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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]

#391

Post by dllthomas »

luckylion wrote: post #249
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still wonder why startups don’t offer more flexible work. If anything, my time in a startup was significantly less flexible than at a bigco, where I had a much bigger team to cover my shifts. It could be something as simple as a 4 day workweek. Or even 4x 10 hour days. Instead startups are a place where people are expected to put in 60 hour weeks!

Likely because people believe they'd happily give up salary for more flexible work, but really wouldn't, and so you'd not get any employees if you didn't pay high salaries and offered more flexible hours and some culture benefits.

I think Tikhon's point about figuring out how to show that you're offering the benefit is key.

If my salary is $200k, it's clear what that means, and I can be pretty confident that there won't be weird social games to get me to actually accept less this pay period. (There's an argument that income tax is an example of this, but that doesn't vary in unpredictable ways between positions.)

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

#392

Post by alkonaut »

gumby wrote: post #381
alkonaut wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then it's simply a business. Nothing wrong with that but calling your local grill or clothes shop a "startup" turns the term into just a synonym for "small business".

I use it as a term for "just-started company hoping to validate business model then grow". Not just "VC funded company looking to grow exponentially".

E.g. wikipedia

"startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder"

I don't mind that definition. But I also wouldn't call my company not a startup if it doesn't want VC funding or doesn't hope to grow more than linearly/organically.

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

#393

Post by jsjohnst »

hef19898 wrote: post #360
jsjohnst wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And further compounding the issue, in a specific part of France, they will give you shit for even trying to speak French. It doesn’t matter if you have good vocabulary and decent grammar / pronunciation, they still will refuse to speak to you or worse insult you for even trying. This certainly isn’t an issue in all of France, just one specific area that I’ll avoid naming to not offend folks from there.

Having been to most corners of France so far, I cannot confirm this. I can confirm so, that French have a tendency to not like speaking English at the very beginning of a conversation. They do appreciate so, if foreigners try speaking French. Some even all of a sudden can speak English.

Yep, as I said, it’s a very specific part of France and not a “French” thing in general. Anecdata is anecdata, but I’ve had a lot of friends (some French, some not) agree that this is common in this specific place, so I know I’m not alone.

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

#394

Post by garmaine »

hef19898 wrote: post #321
garmaine wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m talking about startups, not big public companies. That approach doesn’t work so well when the startup shares are illiquid and no market exists to sell them at vesting or tax time. In the USA this isn’t an issue because you can make an 83(b) election with our tax authority which basically means “I elect to pay taxes when I sell, rather than at vesting.” So as your illiquid startup shares vest and you accumulate pa…

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 to cover taxes when they vest.

...how? Sell to whom? On what market? I think you’re missing the point. These are pre-IPO shares with explicit sale restrictions that prevent you from selling.

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

#395

Post by jsjohnst »

dctoedt wrote: post #354
jsjohnst wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but from my understanding, it’s a bit more complicated than that. If a lawyer tells you something is “probably ok”, but doesn’t cage that “probable” in enough legalese, then they can potentially be held liable in court. This is why you’ll rarely see a good attorney saying things like you suggested. Ultimately though, there is an important thing that GP’s friend missed out on. Lawyers do not tell you what to do…

Thanks. FYI, IAAL; I don't claim to be the world's greatest, but my clients seem to appreciate it when I tell them that I think that Contingencies X, Y, and Z are acceptable business risks for their situation — after explaining the nature of the risk — and I've never had any kind of malpractice claim, knock on wood. Example: Many years ago, on the afternoon of the last day of the quarter (when lots of business gets c…

Thanks! Curious, as a lawyer, how do you feel about what I said in the second paragraph? I like to ask whenever I get a chance, most agree, some don’t, so I’d love your perspective.

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

#396

Post by dctoedt »

jsjohnst wrote: post #395
dctoedt wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. FYI, IAAL; I don't claim to be the world's greatest, but my clients seem to appreciate it when I tell them that I think that Contingencies X, Y, and Z are acceptable business risks for their situation — after explaining the nature of the risk — and I've never had any kind of malpractice claim, knock on wood. Example: Many years ago, on the afternoon of the last day of the quarter (when lots of business gets c…

Thanks! Curious, as a lawyer, how do you feel about what I said in the second paragraph? I like to ask whenever I get a chance, most agree, some don’t, so I’d love your perspective.

> as a lawyer, how do you feel about what I said in the second paragraph?

I agree with it completely. But I've been doing this long enough that I'm not embarrassed about telling clients what I think and what I'd do if I were in their shoes, and my clients aren't the sort to just passively do what I tell them.

(It also helps that I've been a solo public-company general counsel — meaning that for a number of years I worked very closely with sales people and became acutely aware of the importance of getting deals done, as opposed to just identifying and flanging up risks.)

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

#397

Post by defnotashton2 »

hef19898 wrote: post #231
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…

IMHO there is more to SV than just that. Case in point, in Germany non-competes are basically non-enforceable, patentble inventions have to be offered to your current employer so. But only if they are directly linked to your current job, not which equipment yu are using. And if it is not directly linked to your current job, it's all yours. And still, we don't have anything near to SV over here.

There are soooo many regulations that add barriers to mobility in Germany. The weird employment recommendation coded letter, and the fact that you literally cannot fire anyone.

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

#398

Post by biztos »

stickfigure wrote: post #387
aden1ne wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Compared to total land mass, sure. But (as that map clearly shows) most Mediterranean climate is not in California. If it's just about the climate, there are plenty of options. ...or more likely, the weather is not a critical issue.

Why can't the weather be a critical issue that only works in combination with the other factors?

My intuition says that Silicon Valley wouldn't be possible in a beach town nor in a place that's too cold or too hot, simply because of how much the weather would distract you from work. The great thing about the weather in the Valley is that it's pleasantly bland (or blandly pleasant?).

But I think it's very likely that the weather doesn't matter at all if you don't already have some equivalent of the Stanford-Berkeley nexus and California labor law and a lot of very rich people willing to make high-risk investments.

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

#399

Post by 908B64B197 »

iainmerrick wrote: post #241
theamk wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a pretty bad example, they are well known for not caring where did you study. As long as you pass their (hellish) interview, they will take you. And bootcamps are not going to help you with that.

they are well known for not caring where did you study No, this is incorrect -- Google has a list of “favored” academic institutions. It’s not used to filter out candidates, so they’ll still hire people from other backgrounds, but studying at a top university is considered to be a positive signal. (Possibly this has changed recently, but it was true through at least 2012 or so.)

Often it's simply the signal to noise ratio. It varies tremendously between institutions.

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

#400

Post by kirillzubovsky »

baby wrote: post #78
batmaniam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At the same time how can smaller companies compete with large companies if they can’t match salaries?

Honestly, for certain jobs, you would be almost crazy not to work at a big company right now. FB/Google at el can offer salaries that are multiple-x of those at startup. If money is what you are after, it just makes a lot of sense to work there and squirrel away the cash.

In fact, there are probably only two things that startups can offer that big companies cannot:

(1) A product that when successful it will change everything, think Google/Facebook/SpaceX material. This is good because it puts employees in a position to "change the word," while also potentially getting paid in the long run.

(2) Flexibility and room for the mind to work. No useless meeting, no endless discussions to cover one's ass, no set hours or obscure HR policies. Just hard work and a ridiculously challenging mission.

Outside of that, why would you work at a startup?

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