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Here’s the same kind of cheating. I was working at a well-funded ($86M Series B) fiberoptic startup in Fremont in 2000. We were trying to develop a polarizatio
by aj7 6y ago
Here’s the same kind of cheating.
I was working at a well-funded ($86M Series B) fiberoptic startup in Fremont in 2000. We were trying to develop a polarization-maintaining fused fiber coupler, which we knew little about except for reading some papers. We were led by a young Chinese guy who kept everything he knew pretty much to himself. We all went out for pizza. I asked him, how did you solve so-and-so problem? Remarkably, without hesitation he said, I called up my friend at so-and-so COMPETING STARTUP, and asked him how they did it. (And he didn’t share with me any details of the solution, either). Then, I knew Silicon Valley was immersed in a sea of electrons…
- dahart 6y agoI assume there is more context here, so out of curiosity, why do you consider that example “cheating”? Was the competition friend a low level engineer who stole and leaked information, or was he in the competition’s leadership and agreeing to share solutions? Is there a rule at either company, or law that was broken?
- aj7 6y agoWhat do you think? And does it matter?
- lordnacho 6y agoWhat's cheating about that? "How did you cook the soufflé?" "I asked my friend and he gave me some pointers" Not clear to me how your story differs. Was it something specifically mentioned in an NDA or contract?
- aj7 6y agoReread it about four times. ESPECIALLY the last sentence.
- renewiltord 6y agoOkay, so if it was a trade secret, that's trouble. But people will give away all sorts of information all the time. That's what the network is for. If you want to publish a blog post on something, it's really involved. You have to make your vendors look good, your engineering team look good, and then there'll be this army of people on HN and Reddit who will nitpick everything so that you lose any of the good will you generate. Wayyy better to just use private channels to exchange that information. So, if I'm considering data pipeline stuff I'll just hop on Discord with my friends and ask them how it went at their company and they'll just tell me. Obviously none of us will tell the rest of the world, but we'll tell each other. Heck, strangers will do that in SF and Silicon Valley in general. Most people easily understand what parts are MNPI and what is company-private IP and what isn't. Until Xiaomi or Huawei or whatever stole that bloody robotic arm off T-Mobile even big companies would routinely officially sanction this information sharing.
- aj7 6y agoEveryone in fiberoptic hardware knew what Huawei was up to… in 2000.
- aj7 6y agoYour first sentence is all that’s needed here. My LAST sentence is the most important in the comment.
- aj7 6y agoYou don’t understand anything about fused fiber. There’s no useful theory. Everything is process art and exact replication. It’s probably true in semiconductors too. TMC and Intel use the same equipment vendors.
- renewiltord 6y agoNo, I don't understand anything about fused fibre. Just want to clarify that part. I'm talking about the idea of sharing info rather than the specific case, for which I have no knowledge. Not pretending to know that. For lots of software too it's just the real mechanism of stuff. I've definitely straight copied infrastructure code from friends at other companies. Not hardware process stuff certainly but it's straight plagiarism. And honestly, I don't understand what the significance of "Then I realized Silicon Valley is immersed in a sea of electrons..." Is. I thought it was just colour but clearly you intend some significance to it.