7 ms·
Borland. I worked there up until the mid 90s and then was recruited by Microsoft. They picked off all the great talent leaving barely any competent engineers le
by MikeF_323 4y ago
Borland. I worked there up until the mid 90s and then was recruited by Microsoft. They picked off all the great talent leaving barely any competent engineers left. I alongside a ton of other engineers were wined and dined and given a hell of an offer we couldn't refuse. It was insane, I should write a book honestly. I miss those days, it was the wild west of tech.
- aninteger 4y agoI'm curious if non-competes were a thing at this period of time. I'm not sure if something like this could happen today (although I'm sure it still happens).
- kube-system 4y agoNon-competes have been a thing for centuries, but California banned them in 1872.
- swyx 4y agowhich is awfully convenient that amzn and microsoft (and uber?) are based in washington state where this doesnt apply
- klyrs 4y agoNoncompetes are pretty toothless, even illegal in several jurisdictions. Even then, a company with money and clout to poach talent like that can also stand up for you if your failing ex-employer chooses to lash out.
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago>Noncompetes are pretty toothless Not true. They’re illegal in California, but in other US states where they are legal they can be quite toothful. I have seen several ex-employees of my prior company get sued and lose. It became a silent doctrine to just leave a two year gap on your public LinkedIn after working there. If you put anything in that period (the length of the non-compete), you were at risk of the CTO suing you for fun if he thought any of the scope your prior work overlapped with your new role. Fun stuff.
- klyrs 4y ago> >Noncompetes are pretty toothless > Not true. Sure, if you delete the "in several jurisdictions". But when you read the entire sentence, then what I said is correct.
- Aloha 4y agoIn texas they must have a geographic nexus in them, so if you move from Austin to Dallas, its often void.
- pjmlp 4y agoThey are also illegal in most European countries.
- ManlyBread 4y agoThe one in Poland is fun. You can bar someone from working in the same field for quite some time but you must pay them 70-80% (I don't quite remember how much but something like that) of their annual salary during that time. Which means that most of the people proposing this kind of deal are clueless ans greedy businessmen who think they found a perfect leash for their employees but what's actually happening is that they find out far too late that it's binding them and not the employee.
- morelisp 4y agoThey're not illegal in Germany, but the legal requirements are so onerous (50% salary paid for the duration of the non-compete) nobody does it. I believe it's similar in France.
- wongarsu 4y agoThey can be done in Germany if they are very limited in scope, basically if they don't make it harder to find your next job. But it's a fine line, and if a court decides you stepped over the line it's as you described. Nobody sane would put it in a standard contract below C-level.
- sofixa 4y ago
- jarym 4y agoI wonder what makes a company poach like this vs do an aquihire
- nomel 4y agoCost, surely. Paying for 10 engineers is much cheaper than paying for them and the IP they helped produce over the years, especially if you're not interested in that IP.
- bombcar 4y agoPoaching can be done quietly and cheaply, acquihires get everyone publically.
- p1necone 4y agoI suspect this would work in a lot of cases if you can find out who the key engineers/strategy people in the company are. But working that out is probably the hard part. If you have the money an acquihire guarantees you get everything. But then you still have to work out who those key people are after the fact and make sure you keep them happy.
- KaiserPro 4y agoAquihires can be very destructive. You end up with either the whole company, or you piss off the people that you wanted when you fire their co-workers. It also pulls in an almost complete graph of employees who are isolated from the new parent company. Its much better to pull off the people that you want, and get them to join willingly, as they tend to adopt the culture/learn better when in isolation.
- tormeh 4y agoCuts both ways. You also get a fully functioning, self-contained team or 10. That can be attractive.
- nradov 4y agoAquihires are really only a thing when the target is a start-up with little revenue and limited growth prospects. At the time, Borland was a real company with many products and paying customers. The majority of Borland products completed directly with Microsoft products at the time. If Microsoft had done an acquisition then they would have sunsetted most Borland products anyway so it would have been a pointless waste of money.
- moosedev 4y agoI’d enjoy reading more in this very thread, if you don’t feel up to writing the whole book right now :) Edit: Fan of Borland products in the 90s!
- triyambakam 4y agoI think that's how Anders Hejlsberg (creator of C# and Typescript) joined Microsoft?
- buggythebug 4y agoYou know someone works in programming if their name is Anders or Tobias
- Cyph0n 4y agoI know of a Tobias who ended up working as an analyst-therapist before switching to a successful acting career.
- astrange 4y agoI know one who got turned into a hawk and couldn’t turn back.
- Cyph0n 4y agoAnimorphs huh. I read a few books a long time back, but then recently read about how the series became quite twisted towards the end. Younger me would probably have enjoyed it.
- astrange 4y agoYeah, the author killed off most of the characters at the end, which was surprisingly realistic. More than one of the heros (and one of the villains) was a programmer too.
- ihaveajob 4y agoHe blued himself later on, so...
- ezl 4y agothe world's first...
- imron 4y agoI’d read this book! The color scheme I use for vsc++ still mimics turbopascal/turboc++ from the mid 90s.
- macksd 4y agoThe nostalgia I feel for QBasic as my first programming experience as a kid is followed very closely by my nostalgia for Turbo C++ 3.0.
- 300bps 4y agoI should write a book honestly. Please do! Turbo-C 1.5 and Borland C++ were two of my all time favorite programming tools. I just got done reading Commodore, A Company on the Edge and would love to read about Borland/Microsoft back in the day.
- ROTMetro 4y agoWas the "Microsoft limo parked across the street waiting for people to come out on their breaks" true or just a rumor at the time?