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There's no doubt in my mind that Silicon Valley's success should be credited in part to California's ban on non-competes. Bad for individual companies, but good

There's no doubt in my mind that Silicon Valley's success should be credited in part to California's ban on non-competes. Bad for individual companies, but good for industries. Just look at Meta's current poaching spree, and previously the founding of Anthropic, SSI, Thinky. Whatever secrets OpenAI has will slowly but inevitably diffuse into other companies. Bad for OpenAI but strongly positive for literally everyone else in the world. It pushes OpenAI to keep innovating rather than rest on their laurels.

antonvs 1y ago
Well, it's "bad for individual companies" in the same sort of way as not being able to murder your competitors is bad for individual companies.
MangoToupe 1y ago
> There's no doubt in my mind that Silicon Valley's success should be credited in part to California's ban on non-competes. Maybe, but it's clear that even statute doesn't prevent bad behavior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- modeless 1y ago
  You linked to an example of statute preventing bad behavior. Yes, it took years, the law moves slowly, but it happened. Retroactive compensation was provided for those affected, but most importantly, corporate policies changed.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    > but most importantly, corporate policies changed. How confident are you about that? Given how small the compensation was, does this really represent much victory? Do you really think class action lawsuits as they stand present much disincentive?
    - modeless 1y ago
      Yes, class action lawsuits in general and this one in particular present strong disincentives that companies respond to, especially after they lose.
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        Well, we'll wait and see. I don't agree on any level but time will certainly tell.
        modeless 1y ago
        It's been ten years since the last settlement was finalized in those cases. They were a success and we don't need to wait any longer to decide that.
        MangoToupe 1y ago
        Right but to imply "lack of prosecution implies lack of wrongdoing" is just a non-starter.
godelski 1y ago
You forgot to also mention that it was good for OpenAI too! Maybe not at this exact time, but it was previously. Which is a big problem with a lot of companies, and frankly a common bias in human thinking: hyper fixation on the present. I find this ironic given that one of our greatest skills that has led to our success as a species is foresight. There's a ton of inefficiencies going on right now because of this fixation. As a simple example, the best way for a worker to get a raise is to change jobs. Frequently the last person in has the highest pay (or rather it tends upwards). So older employees leave. But those employees leaving mean a bigger loss because they have institutional knowledge and newer employees are less valuable because they need to be trained. It's cheaper on the long run to readjust your current employee salaries to keep them rather than hide people's salaries and hope they don't jump ship. But the latter strategy is definitely cheaper in the short term. You can probably think of tons of examples and even more if you start to include natural coalitions with others[0] [0] there's frequent psych experiments that are along the lines of "would you rather get $10 and other person get $10 or you get $50 and other person gets $100?" The former is frequently chosen because it's "more fair" despite being a worse option for yourself
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
It really hurt Borland with Microsoft poaching their people purely to cause Borland damage.

antonvs 1y ago

Well, it's "bad for individual companies" in the same sort of way as not being able to murder your competitors is bad for individual companies.

MangoToupe 1y ago

> There's no doubt in my mind that Silicon Valley's success should be credited in part to California's ban on non-competes. Maybe, but it's clear that even statute doesn't prevent bad behavior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

modeless 1y ago
You linked to an example of statute preventing bad behavior. Yes, it took years, the law moves slowly, but it happened. Retroactive compensation was provided for those affected, but most importantly, corporate policies changed.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > but most importantly, corporate policies changed. How confident are you about that? Given how small the compensation was, does this really represent much victory? Do you really think class action lawsuits as they stand present much disincentive?
  - modeless 1y ago
    Yes, class action lawsuits in general and this one in particular present strong disincentives that companies respond to, especially after they lose.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      Well, we'll wait and see. I don't agree on any level but time will certainly tell.
      - modeless 1y ago
        It's been ten years since the last settlement was finalized in those cases. They were a success and we don't need to wait any longer to decide that.
        MangoToupe 1y ago
        Right but to imply "lack of prosecution implies lack of wrongdoing" is just a non-starter.

godelski 1y ago

You forgot to also mention that it was good for OpenAI too! Maybe not at this exact time, but it was previously. Which is a big problem with a lot of companies, and frankly a common bias in human thinking: hyper fixation on the present. I find this ironic given that one of our greatest skills that has led to our success as a species is foresight. There's a ton of inefficiencies going on right now because of this fixation. As a simple example, the best way for a worker to get a raise is to change jobs. Frequently the last person in has the highest pay (or rather it tends upwards). So older employees leave. But those employees leaving mean a bigger loss because they have institutional knowledge and newer employees are less valuable because they need to be trained. It's cheaper on the long run to readjust your current employee salaries to keep them rather than hide people's salaries and hope they don't jump ship. But the latter strategy is definitely cheaper in the short term. You can probably think of tons of examples and even more if you start to include natural coalitions with others[0] [0] there's frequent psych experiments that are along the lines of "would you rather get $10 and other person get $10 or you get $50 and other person gets $100?" The former is frequently chosen because it's "more fair" despite being a worse option for yourself

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

It really hurt Borland with Microsoft poaching their people purely to cause Borland damage.