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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 (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. So people go there to start companies. And now it has a compounding cycle of attracting capital, founders and talent (recent events aside).

But a government employee from Boston can’t say that, cause they can’t do shit about it. It’s not like they’ll fix the weather or the noncompetes (too many entrenched medtech companies to change that now).

So they’ll say “they have accelerators!” and open a city sponsored accelerator and maybe some successful company will pop out in the next ten years.

> 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 these comments.

#1, nobody knows which parts of an ensemble of practices are the central parts. It's quite true that, because of this problem, people just try to copy as much as they can.

But then we lead into #2, your comments on the recipe for success. Among your central points, literally placed in the center, is "great weather". That can't be copied. You have the weather you have. What should the other 99.999% of the world do? Is there even a point in trying?

There are lots of places with a Mediterranean climate.

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...

I don't think that's part of the reason either. Sure, weather might be a factor for employee comfort, but most certainly not for a startup friendly environment. Else why is Stockholm or Copenhagen a bigger startup hub than Barcelona or Rome? Why are all the French startups in Paris and not Marseille, or the German startups in Berlin and not Munich? From even a non-startup perspective: why is Milan a bigger hub for corporate than Napoli or Rome (don't know how true the last bit is, but certainly felt that way)?

There are also historical reasons. Northern italy has long been more industrialized than the south, going back centuries to before there was a modern unified Italy. Paris has over twice the population of Marseille and way more universities which feed the job pool. Scandinavian countries have stronger social safety nets that foster more growth than their comparatively lean budgedted peers in southern europe.

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.

Firstly, I think your number is a little off. Bay Area weather isn’t that amazingly better. Maybe top 10% of cities.

As to “Is there even a point to trying?” No. No in two ways, in decreasing confidence.

Places that don’t have all the parts definitely shouldn’t try to copy Silicon Valley. If you can’t do things the way that they did them then... don’t try to do things the way that they did them. I don’t know how to express that without being circular.

Should any city try to become the next Silicon Whatever* at all? No, probably not. That’s simply because I don’t think there’s a city government in the world capable of doing it. Maybe there would be some benefit in the attempt, but I’m guessing it would be outweighed by the cost. It’s just not the kind of things governments actually do.

*btw all those names make feel a bit ill. Does no city’s Chamber of Commerce see the irony of branding themselves as an innovation hub by copying another city’s nickname?

Editing in more.

> #1, nobody knows which parts of an ensemble of practices are the central parts. It's quite true that, because of this problem, people just try to copy as much as they can.

I don’t know. I think sometimes people know. At least try. Like maybe my description of Silicon Valley is totally wrong. But at least it’s logical and you can choose to follow it or not.

And if you’re going to follow someone as a guru (like the tweet I linked to) then follow their belief on what’s central. And if you don’t agree then don’t follow them! Because you wouldn’t be following them anyway. You’d be following some hybrid half version of them that you created yourself.

I think things get all fucked up when people half follow systems. It’s fine if you take a tiny cohesive piece, like folding your shirts differently cause you saw Marie Kondo do it that way. And it’s fine if you go all in on Tidying Up. But when you rip through every item you own and end up with a giant pile of non-joy in your apartment that you never actually get rid of, you’re fucked. (If anyone is getting Agile flashbacks, I’m inspiring the right vibes).

> But then we lead into #2, your comments on the recipe for success. Among your central points, literally placed in the center, is "great weather". That can't be copied. You have the weather you have. What should the other 99.999% of the world do?

Well, the weather probably is a comparatively small factor, but nonreplicable geographic factors are actually a major factor in the success of most economic hubs, including the Bay Area (aesthetically great weather is one, but a great natural port area, and proximity to abundant agriculture, are also factors.)

Yeah, you can't copy some of those things. Geography matters, it always has.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though.

Way too hot, hazardous weather, impossible to get around (crazy traffic congestions, no useful public transporation, bicycling being suicidal), have to go to Home Depot to get real Coca Cola.

Overall quite "meh".

> no useful public transporation

it's united states overall, so it doesn't really matter.

Combine it with the

>> crazy traffic congestion

It matters. I once pulled out of the Sutter-Stockton garage and sat in traffic for a full hour without getting to the end of the block.

Why were you driving in downtown in the first place? It's one of the few parts of the city that are well served by transit.

Silicon Valley became SV before most of that.

Now it's SV despite all that.

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).

On the other hand it's France, and the French are notorious for not wanting to speak English, while at the same time not many people from Europe speak French. Hard to build a truly European zone that way.

