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> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negativ

• dqpb 6y ago
  Another way of saying it: > Never underestimate how much better a person's life can be by working for a FAANG instead of working for you Edit: For those who are downvoting, I'm simply saying this is what's implied by the quote. I'm not making a statement about FAANGs.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • nitrogen 6y ago
    I don't think that is actually implied. A better life is very subjective.
    • jariel 6y ago
      Employees are absolutely allowed to define for themselves what 'makes a better life' for them, and their choice to move would almost assuredly be an indication of that, hence the implication by moving there. Edit: I should add, it's probably mostly about the money. I mean, nice office, all the perks, all enabled by money. And for most people a very material raise in pay makes a difference
  • Zenbit_UX 6y ago
    > Never underestimate how much better a person's life can be by working for an AANG instead of working for you FTFY.
    • dqpb 6y ago
      I happily don't work at a FAANG. The original quote was about their ability to poach employees. What does it mean to poach an employee? It means to convince the employee to make the major life decision to work for them instead. Why do people choose to make such a major life decision? Usually it's because they think it will make their life better. Why do they think it will make their life better? Because the FAANG offers >= 70,000usd to switch jobs, pays for them to relocate and sell their existing home, offers fully paid health insurance for their entire family, offers hundreds of thousands in stock options, and an unbeatable salary. This is how they convince engineers to work on the world's most effective attention machines. By making their life better in all these ways and more. If you fail to understand that, if you fail to engage in any kind deep or abstract thought that isn't summarized by a four letter meme, then you're doing exactly what this article warns you not to do - you're underestimating FAANGs.
• grecy 6y ago
  As you pointed out there are imbalanced ways of phrasing things and societal taboos that all lead to the imbalance of power where employers try to keep as much control as possible. Not discussing salaries is the exact same thing - the employer doesn't want everyone to know how much their peers are making, lest it result in higher overall salaries. I always think of offering candy to a kid but saying "Don't tell anyone I gave you this". It's pretty clear someone is trying to be manipulative if they don't want anyone else to know the details of the deal.
• pandaman 6y ago
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poach https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poach 2 a: to take (game or fish) by illegal methods b: to appropriate (something) as one's own >>> c: to attract (someone, such as an employee or customer) away from a competitor <<<
  • ninkendo 6y ago
    Webster’s dictionary describes language as it is used, it doesn’t prescribe definitions. Citing a dictionary means nothing in a debate of whether we ought to use a word in a certain context.
    • Teever 6y ago
      How do you feel about poached eggs?
    • Supermancho 6y ago
      > Webster’s dictionary describes language as it is used, it doesn’t prescribe definitions American English is a high context language. The GP was illustrating the current parlance, which Webster is lacking.
      • jfk13 6y ago
        I thought the US was considered to be a prime example of a low context culture. E.g. https://www.unitedlanguagegroup.com/blog/communicating-high-context-vs-low-context-cultures https://www.unitedlanguagegroup.com/blog/communicating-high-...
      • ghaff 6y ago
        Poaching has always had a certain connotation that you snatched/stole/etc. someone from another employer. Of course, we use "steal" in other contexts where it's perfectly legal/by the rules: steal second base, this thing I bought was a steal, etc. So there's a long history of using this language in English for things that aren't actually illegal or underhanded. That said, I understand why people object to it and it may be one of those terms it's better to avoid even if it's used playfully.
• purple_ferret 6y ago
  > but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Some people would similarly have a problem with claiming a higher salary equals a 'better situation'
  • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    Again; missing the point. It's up to employee, who is generally speaking a fully formed human being with the capability to know what matters to them and make decisions on that basis.
  • untog 6y ago
    A higher salary is an indicator of a better situation, it isn’t the situation itself. It just happens to also be one of the easiest indicators to sell to a prospective employee. A great company culture is also a “better situation” but it’s a lot less tangible from the outside.
    • Teknoman117 6y ago
      That's one of the reasons I work where I do. My coworkers are fantastic and I don't get up in the morning hating the fact I have to go to work. Sure I could make more in the Bay (but really not all that much more), but it's hard to beat living walking distance from the office and actually enjoying your place of work. (Satellite office of a bay area company)
  • obmelvin 6y ago
    That's fine - it doesn't matter what is right for 'some people'. It just matters if it's a better situation for the person accepting a new job - whether money is part of their viewpoint or not.
  • cylon13 6y ago
    But again, it's not up to anyone besides the developer accepting the offer to judge what a better situation is. It's implied it's a better situation for them because they are intelligent independent human beings with their own values, and they accepted the offer. If it wasn't a better situation for them they wouldn't accept it.
• johnchristopher 6y ago
  > Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more. Not from the employer's perspective.
  • giantg2 6y ago
    Yep, we're captive elephants and employers don't want to give up our ivory.
• throwaway1777 6y ago
  I think it’s poaching from the perspective of the employer not the employee. The employer wants to keep its prized employees from getting poached by other ruthless employers.
