4 ms·

So now the monopolies are just hiring away all of the people they want from the startup and leaving the company as a shell of its former self - leaving both inv

So now the monopolies are just hiring away all of the people they want from the startup and leaving the company as a shell of its former self - leaving both investors and the employees left behind high and dry.

jbothma 1y ago
Any evidence of that?
- benreesman 1y ago
  Probably talking about character.ai and a few similar cases. It's not the trend GP is making it out to be.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    People in government think otherwise https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-talent-00167968 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-...
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  Google and Windsurf https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how-windsurfs-vcs-and-founders-got-paid-from-the-google-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how... Amazon https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-talent-00167968 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-... Microsoft and Inflection https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-ai-reverse-acqui-hire-150707208.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-ai-reverse-acqui-hire-150... Microsoft almost pulled it off with OpenAI during the Altman fiasco.
  - benreesman 1y ago
    Listen, I think its bullshit what happened to the Windsurf people. And I'm happy that the Figma people didnt get crammed down with some scam ass preference assplay. But blaming Lina Khan for the crime orgy that started the minute she was forced out is silly. Go stick that blade where it belongs. I'll help any way I can. https://youtu.be/pDaELkYEC_g https://youtu.be/pDaELkYEC_g
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      I’m sure the employees who Google hired don’t feel at all “crammed”. The only reason they took this route instead of an acquisition is because of the current regulator environment. But the current VP was a huge fan of Khan.
  - trhway 1y ago
    >Google and Windsurf >https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how-windsurfs-vcs-and-founders-got-paid-from-the-google-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how... that looks strange to me to say the least - a company A's leadership leases completely away the company A's IP to a company B while at the same time getting fat employment offers from the same company B. If it were in Russia i'd say it is a bribe/kickback while in US it looks suspiciously like a huge conflict of interests. How no regulatory agency looked into that...
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      Huge conflict of interest for who? It was a private company who only had a fiduciary responsibility to its investors and the employees themselves had no responsibilities to refuse a better offer from a competitor. There was a whole stink in 2010 about all of the major tech companies agreeing to not poach other companies’ employees and suppressing wages.
      - trhway 1y ago
        >the employees themselves had no responsibilities to refuse a better offer from a competitor actually they have such a responsibility - if the offer in any way connected (or may be perceived as such) with a deal in which the employee is representing its current employer. The same reason why the President can't take expensive gifts from foreign powers for example ... >There was a whole stink in 2010 about all of the major tech companies agreeing to not poach other companies’ employees and suppressing wages. that has no relation to the current discussion.
        JustExAWS 1y ago
        I am well aware of anti poaching agreements between partners or consulting agencies and clients. I am currently working for a consulting company (full time) and in the past I was an employee at AWS ProServe. The contract states you can’t solicit employees under that arrangement. But either side’s employees are free to proactively outreach. I’m not referring to “consulting companies” that are basically doing staff augmentation. Neither is the case here
benreesman 1y ago
A very self-regulating little arbitrage, because the investors and the monopolies are in the process of merging themselves. This is the part most people seem unwilling to accept: these rich guys are dumb man. When you organize your whole society around rich kids having advantages it only takes a couple of decades before they're all just bad at their jobs. This mafia capitalism isn't even good for the capitalists! They just can't get it together on a sustainable system!
- ethbr1 1y ago
  The under appreciated drag is which is statistically more likely to be talented? 1. Someone from a wealthy / connected family 2. Someone who scrambled to the top of 100,000 other people Folks can argue good schools, etc. all they want, but proven ability and drive to outcompete others should be a heavy counter argument against nepotism of all sorts.
triceratops 1y ago
If it keeps up, it's only a matter of time before startups stop being able to hire top talent.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  Most startup hiring has always been a scam for the idealistic where people would be better off statistically by just working for a publicly traded tech company that put RSUs in your brokerage account that you could immediately sell (and should) diversify once you are vested. In my latter years of my career, I’ve been offered “great opportunities” at a startup that paid less in cash for more responsibilities than I was making as a mid level employee (cash + RSUs) at BigTech when I was there. Of course they promised “equity” that was illiquid and probably would have been worthless.
assword 1y ago
> So now the monopolies are just hiring away all of the people they want from the startup and leaving the company as a shell of its former self I thought they were dumping everyone at the moment. Unless you’re an AI researcher.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  And notice who gets hired… That means if there are 10 developer - 7 working on the product and 3 working on the fundamental AI problem, those 7 aren’t going to be left (the company didn’t want the product anyway) and the 3 researchers are going to be hired. Something similar happened with Google and Windsurf. So who benefited from the anti acquisition mood of the previous FTC? Not most of the employees who could have made more just working for a public company in the first place and not even the investors. Google accomplished the same thing with less red tape and didn’t have to hire the people they didn’t want.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> So now the monopolies are just hiring away all of the people they want from the startup and leaving the company as a shell of its former self - leaving both investors and the employees left behind high and dry. If this was a viable strategy then they would have just done it regardless, right? Meanwhile the solution to that is to break up the monopolies to begin with. You don't have trillion dollar companies monopolizing the labor pool if you don't have trillion dollar companies.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  Yes because you don’t like companies being able to pay people more money?
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Companies get money from workers (i.e. customers), pay some back to workers (employees), and keep the rest as profit (or waste it on some kind of bureaucratic inefficiency). Workers can get more money by either paying less as customers or getting paid more as employees. Monopolies screw them on both ends. Customers pay more because there are fewer suppliers, and then employees make less because there is less competition for hiring which also makes it easier for the large employers to coordinate non-poaching agreements.
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      The fact is though in this scenario Google paid the employees more and in what tech area is Google a “monopoly”? The fact that Google did “poach” employees means that there wasn’t an agreement not to.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        In a market where there are only a small handful of incumbents and then a bunch of precarious cash-strapped startups, the incumbents collude with each other so that they only have to outbid the startups. The startups, meanwhile, are at a disadvantage because e.g. the incumbents control search engine rankings or app distribution channels, which lowers their competitiveness and therefore the amount they can afford pay to employees in competition with the incumbents. The incumbents are then the high bidder even while offering something less than they would have had to in the alternative.