I think quite a lot of people can speak French, but have a similar stance against the French people, why would we speak French if you can't bother speaking differently language like English.

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.

I live in a bilingual city (english / french), and the french-speakers here that vacationed in France (n=3) all say that the French laughed at them when they tried speaking.

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.

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.

I don't know about start-ups, but I think Portugal in general is still growing in attraction for remote workers. Great climate, still cheap and beneficial tax laws.

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

what I read is when worker's lives arent threatened (by deprivation of health care) we make sensible decisions about balancing a commitment to an employer with our commitments to family and community.

I have no clue about Portugal, just wanted to point out these things are independent, e.g. in Norway/Denmark high productivity ("work ethic") while at the same time leaving the office on time and closing shops early. While Germany does not threat workers life but people stay too long in the office and shops are open to long - but it gets better.

Well, there is already a special economic zone in that area: Monaco.

Don't think it's particularly startup-friendly though.

Currently in Paris as everything is centralized there but indeed, if the opportunity ever presented itself I would move to Nice in a heartbeat, the rest of the bigger cities (Marseilles, Montpellier) suffer a bad reputation though...

Marseille is not great, but Montpellier is awesome.

This. It is a stunningly beautiful city. It is also right by the Mediterranean.

Still remember sleeping some nights on the beach in Nice, awesome days.

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.

It's still there, and growing.

Everywhere is "Silicon Valley of Europe". Silicon Saxony, Silicon Roundabout (London), Silicon Fen (Cambridge), Silicon Docks (Dublin), Silicon Glen, etc

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.

I mean nobody knows which parts make the difference, but the market will tell after time. The more regions try to change things the more likely it is going to work somewhere. I think that can be great if the decision makers are held accountable / fired if it does not work. Without proper incentives / skin in the game this is just another way decision makers will (subconsciously) implement some crony-sh*t

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.

That was in the context of the US. And Italy is a whole country, so the density is going to be different.

which is a fair point, but I don't see density as a key success factor in the parents comments.

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 in this regard but I am certainly not an expert.

[1] https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/technology/pdf/how-governments-fos...

Corruption has to have an effect. In SV it's common to shout about the success of your business. It would probably be foolish to do the same in Italy.

likely, but I didn't see 'lack of corruption' in the parent post sv pillars, which is the whole point of the counterargument.

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 institution that could finance their operations at reasonable risk for themselves.

the small local banks in Italy could never sustain such a growth, and production remained local, with few notable exception.

sure politicking, corruption and mafia had a part in it, as they will reduce competitiveness of a company compared to others having none of such issues (i.e. the state deciding where to build factories based on unemployment and not efficiency) but a large enough company can absorb that in the bottom line and continue operating.

Medium companies are, however, completely suffocated from this.

the Italian startup stagnation is more confounding, but 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, as everything in welfare comes from the middle class. And existing entrepreneurs have little incentive in branching off to new unexplored areas. Without the fuel and ferment from solo founders making it, there's no culture and no substrate to fall into if a business fails. Everyone is just grabbing at their own chair, hoping not to be knocked into poverty by the next round of financial crises.

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.

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.

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".

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

They had stuff like theatres, temples, and aqueducts that still stood after being utterly neglected for a millenium, whilst their fancy new churches took centuries to get built and needed constant maintenance. It’s easy to see how this would seem wonderful, or how they would take ancient Rome’s engineers and architects as models.

Also, we tend to take things we’re familiar with for granted, and overlook them when comparing different societies. So of course, ancient civilisations were terrible for other reasons, but still...

Roman artists used vanishing point perspective, which to medieval artists -- who had no grasp of perspective at all -- was pretty amazing. What the Romans didn't do was use vanishing points systematically -- they would have multiple contradictory vanishing points in a single image. Brunelleschi's invention of 3-point perspective was much more systematic than what the ancient world had done, but it was very much inspired by the desire to reverse-engineer Roman techniques.

Roman artists use of perspective is not really level that would be "mind blowing". Once in a while you got there little bit of it.

Medieval artists knew things far away are smaller, they did not knew all paralel lines have to go to one one point. But 3-point perspective is just another formal choice, simplification.

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.

All the good engineers are working in Switzerland because of the money and the close proximity to home.

What about other labour laws? Isn't it hard to fire people in Italy, whereas CA has at-will? My friend whose father ran a well known cultural institution there also says organised crime is a problem, effectively an extra tax. Basically he was told he'd have to "hire" certain people, or else...

