A Corp extraction is the main part of the character story for my wiz kid Hacker Violet (not her real name of course)

The Hacker's Digest really, really condensed version. [re edited]

This all occurred shortly after Crash 2.0

Having been born to two top corp executives at a mid level tech firm (MetaTech) Violet and her family lived in a Corporate village on the outskirts of Boston. While her parents were sent to bring a Seattle branch on line the corp had her stay back at the compound so she could complete her schooling. 6 months later her parents mysteriously disappeared and nothing more was heard of the Seattle operation Consequently, Violet became a ward of the corp at age 14. Being a brilliant child and a wiz at science, computers, and tech, was considered rather valuable in the corp's eyes. Following a series of "treatments" on her (read Implants) the age of 12, her "stock" went up. One of these procedures involved the implantation of a (at the time) prototype Commlink making her Meta Tech's "SOTA child". Being fairly perceptive (and devious), she could see what was happening & didn't like where her life was heading. She also knew very well about the "gift" she had been given and cracked its diagnostic codes to learn how it was designed.

At the age of 16, she began to hit the new and growing wireless matrix behind MetaTech's back. Violet decided she would get back at her evil "Uncle Olaf" (as she called the corp) by finding a willing buyer for the design of the implant (one of the current makers of commercial Commlinks in 2070). After finding an interested party she asked for an extraction and a change of identity as her payment. Needless to say, the company accepted the offer and fulfilled her wish. Now 4 years later, she runs the shadows of Seattle, looking for clues as to the whereabouts of her family.

The full story as written is of course a bit longer, with detailed scenes of her Matrix jaunts, the extraction, & settling in Seattle.

So that is a sort of then?

You never really believed in Santa Claus did you? Well I don't ever remember buying into it either, but I did always play along for the phat loot. Christmas Present Whore is such an ugly label to wear, but it pays well enough that you can have yourself extracted later.

Taking us back onto topic.

It may not be precisely the inability to quit that sparks an extraction. I am told that IRL some employment contracts include clauses that state should you leave you cannot go and work for a competitor of your company for a specified period of time (basically until any inside information you have is no longer valuable to a competitor). I know that idea is definately used in Shadowrun.

So here's the deal; You want out of your place of business, maybe the boss is a jerk, maybe the pay isn't good enough, maybe you want to move to another city, maybe someone else is making you an offer you can't refuse. Whatever the reason you want to leave your current employer and you want to start work with another company in the same business. That's the important bit because your contract does not legally permit you to just go and join a competitor.

If you quit and go to another A ranked or lower corp you are in breach of contract and in big trouble, and the company that hires you probably isn't much better off. If however you go and join a megacorp you can hide out in their extraterritorial enclaves and never face charges over that breach of contract. The megacorps organise so many extractions because they can get away with them.

In North America at least these clauses are all but unenforcable for the vast majority of people. You have to pay the person an ungodly amount of money for their work or the judge will chase you out of court and likely tear a verbal strip out of your lawyer for wasting his time.

There are lots of employers that will say that. Unless you normally couldn't make anywhere close to that much elsewhere it is effectively unenforcable at $70k/year to keep you from working for a competitor. They have to pay something that covers the loss of your livelihood for the noncompete clause. We own your brain contracts have a long history of being drawn up in unenforcable ways.

It doesn't make the whole contract illegal. It is just that parts of it are trumped by law.

Starting a new business yourself can be a stickier matter. Even if you don't brain fart and sign a contract with those stipulations, a legal bullying tactic is sometimes to sue. But it is doomed in the end to only accomplish draining both sides of huge amounts of money unless the new business owner has a crappy lawyer, didn't cover their butt, or did something particularly weaselish and got caught.

And this is probably the root of the problem. Even if you win in front of the court and your costs are covered by the loosing side (not sure how this is in the US, but it's like that where I live) you still have to spend the money as long as the lawsuit is running.
Larger companies can easily afford spending the money, not few of them pay annual fees to their lawyers anyway, most people simply cant. So even if you win in the end, most people will be bankrupt before that end is visible. Hence they settle out of court.

