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25 employees including the CTO, and then bought a building nearby to Masimo's office for them to work in. At least according to the CEO of Masimo in public sta
by spogbiper 1y ago
25 employees including the CTO, and then bought a building nearby to Masimo's office for them to work in. At least according to the CEO of Masimo in public statements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1o8EoW-Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1o8EoW-Eg
- thebruce87m 1y agoSounds good for the employees, so go Apple?
- spogbiper 1y agoYes, very good for the employees. Apple even offered them 2x their salaries to leave Masimo.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoYes "very good", until Apple decides to mass-layoff them, because now, owning the valuable core IP and having killed their primary competitor in the field, Apple can do whatever they want and get away with it because those employees have nowhere else to go in the area. 200+ IQ move </slow_clap>. How people on HN can support monopolization of markets and killing of competition is beyond me, since in the end it always bites them in the ass (see recent mass layoffs in the industry), yet this lesson seems to be quickly forgotten.
- johnfn 1y agoIs there evidence of Apple doing this in the past?
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoApple is infamous for driving other companies into bankruptcy to acquire their assets. For a single example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology
- jachee 1y agoThat’s not evidence of Apple doing mass layoffs, though.
- ggreer 1y agoHow is that an example of Apple driving a company into bankruptcy to acquire their assets? Judging from the Wikipedia article, it looks like Exponential Technologies made a good PowerPC CPU, but Motorola promised they'd be able to catch up, and it's safer to bet on a big company that you've been doing business with than to rely on a startup for a critical component. Licensed Mac clones were only available for two years (1995-1997), and discontinuing the program drove many other companies out of business, so it's hard to see how the change was a ploy to acquire a single company's assets. It seems more likely that Jobs discontinued licensing because it caused Apple to lose money. And it looks like much of the Exponential Technologies team continued under a different name, then was bought by Apple in 2010 for $121 million.[1] If there are other examples, can you provide one that is more recent and/or more blatant? 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/technology/28apple.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/technology/28apple.html
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoWhen they started, they were producing for multiple small customers. Apple was frustrated with Motorola and approached them but demanded they massively increase their production capacity (Apple's model for dominating a supplier... put them in debt and beholden to them for orders) and effectively dominated them as a customer... Then used them to negotiate a better price with Motorola, dumped their purchase contract for 'reasons' and bankrupted the company. Exponential sued.. and won $500 million... for breach contract but were destroyed by that point. Apple gobbled up their IP for around $20 mil later on.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoOh... and I forgot this case also exposed that Apple had embedded proprietary IP into the CPU design which made it impossible to seel the already produced CPUs to anyone else (PowerPC chips were in very high demand at the time and these were the fastest on the market).
- hbn 1y agoLet's not forget Masimo picked the fight. Apple was fine letting them compete.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoPardon? Masimo was first and Apple took their tech (as confirmed by a court). Was Masimo supposed to sit there and shrug?
- FireBeyond 1y agoHah, plenty of people have described Masimo, 400 times smaller than Apple, in the threads on this as "bullying Apple unfairly by being a patent troll."
- Dylan16807 1y agoIf they couldn't get a patent on the LED setup, just the software, then yes. They should just shrug and compete. The idea of a piece of software should always be open to competition.
- adrr 1y agoFirst to what? Sensor was invented in 1972.
- eddieroger 1y agoMasimo does so much more than consumer-worn heart rate monitors and O2 sensors. They'll be fine as well.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoThey will be fine, but maybe they want to be FANG rich. You do not get there if the already big companies play by different rules and can out spend the minute you pose a threat.
- jart 1y agoMaybe if Masimo had made Lamego a significant shareholder, he wouldn't have left his "CTO" role to become a mere Apple employee. Masimo is an $8b company. They created a spinoff called Cercacor which Lamego got to be CTO of. My best guess is it wasn't a real startup like we're used to in the Silicon Valley sense. There wasn't any real opportunity for him to gain generational wealth there if he was successful. Apple not only hired him, but thirty other of their employees too, because Apple recognized that their talent was worth more than a licensing deal. That's the issue with these non-valley enterprises. They're very feudal in the sense that the owners treat their engineers and scientists like ordinary workers, expect total loyalty, and pull out their legal guns when they don't get their way. Big tech companies like Apple are more meritocratic and generally offer smart people much better deals. A court later found Lamego hadn't made his moves entirely fairly, but I believe if you look at the big picture, Apple's behavior wasn't predatory, but rather liberatory.
