IBM demands $500,000 from boss after she jumps ship IBM is taking the former head of its Thailand operation, Patama Chantaruck, to court to claw back $470,000 in benefits it believes she owes after going to work for a rival and – allegedly – breaking the terms of a non-compete clause. Chantaruck went to work for Big Blue in October 2018, joining as country general manager of …
I wouldn't really consider Accenture to be a competitor to IBM outside "the both do consultancy" which doesn't sound like what she was doing at IBM anyway...
Still... if she has the money she might as well just pay them and flip them the bird. It's standard practice to get screwed over by IBM these days, she must have known that when she signed up for the gig.
It's standard practice to get screwed over by IBM these days, she must have known that when she signed up for the gig.
Indeed ...
But let me rephrase that for you:
It's standard practice to get screwed over by [fill in] these days, she must have known that when she signed up for the gig.
* any big/medium/small corp suing you into poverty
There you go.
I'm surprised IBM can afford lawyers.
Gigantic company-obliterating cashflow issues combined with their open ageist/racist employment policies that have tens of thousands of lawsuits worldwide levied against them.
The total compensation for the open malicious racism (literally emails saying "we found out that [employee] is an [ethnic slur]. fire them immediately" from the top-end of management) is expected to be 4-5x the entire value of IBMs entire assets and company value.
I've even heard rumors they've 'delayed' peoples salary payments/bonuses etc as they literally are scrounging around for available cash.
Maybe they intend to just stiff the lawyers JUST as they collapse and give the execs massive severance packages instead?
As has been discussed multiple times here, non-compete clauses skate on thin ice. It may be in your contract with your employer, but once that contract is broken, what recourse is there to reclaim any monies? I've not seen an employment situation where a non-compete clause was in a separate contract. It will be interesting to see the way this pans out as she is very likely to have enough cash to hire a decent lawyer to oppose IBM. Or will it all be settled out of court as is so often the case. With an NDA that leaves us hanging again.
While your legal opinions would be valid in a country where employee rights are protected under employment law, my experience of such things in Thailand is that the company has all the rights and the employee has very few in cases such as this.
Even though I have a low opinion of Accenture (we shall make huge saving by outsourcing and halting investment) if she really did take IBM customers to Accenture she has likely done the customers a large favour
This style of contract would likely be legal in Europe as well as this was a separate contract to her employment contract. She signed a contract where she was being paid to not work at certain companies for the duration of the contract and then decided to break her side of the contract.
I dunno, regardless of the legal status of boilerplate anticompete clauses, it sounds an awful lot like she entered into a special noncompete contract where she got paid separate money *specifically* to not compete. That sounds enforceable, at least to my non-lawyer ears. :) But they also have to prove competition, which sounds like a bigger problem.
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