I'll have to agree with Brahm here. The fact that something is in a contract doesnt necessarily mean its legal or enforcable.

Always assuming of course you live to actually see a payment. With corps beeing ready to break to the law on pretty much every legal regulation ever invented, I somewhat doubt they'd step back from silencing some wannabe-rich.by-suing-the-corps.

Going up against anything big enough to have extrateritoriality without something equally big behind yourself is suicide. The corps have their own court, they make the rules.
And if anything leads back the corp to make it look bad, some random person takes the fall. In some written confession that's found after his "suicide".

My friend was going through a lawsuit when he left one company and went to another. he is not allowed to bring his client list with him, but he was still being sued rather aggressively and harassed as well. Then his new employer put out all the funds for the legal team, and went to the old employer and said back off or they will hire the rest of their staff and put them out of business. the lesson here is to make sure you leave to someone that can help you if you are sued. One of the things about extra-territorality is that you have to be under their juristiction, to be under their laws. If there is a dispute between corps, it goes to an arbitrator or at worst corporate court. Extractions are part of the business, and so is suing each other. It is just another stall tactic to try and get some advantage as well as good PR.

Ok I think I see where we are missing each other's points. You are absolutely right that there is now ay to sue over an extraction.

I was simply pointing out that the Litigation Industry is another one that can make use of runners to make a dirty NuYen or two.

Couple things to think about. First of all, in the SR universe, MegaCorps essentially have the clout of a modern/current Country. They're not really a business as you and I recognize them. Thus, when you're discussing extracting an important scientist (as an example) from lets say Fuchi-Europe, it would be similar to the USA deciding to extract one of Russia's top scientists. So at that point it becomes less about what contract the scientist might have signed, and more about a MegaCorp that is essentially nations in its own right deciding to steal someone from what they view as an opposing MegaCorp.

Second, depending on the field you work in and how important you are to the field, do you really think that a 'contract' means anything? If you're one of Ares top research/designers in the field of military hardware, they're not going to let you go ANYWHERE - it doesn't matter what your contract might say. And who's going to stop them - the UCAS government? Uh-uh. Ares has essentially the same rights as a foreign country, meaning there isn't drek UCAS can do about it.

And finally, keep in mind that the people that are most likely to be the target of an extraction are the important minds/scientists/vips - these are the people that were probably enticed to join the 'Corp with rather prodigious salaries, breathtaking perks, and all the wining and dining it took. "We'd like to hire you to join our R&D department. The contract is long term, so you'll have guaranteed employment (read lifetime), the pay is well above the industry standard, we'll provide you with an excellent apartment at no cost to you, a company car, and an extremely generous health insurance package. Just sign on the line here." That kind of offer is probably going to tempt more people than you might think.

The bottom line to remember is that "illegal" is irrelevant to MegaCorps. So are contracts. Once you're employed, you're THEIRS - and there isn't drek-all you can do about it. (At least, that's what they want you to think. For the paltry sum of 200k Nuyen plus expenses, I'm sure we can find a way to get you where you want to go.)

-Dwarf

Ah, sorry bout that misunderstanding.

One might add that most extraction situations take place with some form of pressure involved. That romantic "getting kidnapped to join a new employer" is rather rare. The corps know what they have with their people and treat the important ones well enough to make sure they *want* to stay on board.
The few ones that want to go by themselves usually found themself in a unforseen situation that they saw no way of squaring with their current employer. Either that or they want to change their job description and cant at their current emplyer.

In fact, most people wouldnt want to be extracted because that means leaving behind a lot. Family, friends, social enviroment, Identity and all that. We're talking high class scientists usually. To them, their name is more then just identification. It's the sum of their scientific acomplishments. Giving that up alone would require a very serious reason.

If you call "spending equal time reading it as figuring out under what conditions I could fling it out of the store and into the police substation around the corner" sort of, then yes, sort of. And it probably would do it, too. I've gotten my sourcebooks to fly across the house, no problem. To do the above would require only two things: an open door, and the right wind direction (since it's always windy as a mofo this time of year).