On top of other issues there's the fact that once SV is established somewhere, it turns into a magnet for all the new startups.

yeah Italy got it's problems, but it's a easy counter-example of what parent posts proposed as a thesis: that the secret ingredient was non-competes, education and climate.

it is readily apparent that the success pillar from silicon valley were not these three.

Since this was about the difference between US East and West coasts, I think the assumption was that the basic ability to be flexible economically would be the same. Obviously "not in the middle of a bitter civil war" is a pretty hard requirement as well, but nobody feels the need to mention that one either.

From what I can tell, Italian universities churn out some really great programmers, which mostly end up moving to other countries where it's easier for companies to actually run. Kind of a shame -- in addition to climate, Italy has food and history going for it as well.

In Italy you cannot fire anyone. Like a marriage. And taxes on wages are the highest in Europe. This is why they cannot easily compete globally.

which is all true, and further support the point that the three pillars pointed by parents (non competes, climate, colleges) are not the primary conditions for creating a silicon valley.

Second world war pretty much made Europe much poorer than US. At the same time, Silicon valley a) was not wrecked by war b) had extravagant funding by US state c) had direct access to the (already then) remarkable US market.

So it's not just the current conditions, need to look at history as well.

And the marschal plan laid the basis for the German Wirtschaftswunder and made Germany the industrial powerhouse it was for quite a long time.

Inventions from centuries past notwithstanding, what universities does Italy have that are in the same league as Stanford and Wharton?

is going to be very hard to directly compare public and private universities.

alumni average results and achievements will vary a lot, because of open access, and population size and economic stagnation would screw other metrics like employment rate, wages etc. other metrics like staff size are pointless as well, unless maybe proportioned by participation over population size, and then one would need to carefully define what each university catchment region it.

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.

Its not just those three. Its also local demand, diversity, merit, culture and acceptance and many other things. Plus existing inertia matters too. It takes tons of effort to get the ball rolling.

Im sure there are lots of other reasons too, any 1-1 comparison would be unfair given the differences in culture and overall direction of the societies.

> Its also local demand, diversity, merit, culture and acceptance and many other things. Plus existing inertia matters too. It takes tons of effort to get the ball rolling.

I think the last point is the most important one. It also took a lot of government/military/intelligence funding to get the ball rolling, and a time where the government/military/intelligence wanted to fund specifically that, something you cannot simply copy. The weather, local culture etc were available before, but SV didn't become a major player before all the stars aligned just right.

Density, first off. You’re comparing Australia to an area of like 100 square kilometers.

My description of why Silicon Valley happened was also based on it being in the US. I don’t think Silicon Valley happens without the rest of the US (obviously this would be so different it’s hard to compare).

I guess my point is that I was saying why the apple grew on this particular branch, and you’re asking why this other tree didn’t grow any apples at all.

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.

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.

In my limited experience with lawyers, they always advise conservatism. That's not to say they're always wrong. But they don't have much incentive to say, "Go for it!" Even if you're 95% chance likely to have things work out okay, what would the lawyer get in that situation? Nothing. And in the 5% of cases they'd be excoriated for giving their client bad advice.

> Even if you're 95% chance likely to have things work out okay, what would the lawyer get in that situation? Nothing. And in the 5% of cases they'd be excoriated for giving their client bad advice.

Spot on. EDIT: On further thought, there's a wrinkle, which is that NOT being super-conservative can be good marketing for a lawyer. In a 95% confidence situation, consider the lawyer who tells the client, "here are the pitfalls, but IMHO they're an acceptable business risk [one of my favorite formulations], so if you want to do it, then go for it!" That lawyer is likely to have a happy client who, if asked for a recommendation by a third party, might refer the third party to the lawyer.

(Of course, this presupposes that the lawyer has enough experience to be able to confidently weigh the business risks — and that a 5% disaster doesn't befall the client.)

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, rather instead they advise you of risk on what your options are. It’s your responsibility to decide how much risk you are willing to bear.

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 closed for financial-reporting purposes), a software-company client's VP of sales — with whom I'd worked for years — called me and described a situation, saying "the customer wants to change our contract to say X." I asked a couple of questions and then said "there's always the possibility of Bad Situation B coming up, but it's unlikely, and it'd be manageable if it did — go ahead." The VP said "Thank you — bye!" and slammed down the phone. (That VP went on to CEO positions at two other companies and uses me to this day.)

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.)

The core task of a lawyer is risk identification and mitigation.

If everything else goes south, the client sues the lawyer — and the best defense is “here’s where I said that might happen.”

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.

Probably because Australia has a significantly different culture. One factor is that giving equity to employees is rare in Australia.

