Cisco executive criticises HP’s personnel policies

AN EXECUTIVE at enterprise networking outfit Cisco has criticised HP for the way it treats workers that want to leave its employ.

Mark Chandler who is SVP, general counsel and secretary at Cisco has rather publicly called out his firm's enterprise peer HP, saying that for the third time in two years it has filed a lawsuit stop a former employee from going to work with Cisco.

Chandler suggested that HP is desperate to hold on to its people and could be creating an unhappy work environment.

"As headhunters and other companies are flooded with resumes from HP employees seeking safe ground amidst the chaos of executive turnover, we can probably expect to see more desperate moves to lock up human capital," he said in a barbed blog post.

"In an unhappy work environment, it's a strange decision to try to achieve employee retention by litigation. And it can't help recruitment efforts when it seems the corporate slogan could be changed from 'HP Invent' to 'HP Sue.'"

HP's habit of suing its employees runs counter to the spirit of Silicon Valley, according to the Chandler, and pulls the firm far away from its roots.

"Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built their world-class organization in the one state that won't generally enforce employee non-compete clauses. In Silicon Valley, human capital is as mobile as financial capital," he added.

"Employees' freedom to find the best way to use their skills and advance their careers is a key factor that has driven the development of Silicon Valley. Trade secrets are protected by intellectual property laws, not by non-compete agreements and vague theories that a new job would 'inevitably' cause an employee to use trade secrets of his or her former employer."

According to Chandler this heavy-handed approach from HP is unfair to the individual, nevermind the rival firm that hopes to hire him or her, and creates an unfair amount of stress on someone who is just looking to change their job.

!"In the first of the three cases, HP was so persistent in the litigation and so threatening, that the individual, who had retired from HP months before even talking to Cisco, withdrew. There seemed to be little concern with the stress that a big company turning its legal guns on an individual can cause," he added.

"In another case, an employee who worked in HP's financial services group was sued to block her from working in Cisco's customer finance group, even though there was no argument whatsoever that relevant intellectual property at stake. She persisted and HP relented."

Chandler said that under new leadership, in the form of Meg Whitman, things could change, and urged the firm to support its employees right to freedom. "Stop suing employees just for leaving," he added. µ