
Tech Titans Thwart Former Workers’ Autonomous Startup Dreams - Fricken
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-31/tech-titans-thwart-former-workers-autonomous-startup-dreams
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chollida1
Aside from them trying to call Levandowski a casualty of two large companies
competing....

Has any field done a good job of balancing the tension of letting employee's
be able to freely move and the employer's ability to protect IP from moving to
a competitor?

I only really know the finance and software fields well and there its very
acceptable for an employee to leave for a competitor, however the line starts
to get very murky when the employee starts recruiting other employee's to
their new employer.

Typically there is a garden leave involved where the employee gets paid but
can't compete with his/her former employer and can't recruit from them for the
same period. Other than that, quant's often walk out the door with their
models, while programmers can't leave with their source code, open source
aside.

How does, say the drug industry, handle top scientist switching companies, or
does this not happen as often due to the large time required to produce drugs?

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krisdol
>I only really know the finance and software fields well and there its very
acceptable for an employee to leave for a competitor

Maybe in California. Non-competes are a reality pretty much everywhere else.

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ghaff
People leave for competitors all the time in many states. It's the norm rather
than the exception. The exceptions usually involve high-level people taking a
similar position with a direct competitor. (There are also some specific
professional services-type organizations that take a hard line. The thinking
there is mostly that they'll take clients with them even if they don't
actively solicit.)

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bgun
There may be a valid point to be made about big companies discouraging star
employees from leaving to become founders, but they couldn't have picked a
worse example.

~~~
caseysoftware
No kidding.

This entire article could have been summarized by - "Don't steal stuff from
work."

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TwoNineA
Startup dreams involves stealing trade secrets?

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jpm_sd
"if you quit to set up your own company" that directly competes with and/or
rips off your work for your previous employer, "tread carefully"

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tanilama
Such a weird article.

This man at this stage is pretty suspicious that he didn't approach his dream
LEGALLY. That is the problem.

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kiliantics
So much money wasted on lawsuits and acquiring companies from former
employees. The same tech should not have to cost this much to develop and be
made available to people. The consumers will pay for all this. The
inefficiencies of capitalism.

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nyrulez
Ton of startups by Google employees. Yet they focus on one with stolen
property. Great journalism.

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typednothing
If two parties negotiate a deal, and one of both parties gets to write the
contract, then, the other party will pretty much be screwed. That is why the
contract must be written by a third party, such as a marketplace.

~~~
s73ver
A marketplace is not a party.

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ge96
>waiting for available socket...

hmm interesting

