I work for an Austin tech company and got laid off or fired. What are my rights, and what about my stock options?

Texas at-will means most firings are legal, but two things deserve immediate attention — whether an exception applies, and what happens to your equity: The at-will baseline and its exceptions: A layoff or termination without warning or good reason is usually lawful unless it was because of a protected characteristic (race, sex, national origin, religion, age 40+, disability, pregnancy — Title VII/ADEA/ADA and Texas Labor Code Ch. 21), retaliation for protected activity (complaining about discrimination, filing a workers' comp claim, whistleblowing, taking FMLA leave), or a Sabine Pilot refusal to commit an illegal act. Mass tech layoffs can trigger the federal WARN Act — 60 days' notice or pay in lieu for plant closings/mass layoffs at 100+ employee sites — so review a sudden large layoff against WARN before signing any release. Your equity — often the biggest number: This is where Austin cases turn. - Vested options/RSUs: generally yours, but exercise windows matter — many plans give only 90 days post-termination to exercise vested stock options or you forfeit them. Calendar it immediately. - Unvested equity: usually forfeited on termination unless your agreement provides acceleration (single- or double-trigger acceleration on a change of control, or negotiated severance acceleration). Read the plan and grant documents. - "For cause" vs. "without cause": the termination characterization can decide whether you keep or lose equity and severance — cause definitions are negotiable and contestable, and a wrongful "for cause" label can be challenged. - Promised-but-ungranted equity: options you were promised in an offer letter but never formally granted are a contract/wage dispute worth pursuing. Severance and releases: Severance is not required by law, but tech companies commonly offer it in exchange for a release. Everything is negotiable — amount, equity acceleration, exercise-window extension, references, non-disparagement, and the scope of the release (which cannot waive your right to file an EEOC charge). Have counsel review before signing; the standard offer is often not the best available, especially if you have a discrimination or WARN angle. Deadlines: EEOC/TWC charge within 300 days; Payday Law claim for unpaid wages/commissions within 180 days; request unemployment immediately (twc.texas.gov, headquartered here). Preserve offer letters, grant agreements, plan documents, reviews, and communications before your access is cut — equity disputes are won on documents you can only get while you still have the login.

Is my non-compete enforceable, and what happens if I join a competitor in Austin's tech scene?

Texas non-competes are enforceable more often than tech workers assume, and Austin's dense, fast-moving job market makes them a live risk: Enforceability standard (§15.50): The covenant must be (1) ancillary to an otherwise enforceable agreement — in practice, the employer providing confidential information, trade secrets, or specialized training — and (2) reasonable in time, geographic scope, and scope of restrained activity, no broader than needed to protect legitimate interests (confidential information, customer goodwill). One to two years is commonly upheld; industry-wide bans untethered to what you actually did are vulnerable. In a remote-work era, geographic scope arguments have evolved — a "worldwide" or customer-based restriction may be reasonable for a remote engineer, or overbroad, depending on the role. Reformation, not voiding: Texas courts must reform an overbroad covenant to reasonable limits and enforce it as reformed — you generally cannot count on an overreaching non-compete being thrown out entirely, though reformation limits the employer to injunctive relief (not damages) on the reformed terms. What a fight looks like: The former employer files in Travis County district court (or federal court) seeking a temporary restraining order and injunction, usually within days of your move, typically bundling TUTSA and DTSA trade-secret claims, breach of fiduciary duty, and computer-fraud claims — with forensic imaging of your devices as standard. Outcomes are usually negotiated: narrowed restrictions, customer carve-outs, garden-leave arrangements, or the new employer walling you off from specific projects or accounts. The tech-specific danger — trade secrets: Source code, chip designs, algorithms, and customer/pricing data are trade secrets. The fastest way to lose a winnable non-compete case is to take data — syncing a repository, emailing yourself files, keeping "your own" copies of work product. Do none of it; a clean departure keeps the fight about the covenant's reasonableness rather than about theft. Before you move: have the agreement reviewed before you resign; disclose it to the new employer (they often have counsel who handle this routinely and will indemnify or restructure your role); negotiate the exit. Many Austin moves that would trigger litigation are lawyered into safe transitions instead. Note: the FTC's national non-compete ban was struck down in the courts, and Texas has no general ban — your covenant matters, so treat it seriously rather than assuming it's unenforceable.

My Austin employer isn't paying overtime or misclassified me. What can I do?

