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

Post by oars » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

malux85 wrote: post #284

notahacker wrote: post #48

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> From any angle, they created an environment that made these guys think “my time will be better spent at Apple”. tbf I don't think many startups running out of cash and exit opportunities would expect to keep their engineers if Apple approached them to offer a pay rise, regardless of how wonderful the environment was. But the idea to raise capital by 'selling' engineers to Apple instead of agreeing to the aquihire (…

I agree 100% - the use of the word “selling” here makes me very uncomfortable - they are employees and they are not company property that is owned. The “finders fee” response from Apple was the best they could expect. And yeah then I read about firing the CTO and the lawsuit and I started to get a picture of what this company was like. I hope they lose, and good luck to the employees at Apple

Post by C1sc0cat » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 9:52 AM UTC

donor20 wrote: post #250

jlokier wrote: post #201

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> 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.

In france you these need to be pre-approved, you have to have an employment protection plan, and even then the court can overturn all this and make you hire everyone back. "Collective redundancies can be void by an administrative court, if the latter recognises shortfalls in the employment protection plan or if an administrative authority did not validate or approve the employment protection plan at all. In case the…

Post by bkor » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:02 AM UTC

donor20 wrote: post #168

DetroitThrow wrote: post #72

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>Labor mobility is really low in Europe Like the other comment mentioned, this is a very France-centric description - in the Netherlands, for example, you can't block workers from leaving their company in this way.

In the netherlands you can have them sign a non-compete clause, generally for 1 to 2 years. "This clause prevents them from working for your competitor or from starting a similar enterprise after resigning. A non-solicitation clause forbids your employee to contact your clients after resigning." https://business.gov.nl/regulation/non-compete-clause/ In the US, lots of folks have famously started up their own ideas if…

Post by dragandj » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #213

ry454 wrote: post #52

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I believe Europe can create its own SV by following the USA's route: the Europe's equivalent of DoD (which has access to unlimited funds, tens of trillions of euros), needs to come up with a grand multi-decade project and invest into companies that are going to work on related sub-projects. For USA it was the worldwide surveillance system, but for Europe it may be something else, like ITER (but on a bigger scale) or…

There are some science and technology investment projects like this in the EU. For example: > Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market. Ho…

Post by garmaine » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:24 AM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #262

garmaine wrote: post #202

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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 instnce…