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It wasn’t an acquisition - Google offered the employees they wanted a shit ton of cash to leave. What laws keep companies from hiring people they want to hire

It wasn’t an acquisition - Google offered the employees they wanted a shit ton of cash to leave. What laws keep companies from hiring people they want to hire who are legally allowed to work in the country? This is exactly what Google did, it hired employees.

Dylan16807 1y ago
This wasn't an acquisition, but it was really close to one. Whether or not the laws cover it right now, expanding acquisition laws into hiring out the core of a company would not be a big expansion. It wouldn't be a sea change in what types of hiring the FTC has control over.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  So now you want companies to seek government approval before they can hire a certain number of people from a company? What if Google wanted to hire me and 3 buddies from our startup but didn’t want to hire the secretary or more realistically they only needed the backend developers. But didn’t care about hiring the web developer? Who exactly does that benefit? Not the employees. Maybe the investors? Do you really want the government to restrict who can be hired from a company or better yet, whether employees can accept better offers from another company? That’s only the other side of the coin of restricting employee movement based on non competes.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    > seek government approval before There's a neighboring comment that used almost the exact same wording that I already replied to. In short: No. > What if Google wanted to hire me and 3 buddies from our startup but didn’t want to hire the secretary or more realistically they only needed the backend developers. But didn’t care about hiring the web developer? Is your startup like 10 people? Worth much less than a billion dollars? Then it's not big enough to be a problem.
    - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
      So what laws do you suggest that the government pass that both stop Google from offering me a highly skilled and sought after AI professional (not really, we are speaking hypothetically) or my team and don’t suppress my ability to make as much money as the market will give me?
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        They can give just you a job at any time. But if it's the entire team, and that team is the backbone of a company, and acquiring that company would be blocked by the government, all three of those things, then your income is already being suppressed by not allowing acquisitions. Sorry about that, but the extra boost you'd get during monopoly forming would only be temporary anyway. In the long term it's better for both employees and customers to avoid too much consolidation. Extending that rule to stop team buyouts will have almost no effect on the status quo. It's allowing the team buyouts that could potentially change the status quo, and it would be a change for the worse.
        scarface_74 1y ago
        So they just give me a job as the leader, then other people want to follow. Is it them illegal for Google to offer other former coworkers a job? Isn’t that kind of like the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”? So exactly how does a Google “monopoly” (which definitely doesn’t exist in AI if anywhere), harm customers? And would I as a potential employee better off or worse off? Am I paying more for search today because of the monopoly? Am I paying more for any of the free stuff that Google has because of advertising (that I block anyway)? In other words, you do want the government to force employees to stay at a company when they could get a better offer? Isn’t that what we wanted to prevent with outlawing non competes?
        Dylan16807 1y ago
        Just offering normal jobs would generally be fine, doing a big group deal that also comes with IP licensing would generally not be fine. I'm not going to try to give you the exact line. > In other words, you do want the government to force employees to stay at a company when they could get a better offer? > Isn’t that what we wanted to prevent with outlawing non competes? That's way too general. You could use that same argument to say acquisitions should never be blocked.
benreesman 1y ago
It's not about restrictions on hiring, you keep repeating that even though no one has advanced that proposal in the whole thread. You have absolutely crushed that strawman argument, congratulations. It's about the property rights or lack thereof attached to "equity" in a company: a much fuzzier area with much less clear established stare decis: companies very rarely litigate such cases, it's an area that has historically been kept out of the courts for the most part because for the most part it has been in everyone's interests to keep the wheels greased on this (you'll notice old school VCs like Khosla are against fucking around in it in public forums). Everyone would agree that if a giant public company sold itself to the CEO's cousin for a handful of glass beads and declared the existing shares worthless, that would be flat illegal. At the other end of the spectrum we have startup stock options and RSUs and shit, much less negotiable. But the unwritten contract has pretty much always been roughly "if anyone gets rich, everyone gets something". If the trend becomes to just dissolve a startup the minute its worth anything and immediately partition it into exactly the pieces a giant company wants and zero out everyone else, this will have a massively destabilizing effect on a historical engine of innovation (see: OGs are against it on Twitter). And if the Valley can't figure it out in the family? Then we can dust off the law books, because the courts and regulators and maybe legislators will have to get involved. Stop talking about the government restricting hiring, no one said that.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  The government caused the problem in the first place by making it harder for big companies to acquire smaller companies. > It's about the property rights or lack thereof attached to "equity" An employer has never had “property rights” to decide where I can and can’t work. > Everyone would agree that if a giant public company sold itself to the CEO's cousin for a handful of glass beads and declared the existing shares worthless, that would be flat illegal The CEO while working for the company has a fiduciary responsibility to the company. But doesn’t have the responsibility not to leave if another company offers it more money or if other employees that like the CEO, they are free to reach out to the CEO and leave too. > At the other end of the spectrum we have startup stock options and RSUs and shit, much less negotiable. But the unwritten contract has pretty much always been roughly "if anyone gets rich, everyone gets something". “Equity” in startups have always statistically been fools gold between dilution, preferred shares, etc. > But the unwritten contract has pretty much always been roughly "if anyone gets rich, everyone gets something"* See previous comments about only the naive or true believers (but I repeat myself they are one in the same) are naive enough to believe in anything promised or implied by startups more than you will get paid X amount in cash for hours you work (and sometimes not even that). > And if the Valley can't figure it out in the family? Then we can dust off the law books, because the courts and regulators and maybe legislators will have to get involved. So the solution is for the government to pass more laws to fix the problems that the regulations it already put in place caused?