- snapetom 1y ago> Big tech companies like Apple are more meritocratic and generally offer smart people much better deals. It’s mindblowing how big of a gap this is for these non-tech companies. I work for a company that sold to PE. The owners walked away with the vast majority of a 1.5 billion deal. I asked if employees were given anything. “Sure. Some got as much as 50k!” I was told. Using some standard equity math for early engineers, I back of napkined that the 25 year tenure engineers, if they were at big tech, should have gotten low 7 figures. Nope. They got 50k out of 1.5 billion. (No, PE had no say on how that 1.5 billion was divided up for those of you quick to blame PE.)
- lotsofpulp 1y ago>Apple can do whatever they want and get away with it because those employees have nowhere else to go in the area. 200+ IQ move. I would bet Apple, and the other large publicly listed tech companies, have lifted far more employees into financial independence from employers than any other business in history.
- themafia 1y ago> have lifted far more employees into financial independence They've also destroyed financial independence. They've engaged in anti-competitive and anti-poaching practices before. There's several famous examples. Anyways, are you saying it's Apple's goal to lift employees in this way, or does it just happen to be incidental to whatever their CEO wants at the moment? Also all the people actually _making_ those devices, surely the largest labor pool supporting their business, have zero financial independence. That's the typical western blind spot. > from employers than any other business in history I think that'd be the US Government and it's GI Bill. Okay, technically not a business, but if the virtue is independence, then it shouldn't matter who provided it.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>I would bet Apple, and the other large publicly listed tech companies, have lifted far more employees into financial independence from employers than any other business in history. So doing monopolistic and illegal things is OK because it makes some people rich?
- jart 1y agoLamego only stayed at Apple six months. He was very productive. He filed 12 new patents for Apple. But he apparently had disputes with managers. The details aren't entirely clear. But Lamego ended up resigning. After leaving Apple, he founded his own company, True Wearables, which was also successfully sued by Masimo for trade secret theft.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> owning the valuable core IP and having killed their primary competitor in the field, Apple can do whatever they want Massimo still owns the core IP. Apple owns some other IP. > How people on HN can support monopolization of markets There was one niche (note: still massive) provider of this technology. Now there are two, one of which is mass. Even if that collapses to one mass, that’s objectively better. More competitors and more consumer surplus is not a monopoly condition. There is a difference between being reflexively anti-Apple regardless of the circumstances and being pro-monopoly.
- mrcwinn 1y ago(I couldn't reply down another level.) >How HN can support monopolization of markets and killing of [sic] competition is beyond me. That suggests HN is a monoculture of some sort of united front. It is not. Diversity of opinion is best for this community (and all communities). And, sorry, what competition was killed off here? I, as the consumer, was never considering Massimo for my blood oxygen measurement needs. I bought an Apple Watch and just want it to be as feature-full as possible. So does Apple.
- yifanl 1y agoWhy were you never considering them for your blood oxygen measurement needs?
- lovich 1y agoNot the OP but as someone in the same boat. I wasn’t going to buy a device just for blood monitoring. What they produced is valuable to me as a feature of a product but not as a product in of itself
- yifanl 1y agoSo we should allow apple to have monopoly power in every industry because otherwise it'd be annoying to buy separate devices.
- usefulcat 1y agoWhere did anyone claim that Apple ought to have a monopoly on blood oxygen measurement in a wearable electronic device, let alone "have monopoly power in every industry"?
- snitty 1y ago>monopoly on blood oxygen measurement in a wearable electronic device And I know this isn't your argument, but that's a VERY narrow market for the purposes of a US inquiry into monopolies. Like, the normal market definition fights are about whether you should be considering "premium smartphones" or "smartphones" as a whole. Or all of the grocery stores in a given region, and whether that should include convenience stores that also sell groceries. I'd be hard pressed to imagine a court really contemplating an argument that a company has a monopoly in a very small slice of a market. It would be like saying that Rolex has a monopoly in luxury sport watches with headquarters in Geneva.
- adrr 1y agoMasimo never paid well. $100k to $120k for a senior software engineer. 2x sounds good but probably brought them up to average bay area salaries.
- meindnoch 1y agoYikes. That's like the poverty line in Silicon Valley.
- itake 1y agowhy is 2x the right number for their current employees? how are the employees that left the company, but contributed to the patent/company being compensated with this deal?
- soperj 1y agolol from the company that colluded with multiple other companies to keep developer salaries down.
