cat

You work at X company
X sells Y company cloud services
Y company is doing something slightly wrong that costs them $xx million / yr more than it should¹

is it legal to

offer consulting to Y to improve cost efficiency of using X's cloud services (after you're no longer working for X)
everything discussed is public knowledge², except you only know about Y's infra mistake because you saw their metrics while working at X

You've actually informed the account manager at X who manages Y's account about this, but they declined to bother Y with this information
all of the services X offers is documented publicly, and this particular kind of mistake is one that people are generally aware you can make, but Y apparently hasn't noticed they're doing it. You're not telling Y to stop using X, just that they can shuffle around how they do things to save money

#tech #consulting #cloud #boring sorry

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in reply to @catball's post:

mint @mintexists3/12/2023, 9:19 PM

i am not a lawyer i am a high school student but what if your consultation was framed as speculation: "i know a way that might save you millions of dollars"?

cat @catball3/12/2023, 9:25 PM

that was basically my thought on approaching Y. however, I'm afraid that if X notices I've consulted for Y, that they'll rifle through my file and realize I've encountered Y's metrics before, and then sue me

like, I think it would be toeing the line of "yeah this may technically be legal", and may also be something no one would really notice or care about, but also I'm not sure the likelihood of X chasing me through court with a team of lawyers, or if somehow this isn't actually legal

likewise, I'm not sure how I'd approach Y, since Y is a really large company and probably wouldn't pay attention to any cold-call contractors offering consulting. I'd have to find some connection over there and convince them

cat @catball3/12/2023, 9:27 PM

sorry to kind of ramble in reply, I'm kinda processing out loud I guess!

thank you for the feedback, appreciate it!

Nire Bryce @NireBryce3/12/2023, 9:35 PM

feeling it in my bones how many times the Twitter backchannel saved companies XX million dollars and the person giving them the heads up gets nothing. I hope you can swing the consulting gig and i hope you can squeeze them if it pans out.

I'm not a lawyer but if you can't make anything else work, there's likely a chance you can convince X to hire you as a contractor to consult with Y, so it's both above board and extra money for them.

cat @catball3/12/2023, 10:18 PM

Thanks! I might also ask an experienced consultant i know, then if i decide to follow through, ill double-check with an attorney

your idea of letting X contract me to consult with Y: the account manager explicitly hasnt told Y because they like making $xx million more dollars per year, so it seems like a hard sell to get X to pay me to get them less money (because no one cares about client relationships or experience)

Nire Bryce @NireBryce3/12/2023, 10:46 PM

oh yeah i misread and thought the $xx was unrelated to company X, company X was just providing the pipe for their mistake, not benefiting from it