jbothma 1y ago

Any evidence of that?

benreesman 1y ago
Probably talking about character.ai and a few similar cases. It's not the trend GP is making it out to be.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  People in government think otherwise https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-talent-00167968 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-...
JustExAWS 1y ago
Google and Windsurf https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how-windsurfs-vcs-and-founders-got-paid-from-the-google-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how... Amazon https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-talent-00167968 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/13/big-techs-poaching-... Microsoft and Inflection https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-ai-reverse-acqui-hire-150707208.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-ai-reverse-acqui-hire-150... Microsoft almost pulled it off with OpenAI during the Altman fiasco.
- benreesman 1y ago
  Listen, I think its bullshit what happened to the Windsurf people. And I'm happy that the Figma people didnt get crammed down with some scam ass preference assplay. But blaming Lina Khan for the crime orgy that started the minute she was forced out is silly. Go stick that blade where it belongs. I'll help any way I can. https://youtu.be/pDaELkYEC_g https://youtu.be/pDaELkYEC_g
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    I’m sure the employees who Google hired don’t feel at all “crammed”. The only reason they took this route instead of an acquisition is because of the current regulator environment. But the current VP was a huge fan of Khan.
- trhway 1y ago
  >Google and Windsurf >https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how-windsurfs-vcs-and-founders-got-paid-from-the-google-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/01/more-details-emerge-on-how... that looks strange to me to say the least - a company A's leadership leases completely away the company A's IP to a company B while at the same time getting fat employment offers from the same company B. If it were in Russia i'd say it is a bribe/kickback while in US it looks suspiciously like a huge conflict of interests. How no regulatory agency looked into that...
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    Huge conflict of interest for who? It was a private company who only had a fiduciary responsibility to its investors and the employees themselves had no responsibilities to refuse a better offer from a competitor. There was a whole stink in 2010 about all of the major tech companies agreeing to not poach other companies’ employees and suppressing wages.
    - trhway 1y ago
      >the employees themselves had no responsibilities to refuse a better offer from a competitor actually they have such a responsibility - if the offer in any way connected (or may be perceived as such) with a deal in which the employee is representing its current employer. The same reason why the President can't take expensive gifts from foreign powers for example ... >There was a whole stink in 2010 about all of the major tech companies agreeing to not poach other companies’ employees and suppressing wages. that has no relation to the current discussion.
      - JustExAWS 1y ago
        I am well aware of anti poaching agreements between partners or consulting agencies and clients. I am currently working for a consulting company (full time) and in the past I was an employee at AWS ProServe. The contract states you can’t solicit employees under that arrangement. But either side’s employees are free to proactively outreach. I’m not referring to “consulting companies” that are basically doing staff augmentation. Neither is the case here

