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Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

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Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#91

Post by techdragon »

bitL wrote: post #24
emteycz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why there is no Silicon Valley in Europe then

Aversion to risk. I was told by German entrepreneurs that they can get funding only when they give bank/VC/investor a collateral of the same value or if they are already profitable and don't need it anymore.

I saw similar things when I last looked into the Australian angel/VC startup funding works. This was 10 years ago however so things may have improved since then. But at the time it was most definitely due to a risk averse stance by investors.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#92

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

> Hooked would “sell” three engineers to Apple (including a longtime employee who served as Chief Technical Officer) and continue operating the less technical aspect of its business, relating to advertising. At the end, Apple hired them directly.

The employees were literally put up to sale. Apple didn’t just wake up one morning and hire the hottest new techies, they were up for grabs, and this was clearly an at-will agreement. If the employees were working directly on stuff that competed with Hook, the noncompete seems to make sense. However, that’s a case against the employees, and not necessarily Apple. Not sure if this is really poaching.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#93

Post by MattGaiser »

baby wrote: post #78
batmaniam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should rid of the term 'poaching'. There's no such thing. We're not animals, we are free to accept a better offer it comes along. The CEO should have counter offered with something more substantial, but he couldn't so the engineers went to greener pastures.

At the same time how can smaller companies compete with large companies if they can’t match salaries?

I would bet that most companies vastly overestimate their initial engineering requirements and thus their talent requirements. A past job had a strong interest in scalability when the software serviced maybe a 20-30 (admittedly high value) people an hour. Even their loftiest ambitions maybe put use into the hundreds or low 1000 an hour.

Yet most engineers were hired with the goal of making it "scalable" when most of the work was frontend anyway.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#94

Post by niihau_island »

emteycz wrote: post #3
Animats wrote: post #2

"That evidence does suggest the engineers drew on knowledge and skills they gained from Hooked to develop a product for their new employer––but California’s policy favoring free mobility for employees specifically allows that. (See Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co. (2002) 101Cal.App.4th 1443, 1464 [rejecting the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine, under which a claim for trade secret misappropriation is stated if an employee’s…

I don't understand why there is no Silicon Valley in Europe then

Maybe it's because Silicon Valley occurred first, and then oppressed most of Europe's "native" companies?

It seems that there are some massive sources of wealth for tech companies, such as search, social networks, and e-commerce companies. In Europe, these have all been supplanted by Google, Facebook, and Amazon respectively.

In China, on the other hand, these companies were free to grow and establish their own nexuses of tech talent. As a result, China is the closest to having the Silicon Valley of .

Perhaps Europe should take a page from China's (and the US now, I suppose) playbook?

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#95

Post by golergka »

brianwawok wrote: post #86
Waterluvian wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to work law is really good in Ontario. Heck I had a CEO who threw a tantrum because I took my skills to another company (that isn’t even a competitor) and demanded I quit with threats. My lawyer basically laughed at him and he went away. Ontario’s tech sector is growing a lot but hopefully the salary issues will improve.

Why can no one but the US pay developers well? The GDP per cap is there in many countries... but for some reason developers are only key employees in the US?

Developers work in many different companies, and most of them don't make products that can, or could in even in theory make enough money to make paying as much worthwhile. It's a chicken and egg problem.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#96

Post by mthoms »

tptacek wrote: post #88
mthoms wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Apple that ultimately backed out of the "acqui-hire", not the target company's CEO. Edit: Nope, I was wrong here. I think the rest of this comment is still relevant though. And for all we know, it may have been her investors that encouraged (demanded?) her to go the route of "selling" the employees[0]. It appears the company would be winding down and they stood to benefit by recouping some of their investment.…

I'm not sure it really matters? A consequence of getting into deep talks with corpdev is that they'll be alerted to employees they want to hire. And there's no way to look good suing someone for offering your employees a better job.

She certainly deserves lots of flack, but it seems reasonably likely (if not certain), that it was her investors pushing for the "sale" of the employees (ugh), and the lawsuit against Apple.

In that context, I don't think the comment I replied to (quoted below) is entirely fair.

>Now, I think she may have acquired a reputation as someone who ends up treating her employees like her personal property

Why don't we name and shame the investors involved here? They're just as culpable IMHO.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#98

Post by AmericanChopper »

brianwawok wrote: post #86
Waterluvian wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to work law is really good in Ontario. Heck I had a CEO who threw a tantrum because I took my skills to another company (that isn’t even a competitor) and demanded I quit with threats. My lawyer basically laughed at him and he went away. Ontario’s tech sector is growing a lot but hopefully the salary issues will improve.

Why can no one but the US pay developers well? The GDP per cap is there in many countries... but for some reason developers are only key employees in the US?

Because the US has more companies that make software than anywhere else, and therefor has a greater demand for software engineers than anywhere else in the world. The supply of software engineers hasn’t kept up with the demand for their labor, so salaries go up. This has happened all over the world, it’s just more pronounced in the US because the demand is so much greater.

The situation in the US does impact salaries all over the world though. A lot of software engineers over seas work for companies that are either US based, or who primarily do business in the US.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#99

Post by dev_tty01 »

Animats wrote: post #2

"That evidence does suggest the engineers drew on knowledge and skills they gained from Hooked to develop a product for their new employer––but California’s policy favoring free mobility for employees specifically allows that. (See Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co. (2002) 101Cal.App.4th 1443, 1464 [rejecting the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine, under which a claim for trade secret misappropriation is stated if an employee’s…

>Which is why Silicon Valley is in California, and why attempts to create a startup culture elsewhere have mostly failed.

Silicon Valley's origin pre-dates these labor laws. Hewlett-Packard was started in the late 1930's. Silicon Valley's success has much more to do with a critical mass of talent and infrastructure that started a long time ago. The labor friendly laws were created as part of California trying to nurture that success.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#100

Post by nradov »

jrott wrote: post #82
ma2rten wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why Silicon Valley is in California, and why attempts to create a startup culture elsewhere have mostly failed. I doubt that that is the main reason. Also, in this case it worked against the startup.

The just so story that is told about this is with no non compete there would be no Intel. The founders would have all been stuck at Fairchild.

That was one key factor behind the original growth of Silicon Valley. The others were the presence of several excellent universities, and a high level of funding from the military-industrial complex during the Cold War.
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