jomamaxx

"Once again they paid for a finite duration of your time and labor not the contents of your brain."

+ Absolutely false. Whenever you work for a company, you will gain knowledge that is their property - almost always. It doesn't matter who/what/when/how you work for - that knowledge is theirs. Even McDonald's workers are subject to private info such as operating details.

+ "For you to somehow by dint of experience BECOME employer property in whole or in total is a truly bizarre perspective."

Nobody is anybodies property. If nearly everything you know about a subject is a trade secret, then you obviously cannot use that elsewhere.

+ "If you can't own them forever as slaves then preventing them from freely applying their learned skills for a period of time isn't coherent and logical."

Would you children stop talking about slavery?

If your skills and experience are tantamount to trade secrets than you cannot use them elsewhere.

The idea that some company is going to let you in on their $1 Billion dollars and research, so you can walk across the street and hand it over to another company 'because you think it's your right' - is not coherent or logical. Put yourself in the perspective of the manager of that IP.

Your comments about NDA's are not quite right. NDA's do not capture a lot of the essential issue.

Pragmatically speaking, it's nary impossible to work in some fields, and then move to a competing firm without passing on know how or trade secrets.

Even the 'manner of approach' to a problem, while it may not be a trade secret, is basically a core part of the 'true IP' that is developed by a company.

Using DWAVE as an example - there are thousands of 'little things' that they will have had to figure out along the way - from which parts to use, which vendors work well, material types, tooling, physical test units, support gear (like cooling etc.) - all of this is IP.

Any number of small issues can be the 'key ingredients' that make or break a project. When DWAVE spends a year trying to figure out how to keep some material at a steady temperature in order to bind it to another ... then that's IP.

It's a paradox when nearly one's entire skill set is tantamount to 'trade secrets' but it's feasible.

An NDA - in the broadest sense - in this case would be a de-facto 'non compete' - because there's hardly a thing this Eng could do for Google that wouldn't involve giving away important information.

In case you guys are not aware: hiring people to steal away trade secrets and know-how is very common in the Valley, often by major players and firms.

If you haven't noticed - the biggest and most successful tech companies all have either natural monopolies (i.e. Facebook/Twitter with network externalities), or insurmountable massive barriers to entry keeping others out (i.e. Apple having MacOS/iOS, a retail distribution chain, massive leverage over supply chain, and market share).

In business scenarios it happens as well, in less 'protectable' scenarios. Apple snared away tons of BlackBerry sales/BD execs - not because they were necessarily skilled or talented - but because of their established relationships within carrier channels. Apple was buying access to Verizon and AT&T - not random sales guys abilities.

"It doesn't matter how much R&D was created. That's the role of patents to deal with that thing."

I'm beginning to think none of you have ever worked in companies that actually produce IP.

First off - that's not what patents are for. Patents protect publicly known information - not trade secrets. And they don't do it very well. There are very few things you can defend with a patent.

What companies are concerned with is 'trade secrets' and 'know how' - and it's a serious thing.

"Then the burden of proof should lie with the previous company, there shouldn't be any possibility of preemptive clause within the former contract."

If you work at DWAVE for 5 years and learn everything you know about Quantum Computing there - and go to Google to work on Quantum Computing - then there is basically a 100% chance that you are passing on 'know how' and 'trade secrets' - otherwise - Google would not hire you.

Your comments about customers etc. are irrelevant with respect to IP issues.

If you work for ABC corp and they make a 'sales automation tool' - and you go off and build your own 'sales automation tool' - then fine. It's not about IP or trade secrets. You can do as you like.

But for other types of things, no way. You work at Nuance on Speech recognition - then you leave and build a nearly identical speech recognition system? That's probably IP theft.

There would not be any technology if IP could not be protected in some reasonable way.

I'm not suggesting that many of these contracts are crazy - and that there can be absurd limitations and weird corner cases - of course it's very tricky - but companies deserve the right to protect their IP in some manner.

"Bullshit, that's what NDAs are for."

Totally false and completely naive.

Most knowledge and know-how is not explicit - they are often learned.

For example - suppose you worked at Nuance, and helped develop their new AI/Neural Network speech recognition system. Everything you know about Speech + AI you learned from them, in that language specific setting.

If you went to work on Google's new Speech Recognition, which is AI-based - it would basically be impossible not to pass on know how and relevant knowledge. The application-specific skills are basically IP.

"If a company wants to keep me from working they should pay for the privilege."

They are paying you. You join the company on those terms. If you don't want to join, then don't join.

What they don't want you dong is taking all their IP, walking off and passing it onto a competitor.

It would be extremely naive to not understand that this happens all the time.

It's a tricky and nuanced problem, but it's real.

From your comments I gather you might not understand the problem.

Were Soft Engs simply to do 'work' then you would be absolutely right.

But in a world of IP ... it's a different story.

Company ABC brings you in, trains you on their know-how and core IP, which took a lot of struggle, $, and R&D to create - then you leave, go to a competitor, and effectively communicate and give away ABC Corps. most valuable asset.

Non-competes can certainly applied far too aggressively, esp. in situations where there is not merit ... but there are definitely cases wherein I think it does make sense.