California is part of the US, and the US was one of the (at the time) two world superpowers. The economic advantages that come from being part of the US (the US simply being a much larger country high among them) are hard to overcome.

> Perhaps the other 90% work for the government.

What a poisonous attitude.

> 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.

That is not cognitive dissonance. They flew in trying to learn how other town achieved goal. Once they know, they are still allowed to dislike the method or part of it.

But also, I don't the the non competes are the key part, because many parts of the world have weak non competes too.

CA law around non-competes is great and all but:

1. It's not like CA doesn't have NDAs, trade secrets, anti-poaching, IP restrictions, etc.

2. It's not like everyplace else in the world (or even in the US) you're an indentured servant who is never allowed to move to another company (occasional man bites dog headlines about a fast food worker notwithstanding)

  >The recipe for success of Silicon Valley...

You seem to have left out "Tons of government money funding early electronics and aerospace development"... a bootstrap factor that should not be forgotten.

"Just why is Silicon Valley so successful?" asks a VC as they fund yet another startup within an Uber ride of Sand Hills Road.

Lots of places had lots of government money funding.

>It has great colleges, great weather, and weak noncompetes.

Massachusetts certainly can't do anything about winter although by "great weather," depending upon your preferences most of the world is pretty much screwed relative to the Bay area.

But great schools relative to the Boston area? They're probably as good overall.

And, while California has particularly weak enforcement of non-competes, Massachusetts recently weakened non-competes and, in any case, there's a pretty long history of people moving among tech companies in the area. And many companies in the Northeast don't have non-competes.

Maybe it depends on what you mean by "recipe for success of Silicon Valley" but I doubt weather has primary influence on the recipe. Sweden, South Korea, and Switzerland are considered the top 3 "innovative economies"[1] in the world and aren't particularly notable for their weather.

[1] usually this means a mix of #patents filed, number of phds/100,000 and r&d expenditure/gdp. Not sure how you would rather measure the success of silicon valley to set it apart.

what about the tax regime?

So they’ll say “they have accelerators!” and open a city sponsored accelerator and maybe some successful company will pop out in the next ten years.

...and promptly relocate to Silicon Valley.

> So they’ll say “they have accelerators!” and open a city sponsored accelerator and maybe some successful company will pop out in the next ten years.

How is that not cargo-culting?

It's worth noting that there are a number of other similar reactions from a European point of view

- You allow Trade Unions in your company? But how do you keep their noses to the grindstone?

- You have workers representatives on the board? How, what, where ... that's crazy !

Of course regulating to force this to happen often has unintended consequences, but then ending non-competes in Wisconsin might not lead to the next Silicon Valley either.

But we should still do it.

(I think my best explanation is that I don't look like Chris Hemsworth, but eating healthy, regular exercise and good lighting in photos will certainly improve my situation, even if the "next Silicon Valley / film stardom" is not within reach. )

> "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 play by these rules because the best workers want to work by those rules.

"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.

And becoming good at writing software is an investment in your human capital.

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 last one year at most and employer has to pay 25% of the last employee income (missing a single payment invalidates clause), so, giving the trouble of paying, handling accounting, etc. companies rarely use that (oddly enough, if this clause is used, it is used for sales people) and I don't see another SV build anywhere here.

It's worth noting that it depends on employment contract in Poland. Rules (if any) are different for B2B(freelance) contracts. Also NCA itself can differ, from forbidding to work with other companies, or simply forbidding you to poach clients(I've only ever seen this one in use).

>simply forbidding you to poach clients

Which my understanding is you can absolutely do in California as well.

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.

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.

> And still, we don't have anything near to SV over here.

You don’t? I mean, Germany is a technology powerhouse, with arguably the best engineering sector on the planet. It just has a different set of technology products than Silicon Valley.

If I were a public policy leader interested in building a more durable, equitable economy for my citizens I would gladly choose the German model.

True that. We seem to struggle so to get all that power on the road for quite some time:

- TVs: Went first to Japan and then Korea then China

- Cameras: Went to japan

- MP3: Went to the US

- Cars: We totally missed the trend to EVs

- Big engineering projects: Pretty bad track record so far, e.g. the Berlin airport. German companies are still supplying components and sub-systems to these projects worldwide, but they are rarely the general contractor anymore.

It would be nice to see that being changed, but everything that is new tech just seems to be an unsurmountable obstacle for a lot of German companies and institutions.

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.

