Would like to get your opinion on the following scenario:
Person works for a Company “A” for more than 10 years. Company “A” provides technical service to Company “B”, and Person is central to that service and an expert.
Person wants to leave Company “A” to quit and move back to the East Coast, but accepts an offer from Company “A” to become an Independent Consultant (no longer employee of Company “A”) and continue to perform the same service to Company “B” from the East Coast.
After 2+ years of this, Company “A” decides that arrangement with Person is no longer viable and cancels Consulting Contract with Person. After contract expires, there are no legal ties between Company “A” and Person.
Is it ethical for Person to offer the same services to Company “B” directly, bypassing Company “A”, and offering a price reduction in services as an enticement to Company “B”?
Provided Person is not under any sort of non-compete agreement with Company A, he is perfectly entitled to offer his services to Company B at whatever agreement they choose to negotiate.
This is a common phenomenon in management consulting where their associates are often hired by the client companies as employees.
Note that the service being provided is Person’s technical skills and abilities, not any sort of proprietary intellectual property of Company A (at least that’s how it seems).
When I hired consultants (engineering ones) there were very specific guidelines about how this should happen, and who got compensated. The consulting companies knew it would, and so offered a way to make it legit. Worked well.
Anyhow, I agree that it is ethical unless some agreement was signed barring it. Which seems to be the case. Even more so since Company A terminated the agreement, and should at least guess that the proposed independent connection with Company B would happen. If they did not want it to, Company A should offer the person compensation for signing a non-compete agreement.
A similar scenario is when Company B hires the person directly from Company A, which is generally viewed as, uhm, smelly… but the case in the OP is so clean it shines. Heck, if I was Company B, was satisfied with Person’s performance, and Company A decided to take him off my hands, I’d be the one going to talk with that person directly.