  • ptmcc 6y ago
    This is purely their fault for being uncompetitive in the wages and benefits offered to their employees. Of course they try to spin it negatively with loaded language. The best way to protect your prized employees is to treat them so well they'd be crazy to look elsewhere. If you, the business owner, can't afford that then you just aren't as competitive or successful as you think you are.
    • georgeecollins 6y ago
      Or.. free markets for the capital holders, patronage for the workers. I don't mean to be malicious or anti-capitalist, but this seems like another example where companies want free markets when it involves taxes or costly regulation. But they oppose free markets when it causes labor costs to go up or reduces barriers to entry. It's a logical position for a corporation to hold but there is no ideological justification.
      • ptmcc 6y ago
        Hypocrisy? In my corporate America?? It's all platitudes of free market competition and meritocracy until the going gets tough and the competition (be it other businesses or labor) gets ahead of you. Then it's sob stories for bailouts, anti-competitive practices, and "but we're like a family here" drivel.
  • dbish 6y ago
    Then pay them more and give them a better situation. So many employers don't give existing employees the right pay increases to keep them from making more by jumping to another company. That's on the employer
• LordKano 6y ago
  Approximately 10 years ago, I was really unhappy with my work situation and was checking job postings. I found one that sounded right up my alley and I reached out to the agency that posted it. They told me that because I was working for another one of their clients, they wouldn't submit me for the job because they felt it was unethical. I responded that I wasn't owned by my employer and just as they were free to let me go, I was free to leave on my own. The real reason was that since employers pay them and talent does not, they don't want to risk their income stream. Since that day, when this agency emails me to ask if I'm looking for new opportunities. I remind them of that incident and request that they don't contact me again. It took about 8 years to finally sink in that I would NEVER have any dealings with them and they eventually stopped emailing me.
  • jpxw 6y ago
    Frankly their actions don’t seem particularly unreasonable to me.
    • thebluehawk 6y ago
      Agreed. Like it sucks, but I can't fault any of the actors in this story. They are all just looking out for themselves.
    • LordKano 6y ago
      I understand why they did it. My decision to make them persona non grata was about not rewarding them for behavior that negatively impacted me.
    • oarabbus_ 6y ago
      It seems like a prudent business decision on the agency's part, to be honest, rather than some kind of underhanded anti-employee move.
      • wolco 6y ago
        Until he applies directly and cuts out the agency if that's possible.
• cptskippy 6y ago
  > I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's intentional language used by employers because it has preconceived notions and they succinctly communicate a story that benefits the employer. When you hear poached, you think illegal and victims. It makes you think that the employer has been wronged in some way and that the employee was both participatory in something illegal or at least underhanded and at the same time being taking advantage of. The reality is that the employee was being taken advantage of by the employer and received an offer more closely aligned with their actual value. But that's the nature of the employer/employee relationship, it's never truly balanced and one party is always benefiting more than the other.
  • thomascgalvin 6y ago
    > The reality is that the employee was being taken advantage of by the employer and received an offer more closely aligned with their actual value. In the vast majority of cases, I agree. If someone is working at CompuTech for $100K per year, and gets an offer from TechuComp for $110K per year, that's market forces working in favor of the developer. This is a good thing. But there is the possibility for entities the size of Google to ignore market forces entirely in order to better position themselves. For example, a guy working on self-driving cars might command a salary of $400K in most cases, but Google or Tesla or someone might offer them $600K just to prevent competitors from having access to them. Most companies couldn't afford to do that, but FAANG are so vastly wealthy that they can hire entire engineering teams as a loss leader. This is still good for the developers involved, at least in the short term, but it isn't so great for the market, or society, overall.
    • wry_discontent 6y ago
      Isn't this still exactly market forces, though? In your example, Google is just driving up the market price for somebody who works on self-driving cars. In what way is it a deviation from market principles?
      • Bootvis 6y ago
        In the same way as offering products below costs would be to drive out competition and become a monopolist. I'm not sure I think this is bad but I believe this is the argument.
• deleted 6y ago
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• spaetzleesser 6y ago
  It’s the same as when during elections a state is called “up for grabs”. Things are phrased in a way that parties/companies are the main actors and voters/employees are just fodder for them. Not a good attitude in a democracy.
• JPKab 6y ago
  The thing that hits me is the "$500k+/year in the valley". Is this really a thing? Am I a giant dumbass for staying in Colorado? Even factoring in my stock grants, I'm nowhere close to that number.
  • non-entity 6y ago
    I keep telling myself one day I'll try to make it, but by the time I feel comfortable with those interviews I'll probably be too old for FAANG lol.
    • Schiendelman 6y ago
      If I may offer advice: Never tell yourself no. Go give it a shot, even if you don't prepare at all. You lose nothing.
      • giantg2 6y ago
        Well... your current employer might let you go or freeze your upward mobility if they find out you are looking at other jobs. I've even seen this internally. If I want to go to another team, why would my manager use their budget or political influence to promote me when they can use it on someone who is staying on their team.
