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]

#411

Post by cortesoft » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #346

cortesoft wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 competitor? He needs to flip that around... why would any employee agree to be hired when they can't leave, and can't work on things in their own time? He doesn't understand that in this industry, it is the workers who are in short supply, not the capital. The best companies go to california and…

"Workers" are abundant. It's the human capital associated with the workers that's expensive. Engineers moving to California should be considered like other capital flows: there are unlikely to be major flows into places where their flexibility is unduly impaired by regulations structured to favor existing, powerful incumbent interests (in this case, the noncompetes).

High quality software developers are not abundant.

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

#412

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #255

ChuckMcM wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the Italian industrialization crisis case isn't that hard to crack: there are many factors leading to it, for sure, but the central choke point was the subdivision(=lottizzazione? I don't think subdivision really renders the term) of banks for local political interests. the push from local industries to large conglomerates to global multinationals was sustained by a strong economy and easy access to large banking ins…

Thank you for this. It does sound like some systemic issues are at work here.

That said, this "my personal belief is that it's likely a result of the absurd taxation the middle class gets. It's basically impossible to build up any saving to start entrepreneurship around here" reminded me that many of the people who start new companies in the Bay Area have often accumulated a bit of wealth from the equity sale of the previous company they worked for.

For example, estimates vary on how many millionaires Facebook created when it went public and its stock value grew, on the low side it is a one to two thousand. Of those, over 200 according to Crunchbase have founded or co-founded new companies on their own. I'm more familiar with Sun Micro since I joined the day after they went public and was in the first 2000 employees. Of the 1999 that came before me, over half started new companies. At least 8 that I know of became general partners in VC firms that went on to fund hundreds a companies. There are also outliers like Eric Schmidt who got both the Sun boost, the Novell boost, and then the Google boost after that.

The point being that spreading out the success of a company widely is likely a big component as well.

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

#413

Post by qppo » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #348

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…

Are you sure that forbidding non-competence clause was really a big factor in Silicon Valley success. This sounds a little bit to simple. I was reading that it was all about initial founding from the military, access to large capital investments, proximity of good universities and existence of whole ecosystem targeted into making creation of startups easier. In Poland non-competence exists too, but in theory - it can…

It basically all derives from Fairchild Semiconductor, which only existed (as did its fairchildren, the companies spawned off it like Intel, AMD, National Semi, etc) because non competes have been unenforceable since 1941.

Texas Instruments was also heavily bankrolled by the military and NASA, just like Fairchild. The godfather of venture capital in America is Don Valentine, who founded Sequoia Partners in 1972 - after working for Fairchild and National Semi.

There are other places that have good universities and access to capital, like New York City and Boston. Plenty of government spending has gone to tech companies there too. They have noncompetes, we do not. They certainly have their successes, but not to the same degree as Silicon Valley.

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

#414

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #394

hef19898 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which doesn't prevent companies from issuing them, does it? Obviously, I'm no tax expert. I did hear of enough instances where people in the US owed taxes for basically worthless shares here on HN. And in case you assume the shares are going to be worthless, just sell to cover taxes when they vest. No harm to your bottom line. And a potential upside.

Yes, because both you the employee and the company have to make active steps to structure the equity grants in a very specific way to get the favorable tax treatment, and if you screw up or skip a step you can get hit with an unexpected tax bill. But there IS a process. AFAIK there is no such thing in many European jurisdictions, like Germany. > And in case you assume the shares are going to be worthless, just sell t…

Back to the start-up? Or just combine the RSUs with a cash bonus large enough to cover the taxes? Both solutions would work.

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

#415

Post by hemantv » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #220

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then, you have Indian government jobs. Indian civil servant finally fired after epic 24-year absence https://money.cnn.com/2015/01/09/news/india-civil-servant-fi...

Indian government jobs are just something else altogether, there is literally no accountability, or reward/punishment for good/bad performance. Promotions are almost always based on seniority, nepotism and political influence. The whole system runs on insane levels of corruption at nearly every level. And on top of these are there cream pensions. Its really like the stuff of the dreams/nightmares based on what you ge…

There is no pension except military anymore

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

#416

Post by garmaine » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #414

garmaine wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because both you the employee and the company have to make active steps to structure the equity grants in a very specific way to get the favorable tax treatment, and if you screw up or skip a step you can get hit with an unexpected tax bill. But there IS a process. AFAIK there is no such thing in many European jurisdictions, like Germany. > And in case you assume the shares are going to be worthless, just sell t…

Back to the start-up? Or just combine the RSUs with a cash bonus large enough to cover the taxes? Both solutions would work.

Both solutions would require the company to have a prohibitive amount of their investment money set aside to cover the tax costs to employees of vested options. That both has perverse incentives and is a very substantial innovation tax—making investments in startups even more risky, and raising funds more difficult (since doing so at an increasing valuation also increases the capital requirements needed to cover the tax bill of future veering events).

The American approach is simple: no sale, no profit, no tax. If Europe wants their own Silicon Valley, they need to adopt similar startup-friendly tax laws.

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

#417

Post by deepnotderp » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

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'd recommend reading Regional Advantage, the dominance of Silicon Valley/Bay Area is a lot more nuanced than just noncompetes, good universities, etc.

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

#418

Post by Rochetshipz » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 8:04 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #308

KingOfCoders wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just read a book about it from the co-creator of Siri, Luc Julia.

He spends a good part of the book complaining about french research, which does not care about products impact and thus is very theoretical, but also about the heavy hand of the government in dictating where innovation happens.

He also talks about Sophia-Antipolis. It started with a boom, and a lot of tax credits to incentivize corporations. But after the subvention dried up, many companies left. It seems to me that most of the companies left do not have innovation in their DNA.

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

#419

Post by Rochetshipz » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

secondcoming wrote: post #358

rcpt wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisbon maybe getting there

I think Lisbon was on the radar a few years ago, but I get the impression it may have blown it. According to folk I know who were looking at it, they had issues with the 'work ethic' of locals (read into that what you will) and high tax.

Well Cloudflare has an office there, where their CTO is.

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

#420

Post by ashwoods » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #325

nkoren wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important piece of context for the renaissance, which is often lost in modern discussions, is that it was not a movement which was attempting to be "innovative" or conceptualised itself as such. Rather, it was fundamentally backwards-looking: an attempt to recapture the glory of antiquity. People were digging up the ruins of a conspicuously more advanced civilisation -- which could do mind-bending things like draw…

Afaik, the old civilizations were rather rudimentary in perspective? There are some traces of it, but no mind bending anything.

We have been trying to reverse engineer Roman cement for quite some time. There are quite a few things that past civilizations did that are impressive by today’s standards and then lost to time.