I'm thinking companies like DWAVE in Vancouver that built the 'first' qubit/quantum computer. The guy spent his whole life developing that tech. It's feasible that Google just grabs up some of the team and internalizes all that work and effort for the price of a few headcount.

It's a real problem in some cases, but worse - very difficult to parameterize.

Wait, Python, Perl and PHP are 'new' programming languages?

Ha ...

"You give me money, I don't shoot you"

That's not capitalism by any definition.

That's extortion and it was a well known practice thousands of years before we invented (or at least understood) capitalism.

I'd argue capitalism is not even an ideology, it's just a simple understanding of comparative value and how to go beyond zero-sum economics.

I don't believe that his commitment to his supposed ideals is in any way 'moral'. I'd refer to his position that 'only free software is ethical' as simply wrong - and arrogant.

Yes - we can admire his tenacity, and some of the great things he's contributed.

Paradoxically, his 'ideals' have probably contributed to his personal ability to make these things, at the same time, his ideology is I think more than naive, it's just plain wrong.

I like Stallman, but I take him with a huge dose of salt.

Less extreme wealth, less extreme poverty, more extreme weather :)

It is not 'making a deal with the devil' to take other people's money on the basis that you'll return a certain amount of profit - and then not do so. The 'devil' it would seem are the Twitter founders, who took investors money on false premises.

So Twitter has hit a ceiling, they are making adjustments, which sadly are op cuts. If they want to hire more people than can grow their numbers.

You seem to fail to grasp even basic common sense: most products and service increase in value over time, and though it's difficult sometimes to measure that value, it's not 'arbitrary'.

For example - as Farmers improve their technology - Tomatoes become bigger, juicier and redder. Clearly - there is 'economic value' in those 'improved tomatoes' and that has has to be taken into consideration when comparing tomatoes grown before, to tomatoes grown now.

Stop misinforming people, take your conspiracy theories to ZeroHedge.

You articulation of the reasoning for 2% inflation targets by Central Banks is completely and utterly false.

"Can you recommend any references for a non-economist to learn about this theory?"

It's not a theory, it's armchair cynicism.

Some high growth startups are kind of like Ponzi schemes, in the sense that some investors know they won't ever get to the full valuation needed to justify the investment - but that someone down the line, after the IPO will be left 'holding the bag', but the economy itself is not a 'ponzi scheme'.

"Fix the fucking educational system and stop wasting people's time."

America spends more % of it's GDP and more $ / capita than any nation on earth.

America graduates far more people from college than any European country.

European Americans score better than Europeans on standardized testing.

Same for all ethnic groups: Asian Americans do better than Asians, African Americans do better than Africans etc..

The reason America - on average - fares a little lower than Europe has to do with it's ethnic composition. BTW - I'm not saying that some ethnic groups / races are 'smarter' than others, but that literacy, attitudes towards education etc. are multigenerational things, and most Latino Americans and African Americans are only about 1.5 generations fully literate, so it will take some time to fully catch up.

In fact - if you account for ethnicity - America has the best schools in the world - wherever they come in from - they do better than they would have from whence they came.

I'm not saying American schools are perfect or whatever - but it's worth noting that if you look at the facts, they don't fit the whole 'American schools are crap' narrative. It's more nuanced than that.

Despite your claims about socialization of higher education - which is perfectly true - America actually graduates a lot more people out of college than European countries. A lot more.

There is a better 'safety net' in most European countries, but there is a lot more opportunity in America. It's 100% true that 'anyone can make it' - as long as 'making it' means having a job, owning a home, in a regular place like Cleveland or Pittsburg or whatever.

Europe has a much, much stronger class system than the US.

American companies have tons of workers and professionals who came from poor situations. Europe is not like that at all.

"America is doing quite poorly in terms of social mobility, compared to other top-tier countries."

I think this is a myth.

Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland all do pretty well on the 'gini coefficient' - but they are tiny, relatively homogeneous societies. They are ethnic groups - and they are each smaller than Los Angeles.

What would the gini coefficient look like for 'The entire EU' for example - which would be a better direct comparison to America.

It would be terrible.

Why? Because Greeks grow up mostly to live in Greece, and much poorer than Swedes, who grow up to be Swedes, generally much richer than Greeks.

Poor Greeks, Sardinians, and Bulgarians kids mostly do not grow up to reach the level of wealth of middle class Scandinavians - not even close.

From Slovenia to London ... the gap is really quite huge.

No, the 'biggest influence' that parents have on their kids are the values, attitudes, the disposition, the care, the temperament, the focus, the self restraint and self discipline , and all the other behaviours they instil in their children by instruction or by example.

After that I would say it's economic and social class.

Of course genes play some role, but there's a pretty low correlation for inherited IQ anyhow.

I worked at a Fortune 50 and we hired a lot of interns.

After I left, I thought back on the kids we hired, how talented they were, and what they went off to do afterwards.

The 'rich kids' were better prepared, more responsible, better communicators, had a better sense of the vision for the company and the consequences of what we were doing.