        • three_seagrass 6y ago
          This is why you do not tell your manager until it's decided, or it's so far along that they're needed as a reference. In a perfect world, your manager should not care and your company should not treat you any differently for looking, but this is rarely the case.
          • giantg2 6y ago
            Externally, I agree. On a side note, my company will not provide references when you leave and forbids managers from providing any references. At my company, internal postings notify your manager when you apply, so there's no avoiding it. It's generally better to talk to them first so they aren't blindsided by the posting. Otherwise, if you don't get the new position that could create some friction with the existing one. My company can also trap you in your current position if they designate you as a "key resource".
• deleted 6y ago
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• mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Offering a better than average package to attract talent is just a HR strategy, I agree. Poaching, on the other hand, usually does not mean that. It means targeting key people at competitors and specifically courting them to make them switch. Hence the analogy with hunting on someone else's land. I would also agree that the term tends to be overused.
  • neomindryan 6y ago
    Thanks for making me feel like slightly less of an insensitive clod for my choice of words.
• vmception 6y ago
  That's gonna be a "no" from me dawg Headhunters, poaching, they are clearly idioms because we don't live in the safari or a conflict zone with hostile tribes (because we won.) Pull request rejected and closed.
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  What are your thoughts on the language to use when a nation-state backed ‘company’ hires away a critical mass of people at many multiples of the market rate as a means to gain market dominance. (e.g. China recently hired away a few thousand engineers from TSMC this way)
  • wolco 6y ago
    That's fine on the surface.. Would you go work for such a state? I value my time and freedom more. If things go wrong I won't get paid, passport may be taken, perhaps jailed.
• mhneu 6y ago
  But the FAANGs have a huge unfair advantage over startups - their size gives them monopoly power that disadvantages small companies. That's a failure of American governance. Economists used to all know that markets needed to be regulated to make competition fair --- and efficient. But the American right has pushed for 50 years to deregulate everything, and the FAANGs have benefited from this rollback of anti-trust. I'm not sure 'poaching' is the right word, but what the FAANGs are doing is unfair. And it's unfair because they benefit from deregulation and monopoly power that hurts anyone at a small business.
  • pepemon 6y ago
    Let's go back to the Soviet style communism where a highly skilled engineer and a simple factory worker make the same money. That'll be the triumph for the society and the economics. Except that it wasn't. Know the history lesson.
    • comfyinnernet 6y ago
      Either you think America used to have Soviet style communism, or you have serious reading comprehension problems, or you're a parodist.
      • pepemon 6y ago
        Is ad hominem allowed here on HN?
  • albacur 6y ago
    Startups do have advantages: they can give early employees a bigger piece of the equity pie than FAANG ever could, and provide a gamble on becoming much wealthier than employees could become working at FAANG. They can also give employees more overall product impact, more autonomy, and better growth opportunities. If you, as a founder, don’t want to give up equity, who’s fault is that? You’re expecting employees to work for a pittance of what they can make elsewhere and take on the risk without upside. If employees are look at your business and decide the probability of their equity being worth anything is too low, who’s fault is that? You’re trying to dupe them into taking a bad deal, or failing to communicate the opportunity. If your company cannot scale to provide market-rate salaries, whose fault is that? You’re expecting your employees to give up their salaries and their financial security to subsidize a non-competitive lifestyle business that suits you, not them. You’d better figure out some incentive where that equation makes sense.
• jacquesm 6y ago
  People use the word poach because it supposedly makes 'non-poaching' agreements sound like something positive.
• mekoka 6y ago
  > Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more. I think your analogy is only slightly apt. I rather see the company being raided for talent as the prey. The employee as its ivory. First, elephants are usually not being protected from predators, but rather from hunters (illegal ones). I know it might sound like a nitpick because the two words can be synonymous, but since this is about terminology, I think it's appropriate. At the time you lose an employee due to "poaching", they're often not unhappy with the conditions you've given them and are not actively looking for another position. But they have been spotted by a "head hunter" hired to find talent for a specific role in a different company. Second, employees might not belong to a company, but some companies spend a lot of time nurturing their talent through various programs (knowledge transfer, mentoring, experimental projects, personal time), because they hope it will benefit them in the future. Time is not free, it's even dearer than money, but it's the currency we all have the same amount of. If we don't consider another company just swooping in at the 11th hour to simply reap what should've been your benefit as a form of legal "theft", then what should we consider it? Maybe the solution for companies would be to put some of their employees under contract, like in sports. They'd pay substantially more for those services, but a clause would include them if another company was interested to acquire their talent. That or maybe some insurance companies may start offering some compensation against poaching.
• fangmanure 6y ago
  In fact, the poached animal usually dies. Given that these folks are instead going to become apologists for obvious abuses of power in the name of "making a difference in the world", perhaps radicalized would be a better word choice :-)