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]

#141

Post by twblalock » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:31 AM UTC

jariel wrote: post #121

shalmanese wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Which is why we're all typing this on DEC machines running OS/2 on AOL internet with 3Com modems.

Funny you have to pick all 30 year old examples. We have been running almost entirely Windows and Mac for over 20 years (at least in consumer land). We have been running mostly Intel and nVidia for over 20 years. We have been running mostly Chrome and maybe 2 others for 10 years. We have 1 comprehensive social network (FB/Insta) for over 10 years. We have 3/4 major internet providers and 4 wireless carriers - forever…

Of course, 20 years ago there were no smartphone platforms at all, no social networks, Internet Explorer was the dominant browser, Google was an upstart competing with search "portals" like Yahoo, a 3dfx Voodoo card was the hot thing to have, Apple was nearly dead, and Amazon was a place to buy books and CDs.

At the time people thought Microsoft was so dominant that most of the innovations of the past 20 years could not have happened, because Microsoft was a behemoth that would simply take over any competitors. But they lost on search, phones, browsers, etc.

I don't really see how it's different this time around. There is currently no company as dominant over the entire industry as Microsoft was in 2000, or as dominant as IBM was in 1980.

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

#142

Post by kps » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

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.

> The founders would have all been stuck at Fairchild.

The founders of Fairchild would all have been stuck at Shockley.

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

#143

Post by not2b » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:33 AM UTC

The startup should have taken the aquihire, because if their key engineers were interested in working for Apple their position was very weak: either take the money or Apple hires the engineers anyway. They aren't indentured servants.

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

#144

Post by oliverx0 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:35 AM UTC

davidgay wrote: post #129

oliverx0 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at-will employment in the US is key to their startup ecosystem. It makes their market very "liquid", as you can hire fast and fire fast.

> I think at-will employment in the US is key to their startup ecosystem. It makes their market very "liquid", as you can hire fast and fire fast. Is that really the case? I would have naively assumed the typical (median) startup path is something like hire, hire, hire, go-bankrupt? And the successful ones more like hire, hire, hire, hire, hire, go-public? Easy firing doesn't seem relevant to either of those?

Companies in Europe are much more reluctant to hire precisely because it is so much harder to fire. When I lived in the US, and got offers, the company’s first question would be: what’s the earliest you can start? In Europe my experience has been long processes that are dragged out unnecessarily.

Hiring is riskier, and therefore slower. There are 2 sides to it of course, on one hand employees are much more protected from losing their jobs, but on the other one innovation and fast access to jobs is also slower.

Also, it is not only about firing. Hiring is also slower because of all the paperwork that needs to happen. For example, in Spain you cannot just hire someone. You need to draft out a contract, cover every possible detail related to the work that the person will be doing, etc. it is just slower in general.

This brings me back to my min point though: employment at will.

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

#145

Post by Jorge1o1 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #127

brianwawok wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

The wage paid to programmers is a function of supply and demand just like everything else in the market.

Investment bankers and programmers earn more than your typical American because the supply of bankers and top-level programmers is much tighter. Goldman Sachs and KKR hire from Wharton or HBS, and Google hires grads from CMU or Stanford. Whether they should or shouldn’t restrict their hiring practices is another matter, but their insistence on hiring only the “elite” causes salaries in those fields to skyrocket.

Welders and electricians make more money than say a landscaper because you need more training, certifications, exams, and experience to do the job, greatly reducing the pool of available labor.

If you want programmers to get paid less, make it easier to become a programmer and get Google to hire more broadly.

That’s perhaps why bootcamps and code camps are looked down upon by existing programmers — not just the belief in the superiority of a traditional 4 year computer science education (whether founded or not), but also a realization that if these things catch on they might be paying us all less in the future.

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

#146

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #137

bonestamp2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why Silicon Valley is in California I don't think that's the reason -- California's labor market hasn't always been so fair and for that reason it makes complete sense why the court ruled in Apple's favor. Apple, Google, Adobe and some other companies used to have anti-poaching agreements with each other. But, then the courts found that to be unfair to the labor market (people) and the companies settled fo…

Anti-poaching agreements are bad, but they aren't nearly as bad as non-competes. Anti-poaching agreements mean one company won't cold contact employees at another. But employees who want to switch of their own initiative are still able to do so. Non-competes blocks even employees who want to switch of their own initiative.

> Anti-poaching agreements are bad, but they aren't nearly as bad as non-competes.

Anti-poaching agreements are non-competes, just between firms rather than a firm and their employees.

> Anti-poaching agreements mean one company won't cold contact employees at another

No, that's not all they mean. The most trivial anti-poaching agreement might restrain itself that way, but anti-poaching agreements can and regularly have included agreements not to employ workers from the other firm, not merely to avoid certain active recruitment/solicitation steps.

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

#147

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:40 AM 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…

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 competitor? We would never allow that in our town."

I tried to explain that 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. And it encourages management to be a better place to work than their competitors. Both things lead to better employee engagement and better results. But they couldn't get past the fact that there was no issue with leaving a company and going into competition with it.

Ultimately I believe (but cannot back it up with any sort of data) that non-technical folks don't appreciate how much crappy work is involved in starting from a blank sheet and coming up to being competitive with an already up and running company. But what ever the reason, the unwillingness to "go there" with this sort of protection time and time again has killed innovation. Even when an example that it works, and works well, has decades of history demonstrating that it does.

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

#148

Post by burtonator » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:44 AM 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…

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

Except Apple and Google both hate it when it's done to them which is why they illegally colluded and agreed to not poach from one another and why they lost a lawsuit for $415M:

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...

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

#149

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:45 AM UTC

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.

When you're talking about individuals, sure.

But when you're talking about a whole team, it's a little different. Original employer A went to a lot of expensive effort to find a very particular set of qualified engineers that could work together at the same time -- where the sum is much more than the parts.

If employer B hires the team already put together perfectly qualified for a similar task roughly all at once... they're not just taking advantage of employees' freedom (which is fine) but literally essentially "stealing" the massive work employer A did to assemble the team piece by piece.

I'm not saying it should be illegal, because I don't see how you'd write any effective law against it. But when you take a whole team at once, I think the word "poaching" is apt.

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

#150

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:47 AM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #148

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. Except Apple and Google both hate it when it's done to them which is why they illegally colluded and agreed to not poach from one another and why they lost a lawsuit for $415M: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...

Long after neither of them were startups anymore, yes.