Some employees are alleging they were duped via complicated legalese and double-talk in employment contracts about how their shares would be handled upon termination or voluntary departure from the Internet telephony giant.

That matters, since Skype was recently sold to Microsoft for $8.5 billion, well above previous valuations. Thus, those who were, as a Skype PR person said, not in it to win it, um, lost.

Dramatic stuff, to be sure. But, even with all the fervor around the employment contract issue, the handwringing about what it means for compensation issues in Silicon Valley and a whole big dose of how private equity companies (in this case, a firm that had bought Skype called Silver Lake) are evil, it’s struck me as little more than an insider read-the-legally-obtuse-contract dispute.

And, although I love Reuters’ Felix Salmon’s epic tsk-tsking posts, that’s why I like to see real documents as proof of what people knew and when.

Apparently, a lot and rather clearly from this PowerPoint that was given to employees of Skype as of December 2009 as part of its changing ownership, after Silver Lake and other investors bought it from eBay.

While it’s not proof of what employees got it — typically, it is standard HR policy to hand this stuff out to everyone — and who read it (no accounting for slaggards!), it is pretty clear on what happens upon leaving Skype, either by a firing or quitting.

On the eighth slide, as you can see above, it says, in part:

“Good Leaver”: someone who gets fired without “Cause”

* Gets the fair-market value of their currently vested options

“Bad Leaver”: someone who resigns, or is fired for “Cause”

* Skype buys back their options at the lower of fair-market value or strike price

* This provision lapses post-IPO

It seems pretty buyer-beware clear, but check it out for yourself:

Skype – Employee Presentation

While Facebook should not be expecting big bouquets of love from its partner and investor Microsoft, at least it’s not going to be getting legal brickbats either.

According to sources close to the situation, the pair have settled a dispute over the Silicon Valley social networking site’s talent raid of Microsoft’s head of global ad sales, Carolyn Everson, for a similar job at Facebook.

In fact, Everson has already been at work for a week, sources said, after she agreed not to solicit a small group of advertising clients for a short period of time.

She is also barred from using any strategic information in her new Facebook job that she obtained while at Microsoft, sources said.

This kind of agreement is not uncommon in disputed job shifts and is also a far cry from a more stringent legal outcome, which might have benched her completely for some time.

But Everson is a veteran ad exec, having previously worked at Viacom’s MTV Networks. Thus, Microsoft could not have barred her from calling on advertisers she had known previous to her short employment there.

Still, the February hiring by Facebook came as a surprise to many at Microsoft, especially since Everson (pictured here) had been hired only last June, after a long search. In that time, she had become a high-profile presence at internal and external Microsoft events.

So, it’s clear the Everson hiring infuriated Microsoft execs, especially since the company regards Facebook as a close partner. Microsoft is a longtime investor too.

“We’re no longer angry,” said one source at Microsoft, about the cooling of tensions, “as much as disappointed.”

But key in the weighing of options at Microsoft is the obvious importance of keeping up good relations with Facebook. It is an important partnership, especially for its Bing search business, especially as an advantage over Google.

Thus: Bygones!

“We are not announcing how many and in what country,” Elop said this morning. “But there will be substantial reductions in employment in various locations around the world, and that too will affect Finland.”

The Finnish government is already bracing itself for the hit. ”You’re talking about 20,000 people, it’s a big number,” Minister for Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen told YLE. ”We’re talking about far and away the biggest process of structural change that Finland has ever seen in the new technology sector.”

Ugly.

That said, as I’ve noted here before, Nokia’s R&D spend is nearly three times that of its rivals and about five times that of Apple.

Oh, and don’t fret too much, Nokia staffers. Google’s hiring …

UPDATE: Reached for comment, Nokia refused to confirm Pekkarinen’s number. But it didn’t deny it either. “Stephen mentioned that there would be significant changes but the impact of the new strategy on personnel is not known yet until the planning process for implementation of the new strategy is started,” a spokesperson told me. “We have a strong track record and positive experiences of supporting employees in this kind of a situation and will aim to support the employees with different solutions. As always, when impact on employees are known we will announce them, and if job reductions are warranted we will follow all relevant legislation and practices.”