benreesman 1y ago

A very self-regulating little arbitrage, because the investors and the monopolies are in the process of merging themselves. This is the part most people seem unwilling to accept: these rich guys are dumb man. When you organize your whole society around rich kids having advantages it only takes a couple of decades before they're all just bad at their jobs. This mafia capitalism isn't even good for the capitalists! They just can't get it together on a sustainable system!

ethbr1 1y ago
The under appreciated drag is which is statistically more likely to be talented? 1. Someone from a wealthy / connected family 2. Someone who scrambled to the top of 100,000 other people Folks can argue good schools, etc. all they want, but proven ability and drive to outcompete others should be a heavy counter argument against nepotism of all sorts.

triceratops 1y ago

If it keeps up, it's only a matter of time before startups stop being able to hire top talent.

JustExAWS 1y ago
Most startup hiring has always been a scam for the idealistic where people would be better off statistically by just working for a publicly traded tech company that put RSUs in your brokerage account that you could immediately sell (and should) diversify once you are vested. In my latter years of my career, I’ve been offered “great opportunities” at a startup that paid less in cash for more responsibilities than I was making as a mid level employee (cash + RSUs) at BigTech when I was there. Of course they promised “equity” that was illiquid and probably would have been worthless.

assword 1y ago

> So now the monopolies are just hiring away all of the people they want from the startup and leaving the company as a shell of its former self I thought they were dumping everyone at the moment. Unless you’re an AI researcher.

scarface_74 1y ago
And notice who gets hired… That means if there are 10 developer - 7 working on the product and 3 working on the fundamental AI problem, those 7 aren’t going to be left (the company didn’t want the product anyway) and the 3 researchers are going to be hired. Something similar happened with Google and Windsurf. So who benefited from the anti acquisition mood of the previous FTC? Not most of the employees who could have made more just working for a public company in the first place and not even the investors. Google accomplished the same thing with less red tape and didn’t have to hire the people they didn’t want.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> So now the monopolies are just hiring away all of the people they want from the startup and leaving the company as a shell of its former self - leaving both investors and the employees left behind high and dry. If this was a viable strategy then they would have just done it regardless, right? Meanwhile the solution to that is to break up the monopolies to begin with. You don't have trillion dollar companies monopolizing the labor pool if you don't have trillion dollar companies.

scarface_74 1y ago
Yes because you don’t like companies being able to pay people more money?
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Companies get money from workers (i.e. customers), pay some back to workers (employees), and keep the rest as profit (or waste it on some kind of bureaucratic inefficiency). Workers can get more money by either paying less as customers or getting paid more as employees. Monopolies screw them on both ends. Customers pay more because there are fewer suppliers, and then employees make less because there is less competition for hiring which also makes it easier for the large employers to coordinate non-poaching agreements.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    The fact is though in this scenario Google paid the employees more and in what tech area is Google a “monopoly”? The fact that Google did “poach” employees means that there wasn’t an agreement not to.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      In a market where there are only a small handful of incumbents and then a bunch of precarious cash-strapped startups, the incumbents collude with each other so that they only have to outbid the startups. The startups, meanwhile, are at a disadvantage because e.g. the incumbents control search engine rankings or app distribution channels, which lowers their competitiveness and therefore the amount they can afford pay to employees in competition with the incumbents. The incumbents are then the high bidder even while offering something less than they would have had to in the alternative.