- krferriter 1y agoGood for everyone except whoever had money invested in Masimo
- scarface_74 1y agoSimilar to what HNers are so happy to say about restaurant owners who actually have to be profitable and can’t depend on the largess of investors, if Masimo can’t afford to pay market rates to developers, the company doesn’t deserve to exist.
- blizdiddy 1y agoThis, but unironically
- geodel 1y agoRight. Somehow people here are struggling on how to pin blame on Apple even when developers are better off with Apple's offer. It is a great outcome for anyone who is developer. If in their world view "best developer salary is not always the best thing" one could have better reasoning for supporting little guy Massimo getting crushed by Apple.
- FireBeyond 1y agoSo if Apple came to your company, promising licensing, collaboration and other things, when all along their intention was to "take" "your" employees, you'd be cool with that deception? The employees made out better - good for them. That's a lot easier to do when you have a market cap 400 times higher than that of the company you made all these promises to, and then left holding the bag.
- meindnoch 1y agoIf another company taking some of your employees will affect you company's bottom line, then you better pay those employees handsomely.
- nkrisc 1y agoI think the good is offset by Apple using its other hand to suppress wages for other employees by engaging in “no poaching” practices with other companies. Probably a net-negative.
- FireBeyond 1y agoGreat for the employees. But Apple submarined their way in offering partnership, licensing, collaboration, with near zero plans to do any of it. So good for the employees, but I wouldn't be applauding Apple for their outright deceptions here.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoThey destroyed the founders company and stole their IP in the process though. Let’s not forget there’s actual victims in this story.
- adrr 1y agoWhat did they steal? CEO destroyed his own company when he bought a bunch of highend speaker brands. WTF is a medical device company doing buying consumer audio companies?
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoThat’s not for you to decide. It somebody is eating/smoking/drinking themselves to death, does that give you the right to murder them?
- adrr 1y agoI don't follow your argument. Are you saying eating or smoking to death is like a CEO making bad decisions that causes their company to struggle?
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoNo, it’s that murdering someone doing those things is wrong. Even if the company is clearly circling the drain that doesn’t give apple or anyone else the right to steal their staff and infringe on their ip.
- adrr 1y agoThere’s no such thing as stealing staff especially when you severely underpay you employees. $100k for sr devs. Pay them what they’re worth and they won’t leave.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y ago
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoGiving a pass to trillion dollars companies for them to just come next to something they are interested in, poach employees, steal IP and not give a dim to actual innovators sure will be a great incentive towards companies doing more R&D.
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoThe innovators are the employers. The company doesn’t innovate. So if the employees got taken care of then the actual innovators made out well.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoInnovators require the ecosystem.
- jen20 1y agoThere is no such thing as “poaching” employees - just paying them a market rate.
- throwawayxcmz 1y agoIf you actively go out of your way to hire people from company X on a priority bases rather than skills (and no, trade secrets are not "skills"), then you're poaching and it is not same as paying market rate.
- haswell 1y agoI think it’s a bit disingenuous to frame this as a situation no different than “paying market rate”. Whether you like this or not, the practice of hiring employees specifically to work on the same thing elsewhere or to drain a company of its talent - is called poaching. It’s often legal, but can be controversial especially when it’s a behemoth raiding smaller shops. You seem to be offended by the word itself, but it’s just a useful descriptor to differentiate between different types of hiring scenarios. I’ve been poached before, and it worked out great for me.
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- GuB-42 1y agoHad Apple offered a good licensing deal to the company, it would have been good for the company too. Especially if said employees had stocks as part of their compensation package. But it was cheaper to Apple to just hire a few key people and screwing over everyone else. Good or bad depends on how Massimo compare to Apple. Which one of the two offers the most growth potential. If Apple just keep the employees long enough to steal the tech before laying the off, not building on it, then it is terrible for all but Apple shareholders. If Apple "saved" these employees from an exploitative company, providing the with growth potential and further development then it is a good thing.
- ls-a 1y agoIt's time for Cook to cook out really
- lan321 1y agoDoesn't sound like the bad part to me. If Masimo wanted to, they'd have offered them the same or more to keep them, but they didn't. I don't believe an employer has any right to expect other companies not to offer positions to their employees. Employees should not be kept in the dark on opportunities for better pay and conditions because you can't or don't want to fight that offer.
- realityking 1y agoAbsolutely. But if the new company pays them to just recreate the IP the developed in the previous company - now much faster because they‘ve done it before - that‘s an issue. And patents protect against that. That said, a patent whose primary claim seems to be (based on the workaround) _where_ the processing takes place (ant not _how_) seems like exactly the kinda thing that shouldn‘t be patentable.