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

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

#201

Post by jlokier » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

donor20 wrote: post #166

donw wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think something like this makes a lot more sense. First year or so, you're in a probationary period. Unemployment benefits will kick in, but you and the company are still feeling each other out. After that, you get certain protections, whereby firing you becomes a more lengthy (3-6 month) process with specific regulatory milestones. Speaking from a management perspective, if I have had an employee that has…

But it is part of the reason these countries don't have startup cultures. In the US you can just try stuff out including hiring someone who may not be a perfect fit. In the US you can pivot your startup if something isn't working, roll off 20% of your staff and you don't have to talk to a govt tribunal or go through appeals. You can make your own management calls on who you want to work with - you don't have to justi…

> In the US you can pivot your startup if something isn't working, roll off 20% of your staff and you don't have to talk to a govt tribunal or go through appeals.

You can do this in the UK too, without a tribunal or appeals.

What you've described is covered by "redundancy", and it's completely fine legally to make people redundant, in large numbers or small numbers.

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

#202

Post by garmaine » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

jashmatthews wrote: post #151

garmaine wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also German law doesn't make easy allowances for employee ownership / stock options. There's a hack to get around this where you write a contract for a percentage of the eventual exit, but this limits what sort of exits are possible. European laws, regulations, and investor culture are all setup in ways that hurt startups.

> Also German law doesn't make easy allowances for employee ownership / stock options. Airbnb gave me plenty of RSUs while I worked in Berlin. No problem. The Berlin startups with their shit together also know how to use UK (now Irish) Limited companies, which have no issues with offering options to employees.

It’s a German tax law issue. It’s legal to do but not advantageous to the employee, because they don’t allow things like 83(b) elections. Not sure how Airbnb made it manageable in your case, but incorporating elsewhere doesn’t fix the issue.

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

#203

Post by pnw_hazor » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #10

jariel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny as workers get caught up in notions of 'individual freedom', which they see as a benefit, but don't realize that systematically what this favours is simply power. A company with 100x the resources of another, never needs to worry about IP or innovating, because it just plucks off other people's work, integrates into it's own machine and receives the market surpluses, risk free. So yes - by getting tons of…

> IP rules favour the little guy This is one of the most absurd and backwards claims I've seen on this site. Large companies are members of patent pools that prevent them from being sued by other members, whereas small companies without a large IP portfolio can't do anything without inadvertently violating someone's patent.

The trick for small companies is to have a few good patents and leverage the profit/revenue imbalance with BigCo.

When BigCo comes calling with their stack of patents demanding a license or profit share, you break out your few key patents and demand one back from them. BigCo has a lot more to lose compared to SmallCo.

SmallCo has little or no profit and little revenue so BigCo gets no money from them for patent infringement. BigCo has a bunch of money. If SmallCo has good patents BigCo will go away or make SmallCo a deal to avoid millions of dollars in damages or license fees BigCo would owe SmallCo for infringement.

IP litigators will take such cases on contingency.

If you don't have good IP you are a commodity.

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

#204

Post by tubularhells » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

donor20 wrote: post #50

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…

Labor mobility is really low in Europe. In france you can be tied up in litigation (tribunel through appeals) for 10 years easily on an employment termination (my info is from 2016 time frame so may be dated). There is no such thing as at-will employment. Also, noncompete's are weird. If someone is receiving full pay on gardening leave they can work for someone else. If you instead have them work till end of notice p…

The Netherlands in nothing like this, fyi. France is not Europe. It's a flavour of Europe.

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

#205

Post by cycomanic » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #169

ChuckMcM wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly correct. I tried to explain this to a public official from an east cost town who was flying back from the Bay Area trying to "learn the secrets" of creating an innovation hub. When I explained this situation (non-competes are illegal, stuff you do at home is yours) to him he literally said "That's crazy! Why would anyone hire anyone if they knew they could walk out the door to a competitor, or even to start a…

Your comment reminds me of this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/zackkanter/status/130493861651941... The cognitive dissonance humans are capable of is amazing. To actually say “We would never allow that in our town.” in the pejorative while flying back from a trip specifically meant to learn how to be like another town . If you’re not going to act on an author’s central point, don’t try to do any of the other parts…

If it really was great weather, great colleagues, weak nocompetes why has Australia not managed to create the same culture. AFAIK nocompetes are pretty much unenforceable in Australia, they have better weather than california and lots of people like to live there, so what is missing? Honest question.

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

#206

Post by djur » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

lopmotr wrote: post #42

raziel2701 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it expands the whole concept of wage slavery.