Match the remedy to the claim, and mind the deadlines — with the TWC headquartered right here in Austin, the administrative route is unusually accessible: The Texas Payday Law (fastest for discrete amounts): For unpaid wages, final paychecks, unpaid commissions/bonuses under an agreement, and unauthorized deductions — file a wage claim with the Texas Workforce Commission within 180 DAYS of the date the wages were due (twc.texas.gov). It's free, needs no lawyer, is decided on paper with appeal rights, and TWC orders carry penalties. Count 180 days from each missed payment and file even while "working it out." FLSA (for overtime and misclassification patterns): Non-exempt employees must get time-and-a-half over 40 hours. Austin's recurring violations: exemption misclassification (labeling employees "exempt professionals/administrators" who don't meet the duties tests — common with junior tech and support staff); independent-contractor misclassification (gig, delivery, rideshare, and startup workers who are employees under the economic-realities test); unpaid off-the-clock work; and salaried-but-nonexempt staff denied overtime. Remedy: federal suit (Austin Division of the Western District of Texas) with a 2-year lookback (3 for willful) + liquidated DOUBLE damages + attorney's fees — Austin has an active plaintiff-side FLSA bar taking these on contingency, and collective actions sweep in co-workers with the same violation. Alternative: US DOL Wage & Hour Division investigation (1-866-487-9243) — free, slower, usually no liquidated damages. Equity and startup-comp disputes: promised options never granted, disputes over vesting or clawbacks, and unpaid commissions blend wage law with contract and securities issues — bring documents (offer letter, plan, grant agreements, commission plan) to specialized counsel. Construction and service workers: add mechanic's-lien and payment-bond claims to reach money above an insolvent subcontractor (short notice deadlines); tip-credit and off-the-clock claims are common in Austin's hospitality/live-music economy. Misclassification bonus effects: employee status unlocks unemployment benefits, workers' comp coverage, and payroll-tax corrections (IRS SS-8/8919) beyond the wage claim. Evidence — build it before you complain: your own hours log (screenshots, badge/clock records, texts assigning work), pay stubs, the handbook, and job descriptions. Texas is one-party consent for recording conversations you're in. Retaliation for a wage complaint is separately illegal under the FLSA, and immigration status doesn't defeat wage rights — the Equal Justice Center and worker advocates assist regardless of status.

I'm a public employee — State of Texas, City of Austin, or the University. How are my rights different?

Public employment in the capital comes with protections — and procedural traps — that private-sector workers don't have: Which employer, which regime: - State of Texas employees (agencies, the Legislature, the courts, and — as state entities — the University of Texas and its Dell Medical School): You have agency grievance procedures, the protections of the Texas Whistleblower Act, and the state's limited waivers of sovereign immunity. Discrimination claims still go through the EEOC/TWC and Chapter 21, but suits against the State navigate immunity rules, and many disputes resolve through internal agency processes and the State Office of Administrative Hearings rather than ordinary courts. - City of Austin classified employees (police, fire, and civil-service staff): Chapter 143 civil-service protections give you appeal rights, disciplinary due process, and — for police and fire — meet-and-confer/collective-bargaining agreements that govern discipline, promotion, and grievances. Discipline appeals go to a civil-service commission or an independent hearing examiner, not a jury. - Travis County and CapMetro employees: county personnel policies and, for CapMetro, transit-authority rules, with public-employee whistleblower coverage. The Texas Whistleblower Act (Gov't Code Ch. 554) — the key public-employee shield: It protects a public employee who, in good faith, reports a violation of law by the employer or another public employee to an APPROPRIATE LAW-ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY (not just an internal supervisor — this is a common fatal mistake; the report must go to an entity with authority to enforce or investigate the law). Deadlines and prerequisites are strict: you must initiate the employer's grievance/appeal process within 90 days of the retaliatory act before (or while) suing, and the suit itself has a 90-day trigger. Remedies include reinstatement, back pay, and damages. Because the "appropriate authority" and timing requirements sink many claims, get counsel early. What still applies to everyone: federal and state discrimination and retaliation law (EEOC/TWC, 300 days), the ADA and pregnancy-accommodation law, FMLA, USERRA for the many public employees with military-reserve service, and FLSA overtime rules (with public-sector comp-time nuances). Federal employees (numerous here — the VA, federal agencies, the federal courts): an entirely separate system — EEO counselor contact within 45 DAYS, MSPB appeals for adverse actions, and union grievance procedures. Do not miss the 45-day clock. The practical point: identify your exact employer and the exact regime before acting, route whistleblower reports to a genuine law-enforcement authority, and honor the short grievance-initiation deadlines — public-sector cases are lost on procedure more than on the merits.

