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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]

#301

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There are lots of places with a Mediterranean climate.

A Mediterranean climate is actually pretty rare in the world. The only large areas with a Mediterranean climate are the actual Mediterranean, the US West Coast, and some parts of Australia. Apart from that there are only a few scattered spots with a Mediterranean climate. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Mediterr...

I don't think that's part of the reason either. Sure, weather might be a factor for employee comfort, but most certainly not for a startup friendly environment. Else why is Stockholm or Copenhagen a bigger startup hub than Barcelona or Rome? Why are all the French startups in Paris and not Marseille, or the German startups in Berlin and not Munich? From even a non-startup perspective: why is Milan a bigger hub for corporate than Napoli or Rome (don't know how true the last bit is, but certainly felt that way)?

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

#302

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> 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…

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though.

Way too hot, hazardous weather, impossible to get around (crazy traffic congestions, no useful public transporation, bicycling being suicidal), have to go to Home Depot to get real Coca Cola.

Overall quite "meh".

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

#303
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…

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

#304

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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.

Probably because Australia has a significantly different culture. One factor is that giving equity to employees is rare in Australia.

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

#305
post #298

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this is a civil case. this is not criminal. there is no police. the onus is on the company to go to court and do this. And this gets rejected. because indian courts have rejected non-competes as a matter of policy. I would suggest you recheck the ground reality. And yes i do run a company in India.

>>this is a civil case. this is not criminal. there is no police. That is in theory. In reality people in power have more than sufficient means to intimidate you and bring you trouble. >>the onus is on the company to go to court and do this. And this gets rejected. because indian courts have rejected non-competes as a matter of policy. That is if you decide to stay put despite all this for years and fight it out. Als…

i see what you are saying and categorically (but politely) refuse what you are saying.

whether you want to take it or not is upto you. India is far far more employee friendly than Europe and most parts of US.

The point of what you are talking about from a legal system is inapplicable to labor laws. I can throw the same Black-Lives-Matters issues in US courts to you and ask you to go and check New York courts for the same.

In the same vein, I can throw Anthony Levandowski case and make the claim that California is unfriendly to employees. Neither of them is true and neither is the fact that India is at all unfriendly to employees.

Quite the opposite we have a rich ecosystem of employees founding startups - Flipkart, Ola, Unacademy, Paytm are the new founding "mafias" of India. There is exactly zero cases of employees have lawsuits by their employers.

Indian (and the US) legal system and their myriad problems are true - with all its racist vs religious biases - but that has nothing to do with California employment practice or the Indian ones

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

#306

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

Beware. A friend signed a ludicrous non-compete as a consultant which disallowed him from working with any company the company had approached . Was layed off, got legal advice: his lawyer told him not to fight it :( He changed industries.

In my limited experience with lawyers, they always advise conservatism. That's not to say they're always wrong. But they don't have much incentive to say, "Go for it!" Even if you're 95% chance likely to have things work out okay, what would the lawyer get in that situation? Nothing. And in the 5% of cases they'd be excoriated for giving their client bad advice.

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

#307

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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…

>UK is trying hard not to be a part of Europe it seems In what sense?

It seems that whenever there's a substantial difference in practices between continental Europe and USA, it seems that the UK practice is somewhere in between but closer to USA than the rest of the Europe.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Southern France has wonderful weather and the Mediterranean Sea. The EU should start a special economic zone for startups there (a split of later taxes going into the EU budget).

What happened to Sophia-Antipolis near Antibes? That area was spun out as "silicon valley of europe". No tax specialization AFAIK but it did have a dense concentration of tech companies at least two decades ago.

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

#309

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…

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.

Second world war pretty much made Europe much poorer than US. At the same time, Silicon valley a) was not wrecked by war b) had extravagant funding by US state c) had direct access to the (already then) remarkable US market.

So it's not just the current conditions, need to look at history as well.

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

#310
post #273

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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…

> non-competes are illegal, stuff you do at home is yours For “stuff you do at home” is there any limit to that? Like if I’m on my own time and my own computer/internet, and I worked at say, a search engine company, and I made my own search engine in my free time (a huge project, but we’re talking in hypotheticals here) Would my current employer in this scenario be able to sue me? What if it’s “my own time” during th…

Its normally only "related" to your day job so in your example yes.

But if say your an amateur musician your day job employer has no lien over your compositions.

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