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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]

#221

Post by Kbelicius »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #132
pm90 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A first step might be to expand the European University system to handle the influx of Graduate students that were previously headed to the US. Give funding, poach the frustrated non tenured profs from the US. Essentially reverse what happened during and after WW2, when the anti semitism caused Germany and then mainland Europe to lose all the amazing talent to the US.

No, a first step would be increasing social mobility. It's pretty hard to attend school in large parts of Europe. If you are from Europe realize you might be in a bubble of people that speaks English very well -- in general, I've noticed such people are high performers relative to many.

Most EU countries have higher social mobility then the US.

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

#222

Post by baby »

throwqrm wrote: post #80
baby wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Huge equity stakes. Huge. Not "align incentives" level stakes. "Google's chef has $26 million" stakes.

got an offer to be the 20th employee or something in a startup as a senior engineer, and they offered me 0.01% of equity or something. I thought that was ridiculously low.

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

#223

Post by justatdotin »

cycomanic wrote: post #205
travisjungroth wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've happily signed non-competes here in 'straya, confident that they were so unreasonable as to be unenforceable.

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

#224

Post by 0xfaded »

jlokier wrote: post #201
donor20 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But what's the notice period? 3-6 months may be enough to kill a pivoting company when otherwise IP and team could be packaged up and sold off. One of the things people seem complain about on HN is that founders of failed companies in SV seem to make off quite well. In fact I believe this mentality helped me take the leap with my startup. The only problem is that I moved to Europe to do it, and the prospects for failed founders are basically lost years.

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

#225

Post by dbuder »

batmaniam wrote: post #18
tallgiraffe wrote: post #4

Sounds like a few engineers found out that Apple was looking into their company and knowing Apple was interested they took a new gig, meanwhile the CEO got upset and decided to fire the last remaining defecting engineer, who out of goodness of heart actually declined Apple, but gratefully took the offer once he got fired. Although it probably hurts to have your team poached, it sounds like potentially it wasn't a gre…

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.

We are animals.

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

#226

Post by dragonwriter »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #181
travisjungroth wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you’re not going to act on an author’s central point, don’t try do any of the other parts (they’ll probably actually be harmful). If you’re not going to copy the central parts of something successful, don’t bother copying the other stuff. > The recipe for success of Silicon Valley is pretty straightforward. It has great colleges, great weather, and weak noncompetes. There are a couple of interesting things about…

> But then we lead into #2, your comments on the recipe for success. Among your central points, literally placed in the center, is "great weather". That can't be copied. You have the weather you have. What should the other 99.999% of the world do?

Well, the weather probably is a comparatively small factor, but nonreplicable geographic factors are actually a major factor in the success of most economic hubs, including the Bay Area (aesthetically great weather is one, but a great natural port area, and proximity to abundant agriculture, are also factors.)

Yeah, you can't copy some of those things. Geography matters, it always has.

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

#227

Post by pwdisswordfish4 »

batmaniam wrote: post #18
tallgiraffe wrote: post #4

Sounds like a few engineers found out that Apple was looking into their company and knowing Apple was interested they took a new gig, meanwhile the CEO got upset and decided to fire the last remaining defecting engineer, who out of goodness of heart actually declined Apple, but gratefully took the offer once he got fired. Although it probably hurts to have your team poached, it sounds like potentially it wasn't a gre…

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.

You mean, humans aren’t animals?

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

#228

Post by kamaal »

sandGorgon wrote: post #188
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…

Indian labor laws across the whole country operate like this. Non-competes are useless..

Its a little different in India. Legal knowledge is negligible among most employees. Even thought the law says a thing, intimidation and threats always do the trick. No one really drags companies to courts given the long intervals of a case, costs, plus mind boggling amounts of corruption involved in anything.

Secondly even things like notice period are not enforceable. I have seen situations where a manager would block a person's relieving letter for standards 3 months waiting, while the receiving company wants the candidate to join in a month. The candidate asked for manager to give it in writing in a mail and the manager instantly approved the notice period to be reduced to a month.

These days the internal separation portals block such approvals, and getting it changed is a long drawn process which will spawn beyond a person's notice period. And if a person requests a change while they are employed they will be fired.

Existence of a law means nothing in India.

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

#229

Post by justatdotin »

numair wrote: post #136
toomanybeersies wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or are developers paid a disproportionate wage in comparison to other jobs? Why should a software developer get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, while those who weren't lucky enough to be born with the required intelligence (despite what coding bootcamps say, not everyone is cut out to write code) are doomed to work a low-wage job for their entire life? It's the height of privilege. And if you subscribe…

Your post is a literal summary of why the attitude and performance of software engineers in other countries is so utterly subpar. Having spent a lot of time in Australia, I found the work ethic and culture of the office-bound workers there to be completely unacceptable by American standards. You wouldn’t understand American standards because you don’t understand the difference in work intensity and performance. There…

"work ethic" : right, huh..

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

#230

Post by cutemonster »

reader_mode wrote: post #70
mattmanser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France != Europe. This sort of thing doesn't exist in the UK, for example. As for firing people, perhaps France, but not UK. Most jobs have a 3-6 month probation period, with a week's notice either way, and in the first 2 years you can fire anyone for no reason (apart from reasons of race, gender, pregnancy, etc.). After that, by which point it's obvious they can do the job, generally you have to give a progression o…

UK is trying hard not to be a part of Europe it seems :) Anyway I've seen similar laws in several countries in EU, but I talked to a lawyer friend and he said he looked into it (briefly) and couldn't find examples of it being enforced through court in my country (Croatia). As for termination - probation periods exist for sure but passed that it's really hard to get rid of people, the two year thing exists if you give…

> got reinstated to previous position

In which office? A or B

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