How do I bring a discrimination or harassment claim against a Travis County employer?

The sequence is rigid and the deadlines control everything — and in Austin, the state civil-rights agency is headquartered downtown: 1. Use the internal process (strategically): Report harassment in writing through the employer's channel and keep copies off company systems. For harassment claims, the employer's liability often turns on whether you used the policy; for discrete acts (termination, demotion, pay), internal complaints build the retaliation record — anything adverse after you complain is a second, often stronger, claim. Since 2021, Texas requires "immediate and appropriate corrective action" on sexual-harassment complaints, covers employers of ANY size, and exposes individual harassers to liability. 2. File the administrative charge — 300 days: File with the EEOC (Travis County falls in the San Antonio District; file online at eeoc.gov or through the intake line 1-800-669-4000) or the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division (headquartered in Austin at 101 E. 15th St.) — the two agencies cross-file. The clock runs from each discriminatory act; waiting out an internal investigation forfeits claims. (For the Texas sexual-harassment track, filing within 180 days preserves every option.) Federal employees have a completely different process — EEO counselor contact within 45 DAYS. 3. Investigation → right to sue: The agency may mediate (worth doing — free, and sometimes resolves), investigate, or dismiss. You may request a right-to-sue letter after 180 days; once issued, federal suit within 90 days (Austin Division of the Western District of Texas), or the state-court route under Chapter 21 (suit permitted 60 days after filing, two-year outer limit). 4. Build what wins: a dated timeline; comparators (who did the same thing and kept their job — names and demographics); shifting justifications (the reason at termination vs. at the TWC unemployment hearing vs. in the EEOC position statement — inconsistency is powerful, and the unemployment-hearing transcript locks testimony early); documents preserved before access cut-off; and witnesses committed early. Damages: back pay, front pay or reinstatement, compensatory and punitive damages (federal caps scale with employer size to $300K; uncapped race claims under §1981), and attorney's fees — which is why plaintiff counsel takes strong cases on contingency. Travis County context: The county's international tech workforce makes national-origin, accent/English-only, religious-accommodation, and immigration-status (INA anti-discrimination) claims common; public employees layer whistleblower and civil-service overlays on top; and severance negotiations conducted with a filed charge behind them recover multiples of the standard exit offer. Consult employment counsel before signing any release.

Employment Law in Travis County, Texas

Travis County's labor market is the most technology- and government-weighted in Texas, and its employment disputes reflect that split. The private economy runs on tech — Tesla's Gigafactory Texas in southeast Travis County, Apple's second-largest US campus, Samsung's Central Texas semiconductor operations, Dell just north in Round Rock, IBM, Oracle's relocated presence, and one of the country's densest startup and venture ecosystems — alongside healthcare (Ascension Seton, St. David's, Dell Medical School), the University of Texas, and a hospitality and live-music service economy. Overlaid on all of it is government: Austin is the state capital, so tens of thousands work for the State of Texas (dozens of agencies, the Legislature, the courts) and for the City of Austin, Travis County, and CapMetro — public employees whose rights run through civil-service systems, the Texas Whistleblower Act, and sovereign-immunity rules rather than ordinary private-sector law. Texas at-will employment is the baseline — termination at any time for any lawful reason — but which overlay applies (private tech, public-sector civil service, or the specialized regimes of healthcare and the university) is the first question in every Travis County employment dispute, because it determines whether the remedy is a lawsuit, an agency complaint, a civil-service appeal, or a whistleblower action.

