Nice piece
Typically bad headline. What is 'Virty'?
VMware has taken Hortonworks to court along with four ex-VMers who now work at the startup - and among them is VMWare's former global sales chief. Virtualisation juggernaut VMware is taking on the little elephant Hortonworks over claims that the Hadoop vendor committed "unfair practices" - the details of which were not …
This really does sound like bullying. Non solicit and non compete agreements are almost impossible to enforce. Those clauses are most often used to scare staff into staying with their current employer or to deny stock options to vested staff (as most option deals are considered private and have different rules).
A side effect of capitalism is that it is "not in the spirit" of the law to create rules that prevent individuals from maximizing their personal income so most states won't recognize clauses that force you to take a loss.
The close dates of leaving VMware and joining HortonWorks, suggests that perhaps a headhunter was just doing their job and naturally once a colleague you respect either tells you about an interesting opportunity they are exploring or intending to take, you would naturally also take a look...
IMHO its a desperate move on the part of VMWare.
Hortonworks has had a ton of recruiters on their payroll and have been aggressively contacting folks.
(I can remember at least 5 different recruiters contacting me)
Of course it should be noted that many people have been jumping ship in the past couple of months as EMC/Greenplum started to bring in VMware under their management.
Companies compete for customers. They also compete for employees. If the grass was greener on the other side of the fence, then they have no one to blame but themselves. I think this taking of legal action by VMWare illustrates the employee's sense of 'where not to be' is accurate.
Future talent considering VMWare for a career stop would be wise to consider this situation.