'College education' is surely causative to some degree, but in America, most wealth is not inherited, and those parents who can afford 'activities' for their kids are probably far, far better parents than others. It's not the 'activities' that I think develops the kids, I think it's the very fact that these parents are investing a lot of time and energy in their kids, teaching them positive behaviours that matters much more.

I wish I had the link but I read a study a while back that showed that 'rich parents' were far more conscientious than other parents.

I don't doubt that money is a big advantage, as well as social class, but it would be foolhardy to think that these are the fundamental issues.

Rich kids are posited as 'brats' in films and TV because it's populist - most viewers are not rich. And of course - those douches exist. By by enlarge, upper-middle class kids are great. I would bet they make better players than otherwise on average.

I should also point out that kids from communities wherein they were not seen as lower class - i.e. rural communities, seem to have decent dispositions as well, and at least by the numbers, they didn't have a lot of money. But it doesn't cost a lot to have a stable home / good parents out in the sticks.

Large corps may produce mediocrity, but the issue for MS is not so much that - they have talent, and are operationally effective.

I think large corps fail to grasp industry pivots - and they keep doing 'more of same' - failing to take risks on new, emerging concepts.

Part of this is 'baked in' - large, incumbent entities have more to lose than to gain by innovation.

Protecting MS monopoly is easier than taking the risk of heading in a new direction that does not pan out. Very, very few companies can do it well.

Amazon did a great job with AWS - but that was a spin-off of something they already used internally, so it had at least one 'satisfied real world customer' in a way.

Also - consider Apple without the iPhone. They just would not be what they are. The iPhone was a rare win, and it had a lot to do with leap-frogging BlackBerry - who created the market demand for data services. Were it not for BB making ridiculous amounts of surplus profits, Jobs would have not been able to justify to himself a $200M investment in the iPhone. Of course - MS should have seen this and acted more aggressively on creating a better experience - they missed it.

In the end I think Cook came up through the ranks of Ops, and is a trusted maintainer of the system. Ballmer is a loud, boorish Trump-like figure who I don't think was very liked.

"Designers are ruining software in general"

Designers and Engineers collaborate to make products.

Some suck, some are great.

Blame bad design on bad designers, bad software on bad engs.

Don't blame design or eng for existing.

There is no such thing as 'peak oil' because we keep figuring out ways to find more.

Think Oil Sands: massive amounts of Oil in Alberta and Venezuela was not considered in reserves just a decade ago because it was not economically feasible to access it. Now it is. Deep Oil drilling, arctic exploration - so much changes so quickly. Heck - most wells are left with a lot of Oil in them because it cannot be extracted.

Of course eventually there will be such a thing as 'peak oil' but it's hard to determine.

Does anyone have any benchmarks for this?

I agree there are some smart Econ things here, but when there's a tech article that wavers into Econ elements, I find it all to be lacking, generally.

My point: HN folks are not thinking about market power, value chains, supply chains, forms of financing, currency markets - they're thinking about tech.

At the risk of getting 100 down-votes - this is best exemplified by Bitcoin. It's a very powerful, cool technology - but almost nobody seems to grasp what it means from a financial perspective, i.e. as a currency, as a store of value etc. etc.. HN readers see it in 'techno-social' terms, i.e. 'cool tech' and 'free from big banks' 'decentralization' etc..

Europe is not an open market for agriculture - and the Walloons are defending their agriculture here.

Also, it's not as open a market as you would think.

If it was there would be massive banking, energy and telecoms consolidation, and there hasn't been.

"Yet HN comments are vastly inferior to Reddit's when regarding anything to do with economics."

I find that HN is pretty weak on economics. But it's a tech blog, so ...

And I'm not so sure that 'business ideas' are about economics. Usually, they are simply about doing things using newly available technology, in ways that are obvious in hindsight.

I don't think that AirBnB conceptually is rocket science - it's the great experience they provide for everyone. It's really well put together. AirBnB done by a lesser team of people would be something you never heard of.

I agree - the Musk delirium is strong with these ones.

You have to take HN with a dose of salty optimism.

The Valley depends on a little bit of irrational koolaid thinking.

There is not that much opposition to these trade deals - the opposition is usually from minority (i.e. political) or special interest group (i.e. an industry that would be disrupted, like agriculture).

Case and point - it's the Walloon farmers that scuttled this deal it seems - and agriculture is always the most challenging participant because of how strongly subsidized they are, and how we give them some strategic interests etc..

Most people are generally pro trade these days - even in Europe.

"I wonder why governments subsidize production of commercial airliners so much. There are no network effects or lock-in"

Huge lock-in :)

Aircraft manufacturers are all semi-nationalized they are 'too big' even for private capital to compete on - barriers to entry far too high and too much risk.

Airbus is literally an EU creation. Boeing lives on defence contracts.

So it needs 'a national team playing for it' kind of thing.

There are a lot of jobs, it's very long term, it's big money, involves a lot of tech and R&D so it's a good industry to have if you can get it going. But it doesn't get going without playing 'home team'.

That's great, you managed to keep yourself the lowest growth area in the world, while the rest of the world is gaining wealth by leaps and bounds.

Everyone else is opening up, Europe is hiding in the closet.

Wallonian farmers will pay a much harder price in the long run when the Flemish dump them.