; help me out here, guys.
C'mon folks, let's call this what it is, if it's true - employee theft of trade secrets. The burden is on EMC to prove it for sure, but if they have forensic analysis from IT (which they are entitled to b/c they own the laptop, the lists and every file an employee produces/creates on that machine while on the job) that confirms which files were downloaded on what kind of removable media on specific dates...that's a smoking gun right there.
It looks like these defendants did something dishonest to benefit themselves and their new employer at the expense of the former. That's breaking the rules and probably breaking some kind of law.
Any other vendor would and should do the same thing to protect their intellectual property.
Ever wonder why corporate computers seem to run so slowly? It takes lots of CPU, memory and network capacity to track and report on every single thing that happens on the machine.
There is no expectation of privacy on your company-owned device - at least in the US.
You can bash Dell Technologies all you want, it's popular to hate on #1 and I get it...but if these guys broke the rules, then they should be punished.
And for what it's worth, no one cares if these guys or any others leave for competitors. The ones worth keeping they keep...otherwise, it's usually the guys with no future path with the company looking to jet and try to find a quick buck elsewhere before they're found out.
It's pretty standard to have endpoint protection that tracks what gets copied off the device and it'll be in the small print of most IT Usage Policy documents somewhere. If you copy this type of data off your machine before leaving you've got a pretty good idea that you're doing something wrong and you can't complain if you get pulled up. As for contacting ex-clients, that's also in normal contracts but it's harder to prove i.e. "the customer called me on my personal mobile when they heard I was moving on"...
Stupid move, EMC will bleed them dry with lawyer fees. Simply not worth it! Big picture is that Rubrik needs to start hiring more folks that don't have "EMC" on their resume. "bro-code" is strong with the ex-EMC'ers, very few outsiders have a chance of getting into AM\SE roles there. Risk is you export the EMC mentality to a startup with awesome product.
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