Dylan16807 1y ago

This wasn't an acquisition, but it was really close to one. Whether or not the laws cover it right now, expanding acquisition laws into hiring out the core of a company would not be a big expansion. It wouldn't be a sea change in what types of hiring the FTC has control over.

JustExAWS 1y ago
So now you want companies to seek government approval before they can hire a certain number of people from a company? What if Google wanted to hire me and 3 buddies from our startup but didn’t want to hire the secretary or more realistically they only needed the backend developers. But didn’t care about hiring the web developer? Who exactly does that benefit? Not the employees. Maybe the investors? Do you really want the government to restrict who can be hired from a company or better yet, whether employees can accept better offers from another company? That’s only the other side of the coin of restricting employee movement based on non competes.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  > seek government approval before There's a neighboring comment that used almost the exact same wording that I already replied to. In short: No. > What if Google wanted to hire me and 3 buddies from our startup but didn’t want to hire the secretary or more realistically they only needed the backend developers. But didn’t care about hiring the web developer? Is your startup like 10 people? Worth much less than a billion dollars? Then it's not big enough to be a problem.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    So what laws do you suggest that the government pass that both stop Google from offering me a highly skilled and sought after AI professional (not really, we are speaking hypothetically) or my team and don’t suppress my ability to make as much money as the market will give me?
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      They can give just you a job at any time. But if it's the entire team, and that team is the backbone of a company, and acquiring that company would be blocked by the government, all three of those things, then your income is already being suppressed by not allowing acquisitions. Sorry about that, but the extra boost you'd get during monopoly forming would only be temporary anyway. In the long term it's better for both employees and customers to avoid too much consolidation. Extending that rule to stop team buyouts will have almost no effect on the status quo. It's allowing the team buyouts that could potentially change the status quo, and it would be a change for the worse.
      - scarface_74 1y ago
        So they just give me a job as the leader, then other people want to follow. Is it them illegal for Google to offer other former coworkers a job? Isn’t that kind of like the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”? So exactly how does a Google “monopoly” (which definitely doesn’t exist in AI if anywhere), harm customers? And would I as a potential employee better off or worse off? Am I paying more for search today because of the monopoly? Am I paying more for any of the free stuff that Google has because of advertising (that I block anyway)? In other words, you do want the government to force employees to stay at a company when they could get a better offer? Isn’t that what we wanted to prevent with outlawing non competes?
        Dylan16807 1y ago
        Just offering normal jobs would generally be fine, doing a big group deal that also comes with IP licensing would generally not be fine. I'm not going to try to give you the exact line. > In other words, you do want the government to force employees to stay at a company when they could get a better offer? > Isn’t that what we wanted to prevent with outlawing non competes? That's way too general. You could use that same argument to say acquisitions should never be blocked.

benreesman 1y ago

It's not about restrictions on hiring, you keep repeating that even though no one has advanced that proposal in the whole thread. You have absolutely crushed that strawman argument, congratulations. It's about the property rights or lack thereof attached to "equity" in a company: a much fuzzier area with much less clear established stare decis: companies very rarely litigate such cases, it's an area that has historically been kept out of the courts for the most part because for the most part it has been in everyone's interests to keep the wheels greased on this (you'll notice old school VCs like Khosla are against fucking around in it in public forums). Everyone would agree that if a giant public company sold itself to the CEO's cousin for a handful of glass beads and declared the existing shares worthless, that would be flat illegal. At the other end of the spectrum we have startup stock options and RSUs and shit, much less negotiable. But the unwritten contract has pretty much always been roughly "if anyone gets rich, everyone gets something". If the trend becomes to just dissolve a startup the minute its worth anything and immediately partition it into exactly the pieces a giant company wants and zero out everyone else, this will have a massively destabilizing effect on a historical engine of innovation (see: OGs are against it on Twitter). And if the Valley can't figure it out in the family? Then we can dust off the law books, because the courts and regulators and maybe legislators will have to get involved. Stop talking about the government restricting hiring, no one said that.

raw_anon_1111 1y ago
The government caused the problem in the first place by making it harder for big companies to acquire smaller companies. > It's about the property rights or lack thereof attached to "equity" An employer has never had “property rights” to decide where I can and can’t work. > Everyone would agree that if a giant public company sold itself to the CEO's cousin for a handful of glass beads and declared the existing shares worthless, that would be flat illegal The CEO while working for the company has a fiduciary responsibility to the company. But doesn’t have the responsibility not to leave if another company offers it more money or if other employees that like the CEO, they are free to reach out to the CEO and leave too. > At the other end of the spectrum we have startup stock options and RSUs and shit, much less negotiable. But the unwritten contract has pretty much always been roughly "if anyone gets rich, everyone gets something". “Equity” in startups have always statistically been fools gold between dilution, preferred shares, etc. > But the unwritten contract has pretty much always been roughly "if anyone gets rich, everyone gets something"* See previous comments about only the naive or true believers (but I repeat myself they are one in the same) are naive enough to believe in anything promised or implied by startups more than you will get paid X amount in cash for hours you work (and sometimes not even that). > And if the Valley can't figure it out in the family? Then we can dust off the law books, because the courts and regulators and maybe legislators will have to get involved. So the solution is for the government to pass more laws to fix the problems that the regulations it already put in place caused?