Discrimination and retaliation law runs on the dual federal/state track: Title VII, the ADEA (40+), and the ADA at the federal level (15/20+ employees), mirrored by the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (Tex. Lab. Code Ch. 21), with the 2021 Texas amendments extending sexual-harassment liability to employers of any size and to individual harassers and requiring "immediate and appropriate corrective action." Charges must be filed within 300 days with the EEOC — Travis County is served by the EEOC's San Antonio Field Office (in the San Antonio District), with intake also available through the Austin-area workforce and the online portal — or the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division (headquartered in Austin at 101 E. 15th St.); federal suit follows within 90 days of a right-to-sue letter, in the Austin Division of the Western District of Texas. Public employees add distinct channels: the Texas Whistleblower Act (Tex. Gov't Code Ch. 554) protects state and local government employees who report legal violations to an appropriate law-enforcement authority in good faith, with a 90-day deadline and a grievance-initiation prerequisite; City of Austin civil-service employees (police, fire, and classified staff) have Chapter 143 civil-service protections and appeal rights; and state employees navigate agency grievance procedures and the limited waivers of sovereign immunity that govern suits against the State. Austin's diverse, heavily educated, and internationally sourced tech workforce makes national-origin, H-1B-status, and religious-accommodation issues recurring, alongside the pregnancy accommodations now required by the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Wages and hours in Travis County split by sector. The FLSA requires time-and-a-half over 40 hours for non-exempt workers, and the tech economy's characteristic disputes involve exemption misclassification — treating employees as exempt "professionals" or "administrators" who don't meet the duties tests, misclassifying workers as independent contractors (a chronic issue in the gig and startup economy and among the app-based delivery and rideshare workforce), unpaid overtime for salaried-but-nonexempt staff, and unpaid off-the-clock work. Construction across Austin's building boom brings the classic misclassification and cash-pay underpayment patterns, and the hospitality/live-music sector brings tip-credit abuses and off-the-clock claims. Remedies: FLSA suits (individual or collective) in the Austin federal courts with a two-year lookback (three if willful) and liquidated double damages; Texas Payday Law claims to the TWC — headquartered in Austin — for unpaid wages, final paychecks, commissions, bonuses, and unvested-but-earned compensation disputes, filed within 180 days of when the wages were due; and Chapter 61 wage-claim procedures. Startup and equity-compensation disputes (promised options never granted, accelerated vesting on termination, clawbacks) blend wage law with contract and securities issues and often require specialized counsel. Unemployment benefits run through the TWC (twc.texas.gov; 1-800-939-6631), where "misconduct" and "voluntary quit" fights are winnable with documentation and appeal deadlines (14 days) are absolute.

Non-competes and trade secrets are a live issue in Austin's mobile tech workforce, where engineers and executives change companies frequently. Texas enforces reasonable covenants under Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §15.50 when ancillary to an otherwise enforceable agreement (confidential information or specialized training supplies the consideration), and courts reform overbroad restrictions rather than voiding them — so an unreasonable covenant becomes an enforceable narrower one, not nothing. In the tech sector the hotspots are software and semiconductor engineering (source code, chip designs, and process know-how make departures sensitive), sales and customer relationships, and executive roles, with trade-secret claims under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA) and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) routinely accompanying non-compete disputes when employees move between competitors. Physician covenants must include a buyout option under §15.50(b), litigated in the region's growing medical market. Employees changing jobs should have agreements reviewed before resigning, take nothing — no synced repositories, no emailed files, no "personal" copies of work product — and disclose the covenant to the new employer; data-taking converts a defensible covenant dispute into a losing trade-secrets case with forensic imaging. Note that the FTC's attempted national non-compete ban was struck down in the courts, and Texas has no general ban — assume your covenant matters.

Workplace injury and the practical channels for help complete the picture. Texas's unique workers' comp opt-out means the first fact to establish is subscriber status: employees of subscribers receive medical and indemnity benefits through the DWC system (report within 30 days; claim within one year; free help from the Office of Injured Employee Counsel, 1-866-393-6432, headquartered in Austin) but face the exclusive-remedy bar; employees of non-subscribers can sue the employer for negligence with the employer stripped of contributory-negligence, assumption-of-risk, and fellow-servant defenses. Comp retaliation is independently actionable (Tex. Lab. Code §451.001, two-year deadline). OSHA covers the county's tech-manufacturing plants (the Tesla and Samsung construction and operations have drawn safety scrutiny), warehouses, and construction sites (1-800-321-6742; 30-day retaliation deadline). For help: Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (512-374-2700) handles qualifying employment matters; the Austin Bar Association referral service (512-472-0279) lists board-certified labor and employment specialists; the Equal Justice Center and worker-advocacy organizations serve the region's low-wage workforce; and Austin's active plaintiff-side employment bar evaluates discrimination, FLSA, and executive/equity disputes, taking strong cases on contingency or hybrid fee arrangements. Because the TWC, OIEC, and the state's civil-rights agency are all headquartered in Austin, Travis County employees have unusually direct access to the state administrative machinery — but the deadlines (300-day EEOC charge, 180-day Payday Law, 90-day whistleblower, 14-day unemployment appeal) are unforgiving. Document while you still have access: reviews, pay and equity records, offer letters and grant agreements, the handbook, and witness names.

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