3 ms·

Pure anecdote in support of your argument, from the top of my head, but you have to wonder how things would have gone if Shockley's traitorous eight could never

Pure anecdote in support of your argument, from the top of my head, but you have to wonder how things would have gone if Shockley's traitorous eight could never have come into existence due to non-competes. No Fairchild? No FairChildren? Basically, no Silicon Valley. According to an Endeavor Insight report: in 2014 of the more than 130 Bay Area tech companies trading on the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, “70 percent of these firms can be traced directly back to the founders and employees of Fairchild. The 92 public companies that can be traced to Fairchild are now worth about $2.1 trillion, which is more than the annual GDP of Canada, India, or Spain.”

atq2119 8y ago
Your point is a good one which I fully support, but the comparison of company value to GDP which you quote bugs me. Company value is a stock, while GDP is a flow. Comparing them is like comparing velocity and acceleration.
johnnycab 8y ago
>you have to wonder how things would have gone if Shockley's traitorous eight could never have come into existence due to non-competes You also have to wonder how litigious the society was at the time; the legal framework and protection available was probably not mature enough in a industry going through renaissance. However, it is certainly different today and the poignancy is encapsulated in this quote by Tom Gallo: When you get sued by a big corporation, you lose no matter what https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pure-silicon/ https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pu...