No it doesn't at all. Those employees were always free to apply to Apple independently. This finder's fee sounds like the commission a recruitment agency would charge for literally finding workers. That's a perfectly reasonable way to charge for that service.

OK, let's set aside the fact that the CEO was the engineers' current supervisor and regard her just as a recruiter. If a recruiter contacted an engineer and says "Apple is looking for engineers with your skills", and then contacted Apple and said "I know a great engineer who's interested in working with you, here's their resume", and Apple proceeded to hire the engineer without paying a finder's fee, would the recruiter have cause for a lawsuit against either party?

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

#207

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #197

ChuckMcM wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly correct. I tried to explain this to a public official from an east cost town who was flying back from the Bay Area trying to "learn the secrets" of creating an innovation hub. When I explained this situation (non-competes are illegal, stuff you do at home is yours) to him he literally said "That's crazy! Why would anyone hire anyone if they knew they could walk out the door to a competitor, or even to start a…

> it puts the onus on the company to adequately reward their employees with equity so that they want this company to be successful, not the possible other company I'm happy with invalid not competes, but equity? How does that protect startup X against poaching from an already very successful company like Apple? They can offer (example) a real million now against the promise of millions in 2025. Or real millions again…

Today perhaps. Pre-IPO stock from 1980 to roughly 2008 was always a huge multiple over BigCorp stock. That largely evaporated in the Unicorn bubble AFAICT. I suspect because pulling the value out pre-IPO was a better deal for investors.

Even today restricted stock grants (RSUs) serve the same purpose and act as a multiplier on compensation which is "better" if the company does better and "worse" if the company loses out to competition.

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

#208

Post by unishark » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

jariel wrote: post #155

unishark wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your company engages in sales practices that would be foolish without IP. That doesn't prove it is the only way to sell, or that it true for all fields. For that matter, why are the big fish able to continually have so much margin in the first place except for patents? Microsoft has made how many billions over control of a narrow programming layer to run other tasks in a loop that's been covered in sophomore year…

"then pivot from hiring engineers to hiring lawyers." MS keeps it's monopoly via market power, generally not IP protections (though partly). MS is large enough vis-a-vis fragmented hardware vendors and distribution networks that it can do play all sorts of hardball. It has deeply entrenched sales channels in to the corporate world. Most significantly, it's a platform which means huge switching costs - and - it can us…

> Take a moment to contemplate out how Coke and Pepsi (ostensibly commodities) can dominate their channels in a supposedly free market - it's a little bit similar.

You're comparing beverage companies with a market share of 30-40 percent (or less depending how you narrowly you define competitors) to Microsoft with a market share ranging from 70-90 percent. Note microsoft was able to come from behind and succeed mostly before the days of software patents.

Open source is perversely helped by IP laws because it's the only way to create an alternative that can survive. Like bitcoin being anonymous, versus e-gold which was shut down by the govt. Great except we have to wait for hobbyists and others with free time to waste before competing ideas can get implemented.

As for hardware being worse than software without IP protection, well it sure is worse than software with IP protection. So I guess it'll stay consistent. Maybe the lesson is the nature of hardware is to be commoditized, so you need to put your value in the bundled software.

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

#209

Post by tubularhells » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

donor20 wrote: post #168

DetroitThrow wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Labor mobility is really low in Europe Like the other comment mentioned, this is a very France-centric description - in the Netherlands, for example, you can't block workers from leaving their company in this way.

In the netherlands you can have them sign a non-compete clause, generally for 1 to 2 years. "This clause prevents them from working for your competitor or from starting a similar enterprise after resigning. A non-solicitation clause forbids your employee to contact your clients after resigning." https://business.gov.nl/regulation/non-compete-clause/ In the US, lots of folks have famously started up their own ideas if…

Those non competes cannot be enforced under EU law of free movement of labour.

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

#210

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #199

avereveard wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy literally invented universities, gets comparable climate and unpaid non competes are not enforceable. no silicon valley equivalent in sight tho so I strongly suspect the whole thread so far it's projection and wishful thinking.

Italy is a really interesting case for me as the birthplace of the renaissance. What happened there? And when? For an interesting deep dive into the role of Government in innovation there is a report from Price-Waterhouse Cooper[1] that I found interesting if a bit jargon laden :-). But it definitely calls out for a public/private partnership to be successful. I think governmental and banking stability has hurt Italy…

Corruption has to have an effect. In SV it's common to shout about the success of your business. It would probably be foolish to do the same in Italy.