> It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them wholesale.
Imagine a skilled worker taking a new job that pays better. What a nightmare scenario.
Imagine a skilled worker taking a new job that pays better. What a nightmare scenario.
Let's say tomorrow that you find a better way to do search. It's going to crush google, and MS.
You hire a team, smart people the VC's throw money at you. Everyone is happy. Your growing and the next darling of tech.
Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix.
In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them to the roof to rest and vest.
Thats great for the dozen people who got a great deal from google. It's bad for the rest of the world.
If you know for certain that "they are BlockBuster, you are Netflix", then why are you not cutting them a deal to make it worth them staying?
This is absolutely about workers -- specifically, companies not wanting to pay workers anything close to what they are worth.
It’s a fair question. Workers absolutely deserve a fair cut of the pie in that scenario. Non-competes have been pretty ridiculous lately, and companies had to provide little to no justification.
But the incentives of workers might not be entirely aligned with the “Netflix” or even their coworkers. Blockbuster wouldn’t hire the whole team unless they had to: one or two people who understood the core algorithm is enough, and for 10x their old salary it would be hard to resist. That leaves the startup and everyone else who works there out in the cold.
The second thing is that people aren’t rational expected value maximizers. You can’t pay rent with equity, and a startup may not have the cash to compete on salary.
Finally, it’s possible that allowing the larger incumbent to hire all of a competitor’s employees is actually not in their best interest. After strangling/eliminating the competition, an incumbent has no further need for those employees it poached.
And even if the do, it isnt at the inflated pay rate.
The big incumbent crushed the little guy.
When apple uses its dominant position to tax everyone 30 percent apple benefits, and the market does not.
When apple uses its dominant position to pay your team 30 percent more and stifle the free market by driving competitors out of business. you benefit, Apple benefits more and the market does not.
Is apple being a giant market dominating force a good thing or a bad thing? Your getting the high salary does not reflect your value, or the market value of your skill. It reflects apples desire to put your former employer out of business.
That's the choice of your staff and the reality you have to deal with, isn't it? I'm sure you as worker would prefer to have such an option.
What percentage of the company did you share with your workers? What is their upside if you really are a blockbuster?
If the workers really had an upside, then they might stick with you.
You would need to ban them from working ENTIRELY, and no sane person would accept that.
Alternatively, you might realize that NDAs and IP ownership is still a thing, Google can't just copy/paste your code, and if these people are truly irreplaceable, they should either be your cofounders or founding engineers with a significant equity stake.
Not slaves.
That world sucks.
An exit for Employee < 50 at a netflix-to be will be in the hundreds of millions.
Unfortunately, these things aren’t certain and are contingent on many things including those that have nothing to do with technology.
It’s unfortunate because people have a bias towards guaranteed present value (cash) over expected future value (equity) which gives incumbents a natural advantage.
Hiring all the staff at an inflated rate to put a competitor out of business is good for the staff that got hired.
Without competition the dominant player makes more, without other places to work dominant player pays less.
> It’s not for the greater good.
Your not getting paid because your valuable your getting paid out because its anti-competitive. Paying you more to bankrupt a competitor is no different than dumping product to put them out of business ... Secure your market position and then jack up the prices and lower the salary.