[olivermuty]

Perspective context: Am CTO who has converted consultants to staff before.

There is nothing stopping you personally from changing roles like everyone says and non competes are not enforceable in California.

However B2B contracts usually don't have any such limitations, so there might be a liability for damages between the client and your current company. This is the main reason you need to raise this up to people who has insight into the contracts between client and your current company ON THE CLIENT SIDE FIRST.

Then, and ONLY then imo should you bring it up with your current employer to try to do it in a way that steps on no toes. You need to make sure that the client is allowed to do it based on the contract frameworks AND that they want you before you open that can of worms. It might also be beneficial to have the client be the one to approach your current employer in a gentlemans approach, especially if your client has access to higher up decision makers than you naturally have in your current job.

Then it's up to your current employer how much hell they wanna raise and your political manouvering internally and how you break the news will probably be integral to that. However as long as there are no regulation of this between client and current employer the only thing you might be doing is burn a reference bridge.

[throwaway0905]

great point on the contracts side, I will look into this