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]

#261

Post by kamaal » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:07 AM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #258

kamaal wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bl…

that is a very scary FUD perspective you have and it is not based in reality. Non competes have been tested in indian courts and thrown out. This is fairly established and not a situation that is common practice. the other things you talk about are not standard practice and things that may happen anywhere

>>Non competes have been tested in indian courts and thrown out.

Are you from India?

People here are afraid to approach the police station even for small issues, let alone take on billion dollar firms and fight expensive cases for years. Even winning means losing in a context like this. People even settle traffic violation tickets with bribes, and you are talking about taking on billion dollar companies.

Also no one even goes this far. Programmers earning 4 LPA are not going to spend years in court, many times its just a hack and most people understand this is just how the system works, and get over it.

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

#262

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:11 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #202

jashmatthews wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

RSUs are working just fine. I got them from Amazon, I was able to get largely discounted shares from EADS back the day. Tax wise Amazon RSUs were treated like part of my salary, covering taxes when they vested ranged from selling all and selling parts of the RSU or covering taxes cash and keeping all of the RSUs. The discount at EADS was treated as part of my salary. No problem whatsoever. INAL, but all these instnces had in common was the legal entity being stock based (AGs in German parlance). Most companies in Germany end to be GmbHs, in that case ownership is harder to change but accounting is a lot easier.

That being said, Berlin start-ups have a tendency to complain a lot. If they wanted, they could make a lot of things work.

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

#263

Post by nkoren » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:12 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…

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 in perspective, pour stone like liquid, and build vast spanning domes that lasted for millennia -- and wanted to reverse-engineer how those things were done. That was the genesis of the renaissance: reverse-engineering. Part of the reason Italy was the centre of this was because it had more tech to dig out of the ground.

Even the Enlightenment saw itself as largely backwards-loooking, again inspired by antiquity, this time in more philosophical terms. It's only since the industrial revolution that the framing has started to be more about "innovation towards the future" than "reclamation of past glory".

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

#264

Post by eecc » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:13 AM 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…

I’ll also add the pitiful condition of the judiciary.

“Well then, sue me” is as middle-finger as it gets when quarreling with underhanded competitors or non compliant parties.

Getting justice - whatever that is, in Italy laws constantly change to favor whatever is the current favorite in power - is an such an excruciatingly long process that most will just give up and take the loss.

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

#265

Post by angry_octet » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

russelg wrote: post #219

cycomanic wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

2 year no-compete clauses are common at Australian software companies. If they're enforceable or not I do not know, but they are in place.

They are frequently enforceable for some period of time, TBD via expensive court action, via the blue pencil rule, a la:

"The employee non-compete clause shall hold for the greater of:

1- 6 months

2- 12 months

3- 18 months

4- 10 years

5- Until son of the son shall climb Mt Doom and steal the emerald eye from the statue of Xxyctl."

A court then crosses out the single lines that it finds offensive.

What is known to be unenforceable is restrictions on use of general professional skills. The particular IP of the non-compete must be identifiable and recorded (on an ongoing basis as part of a process), rather than vague knowledge of business secrets.

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

#266

Post by tpush » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

ytwySXpMbS wrote: post #118

barry-cotter wrote: post #108

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. There is no European university system. There’s a French one, a German one etc. They all pay much, much worse than their US equivalent because they’re substantially poorer than the US. Remember, if Germany wa…

I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers from. Assuming by “poorer” you mean nominal GDP, Germany would be the richest state in the US.

Presumably they mean GDP per capita, which slots Germany[0] just under Alabama[1].

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DEU/germany/gdp-per-ca...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...

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

#267

Post by blueblisters » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

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 think people left out one important thing: market. Silicon valley can readily sell to the rest of the North American market which is easily the biggest in terms of size and purchasing power. China has found similar success in Shenzhen because the market allowed the ecosystem to flourish in the first place.

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

#268

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #60

bitL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aversion to risk. I was told by German entrepreneurs that they can get funding only when they give bank/VC/investor a collateral of the same value or if they are already profitable and don't need it anymore.

Tolerance for risk by entrepreneurs is low too. I used to read the German blog ,,Gründerszene’’ — “founder scene” but all the companies they covered were just retail shops without a physical presence: organic oats on the web! Nothing technical and nothing high growth. Tragic.

If I were to start my business, that's what I'd set out to do though. I'd want to start a company that could grow from just me, to maybe 10 people in 10 years. Doing round the clock coding and VC pitches hoping to be sold to Google to me seems like a nightmare compared to trying to make a cereal store on the web with products I really enjoy.

This isn't just risk aversion, it's really that the tiny changce of being a billionaire doesn't really appeal to me more than a solid chance of just building a business and having a healthy work/life balance the whole way.

Nothing to be about "startups" means you have to have things that "scale" or hope for exponential growth or being able to sell the company, or even some new or impressive tech. To me it literally means "a young company bootstrapped with a small amount of cash, hoping to grow".

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

#269

Post by RustyRussell » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

justatdotin wrote: post #223

cycomanic wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#270

Post by KingOfCoders » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 7:27 AM UTC

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…

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).