I think 'the stuff you do at home is yours' might be a really important part. The reason I do not launch (my probably unsuccessful) saas is because boss would claim ownership once it is succesful (or worse get fired even if not succesful)

This is why it's a feature that the original design of the US was a loose federation of independent states, with an intentionally very weak and restricted federal government. States are free to try different modes of governance and different levels of regulation, different levels of pro-employer or pro-employee legislation, etc. Ideally other states see what works and adopt the better models over time, and continue experimentation. For whatever reason though states seem very reluctant to take the stuff that is obviously working in another state and apply it at home, particularly when what is obviously working is the opposite of their system which isn't.

Yep, and the thing is, this is better for workers too. We get more competition in the marketplace, and workers get paid more because their employers want to retain them, because workers have the freedom to go work for a competitor anytime they want.

> 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

I'm happy with invalid not competes, but equity? How does that protect startup X against poaching from an already very successful company like Apple? They can offer (example) a real million now against the promise of millions in 2025. Or real millions against promised millions.

And even for real money vs real money they can outbid the startup easily.

Today perhaps. Pre-IPO stock from 1980 to roughly 2008 was always a huge multiple over BigCorp stock. That largely evaporated in the Unicorn bubble AFAICT. I suspect because pulling the value out pre-IPO was a better deal for investors.

Even today restricted stock grants (RSUs) serve the same purpose and act as a multiplier on compensation which is "better" if the company does better and "worse" if the company loses out to competition.

> non-competes are illegal, stuff you do at home is yours

For “stuff you do at home” is there any limit to that?

Like if I’m on my own time and my own computer/internet, and I worked at say, a search engine company, and I made my own search engine in my free time (a huge project, but we’re talking in hypotheticals here)

Would my current employer in this scenario be able to sue me?

What if it’s “my own time” during the day, but I’m working from home and I switch from my company’s work to my own for 20 minutes before going back to my employers?

What if the project is only tangentially related?

Trade secrets are a thing, and enforceable in California.

> Would my current employer in this scenario be able to sue me?

They can always sue you even if it unlikely they would win.

> What if it’s “my own time” during the day, but I’m working from home and I switch from my company’s work to my own for 20 minutes before going back to my employers?

> What if the project is only tangentially related?

You should speak to a lawyer. It will depend on the details and your exact employment contract.

Short answer what does your employment contract say?

I live in the southern U.S. Non compete clause are 100% enforceable here, and have a ton of case law backing them. I generally won't take a job if it requires me signing it.

I have more than 20 years of experience, and I personally feel I am far more likely to bring knowledge to them rather than then providing it to me.

Anecdotally, regarding IP assignment policies: All large and medium-sized companies I've worked with in the Bay Area have a section in their employment agreement that says something to the effect of "We own everything you work on, using our equipment or yours, on our time or on yours, on company property or at your home."

California law restricts employers' ability to claim ownership of inventions made by employees on their own time.

(Self-cite: A flow diagram with statutory citations at https://www.oncontracts.com/docs/Who-owns-an-employee-invent... )

Its normally only "related" to your day job so in your example yes.

But if say your an amateur musician your day job employer has no lien over your compositions.

The funny thing about that it is a perfectly understandable perspective from someone bent on wooing companies to come to his town (i.e. focused on the immediate needs and demands of his perceived clientele), but at the same time completely misses the big picture.

I guess it would be an easy trap to fall into, but you would hope that someone going to the trouble of trying to learn about how another place did things would be a little more receptive to unexpected things.

I have always deeply deeply disliked non-compete clauses. The only thing that I could come up with is that it’s akin to indentured servitude. But this is much more eloquent way of putting it in language that the businesses and politicians would understand. Thank you.

I like the variants that say "non compete last at most 1 year, and company pays 100% of your salary whilst the non-compete is being enforced".

They seem like a decent middle ground between all parties interests.

Doesn't it just solidify status quo where the always richest companies can afford buying whoever they want this way and hollowing out all potential competitors? Honestly curious, maybe it was great for innovation 15 years ago but now the market has solidified.

"our town" FFS that attitude is why the USA needs one set of employment laws

maybe it's not about what the workers want, it's that it ends up allowing so many new companies to start up that wouldn't have otherwise

Although we also know that Amazon wouldn't be such a big success without all the NDA's. There is no knowledge dilution because of this legal setup and this secrecy of real innovation in Bezos company has given him a three year advantage with AWS on Azure around the corner and Google cloud in Silicon Valley not to speak of Apple.

While you could rent GPU's in 2015 from AWS the competition could not deliver a GPU without calling it Alpha until the end of 2018.

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