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

• Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talks to Mobilized About the Big Microsoft Deal (Video)
• Massive Layoffs Expected at Nokia
• Nokia’s Microsoft Partnership: Does the New Strategy Add Up?
• Live From the Nokia-Microsoft Press Conference: It’s a Windows Phone World After All
• More From Nokia: Forecast Gets Cloudy, Plus Expected Executive Changes
• Nokia-Microsoft: What Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop Have to Say in Their Joint Letter
• Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership With YouTube Video
• R&D Spending: Nokia Vs. Apple Shows Size Doesn’t Matter
• Not Seeing Much Return on That Massive R&D Spend, Are You, Nokia?
• Nokia: Big and Slow

One big surprise: The job market with the strongest growth in tech jobs–with a net gain of 900–was Oklahoma City. Don’t pack up the U-Haul just yet. Yes, it added the most technology jobs of the 60 cities in the survey, but it also had one of the smallest overall tech job pools, accounting for only 18,000 jobs, ranking 57th of the 60.

The New York statistical area, which includes New York City, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had the largest pool of tech jobs at 317,000. It lost 8,700 jobs during the survey period, which as we all know was during the worst throes of the recession and the catastrophe that struck the data-driven financial industry. Fifty-three out of 60 cities saw job losses. Nationally, the group found that the tech industry lost about a quarter million jobs in 2009.

Statistically, the TechAmerica report considers San Francisco, Oakland and the San Jose areas as separate. But if you added them all together, tech jobs would outnumber New York at 394,000. San Jose led the nation in tech pay, at an average of $132,100 per year, and not surprisingly had the highest concentration of tech jobs as a percentage of the workforce: One job in three is tech-related.

The only markets to see job growth aside from Oklahoma City were places like Huntsville, Ala., and San Diego. You can take a look and see how different cities fared here.

The big picture: Google has spent at least $1.6 billion buying 40 companies during the first nine months of 2010. And if you assume the previously announced ITA deal goes through this year, you can tack on another $700 million.

Google breaks out a few of the bigger deals:

• Slide: $179 million
• AdMob: $681 million
• On2 Technologies: $123 million
• 37 other companies: $626 million

Bear in mind that these numbers very likely underestimate Google’s real M&A cost, since they don’t include big employment contracts it hands out to keep key talent it picks up. Slide’s Max Levchin, for instance, is going to do very well as a Google engineer for at least a couple of years.

Today, it’s Sun co-founder Scott McNealy who is bidding farewell. Sources close to the company tell me that he too will leave Sun following the close of Oracle’s $7.4 billion buyout.

Word of McNealy’s fate comes a day before Oracle is to unveil its strategy for Oracle (ORCL) and Sun (JAVA) at an event tomorrow.

McNealy’s farewell memo to employees, below.

Gang,

When I interviewed many of you for employment at Sun over the years, one commitment often made was that things will change above, below, and around you faster than any place you have ever been. Looks like this was one area we exceeded plan for 28 years. While it was never the primary vision to be acquired by Oracle, it was always an interesting option. And this huge event is upon us now. Let’s all embrace it with all of the enthusiasm and class and talent that we have to offer.

This combination has the potential to put Sun, its people, and its technology at the center of yet another industry and game changing inflection point. The opportunity is well documented and articulated by Larry and the Oracle folks. Not much I can add on this score. This is a very powerful merger. And way better than some of the alternatives we were facing.

So what do I say to all of you now this is happening?

It turns out that one simple message to the large and diverse Sun community is actually quite hard to craft. Even for a big mouth who is always ready with a clever quip. The community includes our resellers and customers, our current and former employees, their friends and families who supported our employees on their mission to change the industry, our investors, our supply and service partners, students and educators, and even our competitors with whom we often collaborated.

But let me try. Though nothing I could write comes close to matching the unbelievably strong and positive emotions I have for you all. See, I never was able to master dispassion. I truly loved starting, running, and living Sun. And the last four years have not been without serious withdrawal. And the EU approval rocked me more than it should have.

So, to be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun in my mind should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company.

And I sure “hope” America regains its love affair with capitalism. And except for the auto industry, financial industry, health care, and some other places (I digress), the invisible hand is doing its thing quite efficiently. So I am more than willing to accept this outcome.

