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From the EU to Microsoft: Loose lips sink ships... and careers
Why Detlef Eckert should watch his alcohol intake this Christmas...

By editorial@silicon.com

Published: Friday 29 November 2002

So the Christmas party season is upon us once more - drunken shenanigans in the stationery cupboard, fights in the car park, obscene pages on the photo copier in the morning - you know the sort of thing.

And guaranteed there'll be countless employees who embarrass themselves in front of the whole company - giving rise to a mass outbreak of what has become called meerkatting* from the rest of the office when they arrive shamefaced the next day.

One person however who really will have to watch his mouth when the Christmas drinks start flowing, and beyond, is Detlef Eckert.

Eckert has been given a job within Microsoft, working on improving the security of its software products (a topic we can save for another day). In this instance the more newsworthy fact is that until recently Eckert was working with the European Commission on its ongoing investigation into his new employer's monopoly in certain software markets.

Understandably, Microsoft's rivals aren't best pleased, not least because some of them had actually presented the 'case for the prosecution' to the EC in the presence of Eckert himself.

However, the EC has knocked back any suggestions of impropriety, insisting Eckert has signed all the right forms prior to his move which tie him into 'conflict of interest' rules to prevent him spilling the beans to his new employer.

In truth Eckert is doubtless aware of the scrutiny he will be under. Any kind of slip up would of course become a scandal given the profile of his employer but it raises the question of whether it should be a situation we are even talking about.

There is never going to be an ideal time to change company. If you hand in your resignation at many major firms and offer to work your month's notice before starting at a rival firm you may find you are given 'gardening leave' - and quite probably an escort from the building - for fear of what sensitive data you may feel inspired to move off-site during that month.

It's worth re-iterating that there is no suspicion of wrong-doing on the part of Eckert or Microsoft - the question is more about a situation which shouldn't occur in the first place. In the same way those major firms will include a 'gardening leave' clause in employees' contracts, you'd like to think the EC might draw up a clause forbidding staff to join companies they are currently investigating.

Perhaps that's a point a Brussels pen-pusher could bring up at the Christmas party once he's had one too many Hoegaardens.

*Meerkatting: The practice of heads popping up from behind monitors and cubicles - meerkat-from-a-hole style.