News of longtime AWS executive Charlie Bell’s hiring by Microsoft broke this week. (Amazon Photo)

What exactly will longtime Amazon executive Charlie Bell do at Microsoft?

It’s possible that even Bell doesn’t know the precise answer to that question yet. Microsoft and Amazon are negotiating to determine the initial scope of Bell’s new role under the terms of the non-compete agreement that he signed with Amazon, according to unnamed sources quoted by the Insider news site.

Yes, we’ve seen this movie before, but this one comes with a plot twist.

Bell was a longstanding, high-ranking Amazon Web Services executive, once considered a potential successor to Andy Jassy as AWS CEO — giving him a level of influence, experience, and insight well beyond many of the former AWS executives at the center of past non-compete disputes.

He was also member of Amazon’s senior leadership team, giving him broad insights into its strategy, and a larger set of potential conflicts for Amazon to cite.

Bell worked at Amazon for more than 23 years, before his departure earlier this month. News of his hiring by Microsoft broke Wednesday afternoon.

While it would be natural for him to work in Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing division, he’s listed in Microsoft’s employee directory as a corporate vice president under human resources chief Kathleen Hogan, CNBC reports. That could be a placeholder pending the outcome of the talks between Microsoft and Amazon. Neither company is commenting.

Jassy, now the Amazon CEO, was known to personally make the call on whether to enforce non-compete agreements when executives left the AWS division. According to a court filing in a previous non-compete lawsuit, Jassy told one departing executive that he made such decisions “on a case-by-case basis.”

Non-compete agreements, which have been rendered virtually unenforceable in California, are still allowed in Washington state. However, under a state law passed in 2019, they can’t be applied to employees who make less than $100,000, and they can’t cover a period of more than 18 months, among other restrictions.

That means non-competes can still be enforced against high-ranking executives such as Bell in Washington state, despite the new law.

However, the fact that the state has narrowed the scope of non-compete agreements could still have a more subtle impact in these situations, said Venkat Balasubramani of Focal PLLC, a lawyer who represented former AWS executive Gene Farrell in a lawsuit filed by Amazon over his move to Smartsheet in 2017.

“The Washington legislature’s effort to narrow the applicability of non-competes has forced employers to think twice about enforcing non-competes,” Balasubramani said. “While the statute doesn’t target this type of a scenario specifically … it still is a legislative pronouncement in favor of employee mobility. And it contains some generally applicable terms, such as a presumption that a non-compete with a duration over 18 months is unreasonable.”

Non-compete deals have long been a subject of controversy in the tech industry.

“Unless there’s a rational defense of indentured servitude that I’m not familiar with, I can’t think of a reason why every human shouldn’t be free to choose their place of employment without constraint,” said Chris DeVore, the Founders Co-op managing partner, who has long opposed non-compete deals, citing a chilling effect on innovation.

“Companies have a huge arsenal of tools at their disposal — from ‘hard’ inducements like cash, stock, and role, to ‘soft’ ones like culture and mission — to give talent at every level a reason to stay,” DeVore said in response to GeekWire’s inquiry Thursday afternoon. “Once someone has decided that those aren’t sufficient, they should be free to pursue their career anywhere they choose.”

DeVore added, “I think there are good professional and ethical grounds for companies to seek limits on departing employees soliciting customers or peers to join them in a switch, but limiting the freedom of the individual to choose should be unlawful in every state. That seems to be emerging as the national consensus, and I expect it’s only a matter of time before Washington gets in step.”

In one case last year, Amazon sought to keep a former AWS marketing executive, Brian Hall, from editing and summarizing keynote speeches and slides for a Google Cloud conference in after he took a job with the rival cloud platform — saying the work “threatens immediate and irreparable harm to Amazon” due to his inside knowledge of its cloud plans.

Amazon settled with Hall for undisclosed terms several weeks after filing suit.

Likewise, the company settled the dispute with Ferrell for undisclosed terms after negotiating restrictions on his role.

“We try to be very thoughtful about how we deal with our non-compete agreements,” Amazon said in a statement on that case at the time. “We work hard to find a resolution that both protects Amazon and enables employees to take new jobs – it’s rare that we have to ask a court to step in.”

As of Thursday afternoon, a check of King County Court records indicated that the company had not yet taken that rare step over Bell’s new Microsoft role.

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