And my hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison. He will do well with the assets that Sun brings to Oracle.

What we did right and wrong at Sun over the years might make for interesting reading. However, I am not a book writer. I am a husband, father of four, and a builder and leader of people who want to make a difference.

But spare me a bit of nostalgia. Not of the mistakes we made, and lord knows I made a ton. But of the things we did right and well.

First and foremost, Sun innovated like crazy. We took it to the limit (see Eagles). And though we did not monetize our inventions as well as we could have, few companies have the track record in R&D that we had over the last 28 years. This made working at Sun really cool. Thanks to all of you inventors and risk takers who changed how we live.

Sun cared about its customers. Even more than we cared about our own company at times. We looked at our customer’s mission as more important than ours. Maybe we should have asked for more revenue in return, but our employees were always ready to help first. I love this about Sun which I guess makes me a good capitalist if not a great capitalist.

Sun did not cheat, lie, or break the rule of law or decency. While we enjoyed breaking the rules of conventional wisdom and archaic business practice and for sure loved to win in the market, we did so with a solid reputation for integrity. Nearly three decades of competing without a notable incident of our folks going off course morally or legally. Not all executives and big companies are bad. Really. There are good companies out there. Special thanks to all of my employees for this. I never had to hide the newspaper in shame from my children.

Sun was a financial success. We paid billions in taxes, salaries, purchases, leases, training, and even lawyers and accountants for devastatingly cumbersome SOX and legal compliance (oops, more classic digression). Long term and smart investors made billions in SUNW. And our customers generated revenue and savings using our equipment in countless ways. Many employees started families, bought homes and put them through school while working at Sun. Our revenues over 28 years exceeded $200B. Few companies make it to the F200. We did. Nice.

Sun employees had way more fun than any other company. By far. From our dress code (“You must!”) to beer busts to our April Fools pranks to SunRise to our quiet enjoyment at night of a long hard well done day of work, no company enjoyed “work” more than Sun. Thanks to all of our employees past and present for making Sun such a blast.

I could go on for a long time reminiscing about the good and great stuff we did at Sun, but just allow me one last one. We shared. Not the greatest attribute for a capitalist. But one I could not change and was not willing to change about Sun while I was in charge. We shared in the success of Sun with our resellers. With our employees through stock options, SunShare, beer busts, and the like (for as long as Congress would allow) and through our efforts to keep as many of them on board for as long as possible during the inevitable down cycles. With our partners through the Java Community Process, through our open source collaborations, and licensing strategies. With our customers through our commitments to low barriers to exit. Sun was never just about us. It was about we. And that may be a bit of the reason we are where we are today.

But I have few regrets (see Sinatra’s “My Way”) and will always look back at Sun and its gang with only pride. Enormous pride. You are the best this industry ever had though few outside of Sun recognized it.

And what we are about will live on in Sparc, Solaris, Java, our products, and our spirit. Well past everyone’s recollections of what we did together. I will never forget though.

Oracle is getting a crown jewel of the technology industry. They will do great things with Sun. Do your best to support them and keep the Sun spirit alive and well in the industry. Our children will be better for it.

Thanks for the off the charts support to everyone who ever carried a Sun badge, used our products, or helped our company through the years.

And thanks to my wonderful wife, Susan, who gave this desperado (see Eagles) a chance to choose the Queen of Hearts before it was too late.

Someday, hopefully, you will all get to see or meet her and my other life’s works named Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. If you do, perhaps you will understand why I stepped back from the CEO role four years ago. And why I feel like the luckiest guy in the whole world.

My best to all of you, and remember: Kick butt and have fun!

Scott

FURTHER READING:

• Sun CEO Set to Resign
• Sun CEO: Go Oracle, Beat IBM [Internal Memo]
• EU Approves Oracle-Sun Deal
• EU Poised to Approve Oracle-Sun Deal
• Oracle Sack Half of Sun’s Workforce? Ridiculous, Says Sun.
• Q: What’s the Difference Between Neelie Kroes and Larry Ellison?
• Ellison: Oracle Is the New IBM
• Oracle: IBM, Come Out to Play-ee-ay
• Mr. Ellison Asks That His Burgers Be Served With Freedom Fries Until Further Notice

Before making a decision, you might want to take gander at a list published a few days ago by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the 10 industries likely to see the largest employment decline over the next decade. I mention this here on the TTD blog because it includes several entrants with direct bearing on the tech industry.

Here’s a slightly annotated version of the list, ranked by the number of jobs expected to be lost:

• Department stores: Expected drop, 159,000, or 10.2 percent of 2008-year level of 1,557,000 jobs. Comment: Hello, Amazon! (AMZN)
• Semiconductors and other electronic component manufacturing: Expected loss, 146,000 jobs, down 33.7 percent. Comment: more jobs head to Asia.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Of the 600 financial sector workers surveyed on Wall Street and London’s Canary Wharf who lost or left a job last year, 41 percent admitted to taking confidential company data with them. Exactly half, 50 percent, said they would steal company information if they were fired tomorrow, and 39 percent said they would download it if they felt their job was at risk.

Nearly a third, 28 percent, would use the information to negotiate their next position. The most commonly stolen data: Customer contact lists that could be leveraged at a new job.

Cyber-Ark’s study isn’t the first to uncover such employee sentiments. A similar effort by the Ponemon Institute earlier this year found that close to 60 percent of people who left or lost their jobs in 2008 took company data with them. “I’m not sure that malicious intent and future employment are mutually exclusive,” Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, told eWeek at the time.

“Clearly the responses show that obtaining future employment was a significant motivating factor,” Ponemon added, “but when we see a high percentage of individuals who took information knowing full well they were acting in violation of company policy, that hints strongly at the presence of malice.”

The U.S. economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, closing out the worst year for job attrition since World War II, according to the BLS. Total job losses for 2008: 2.6 million, the largest decline since 2.750 million jobs were lost in 1945. A 16-year high. Congratulations, folks….

Suffice to say, that’s quite a bit more than some economists were expecting. And that’s an ugly, ugly number, 2.750 million jobs lost. With the national unemployment rate rising to 7.2 percent during December, the first quarter of 2009 is also looking pretty bleak. “The job situation is ugly and is going to get uglier,” Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research, told Reuters. “There’s no reason to expect hiring anytime in the next three to six months. We are not going to see any hiring until the government steps in and acts. Talk doesn’t work.”

Robert Barbera, chief economist at the Investment Technology Group, was even more pessimistic–if that’s possible. “I would suspect that starting this past October and lasting through April, we will have really big job losses,” he told The New York Times. “We are not yet near the numbers of those earlier recessions,” he added, referring to the downturns of the mid-’70s and early ’80s, “but five more months like what we have been having and we’ll be there.”

Munster says he expects the U.S. savings rate to increase significantly over the next few years, following 25 years of increasing leverage and a declining savings rate. The good news is that will allow households to rebuild savings, home equity and investment portfolios. The bad news is that it means less consumer spending.

“Nearly all drivers of consumer spending, including employment, employee earnings, consumer credit, household wealth and consumers’ propensity to save, are all moving in a direction to drive spending lower over the near-term,” he writes in a note.

Read the rest of this post

“Mr. Papermaster’s employment by Apple is a violation of his agreement with IBM against working for a competitor should he leave IBM,” said Fred McNeese, director of IBM’s corporate media relations group. “We will vigorously pursue this case in court.”

And for good reason. As a member of the IBM (IBM) elite Integration and Values Team, Papermaster had broad access to the company’s intellectual property, trade secrets, and more. From the complaint:

The I&VT is charged with addressing the most difficult and important issues facing IBM, such as developing corporate strategy and driving innovation and growth and I&VT team members work with the most sensitive strategic information the Company possesses.

In his capacity as a member of the I&VT, Mr. Papermaster has gained access to confidential information concerning the Company’s strategic plans, marketing plans and long-term business opportunities, including the development of specific IBM products.

… Mr. Papermaster is IBM’s top expert in ‘Power’ architecture and technology, and he is privy to a whole host of trade secrets and confidences belonging to IBM that the company uses to design, develop and manufacture its products.”

Sounds like IBM has a lot to lose in Papermaster. Certainly, it’s worrisome that someone with his processor design expertise and deep knowledge of IBM research and innovation could end up at Apple, a company that’s made quite a name for itself recognizing the potential of innovations others have left fallow.