4 ms·

Wow you must work for a company with incredibly deep pockets. No way can massimo compete on salary with apple. Only people in the game who can do that are goo

Wow you must work for a company with incredibly deep pockets. No way can massimo compete on salary with apple. Only people in the game who can do that are google facebook apple chatgpt etc.

scarface_74 1y ago
And as a hypothetical sought after employee, how is that my problem? If another company wants to roll a shit ton of money up to my doorstep, why shouldn’t I take it? Should I be treating my employer “like family” and care about “the mission”?
- hu3 1y ago
  It's about the company anti-competitive behaviour. No one said anything about the employees.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    The company is being “anticompetitive” by offering someone more money? Should we now make that illegal too?
    - Dayshine 1y ago
      Well, we've made other situations where companies offer people money illegal. Such as bribery, or paying someone to steal trade secrets.
      - JustExAWS 1y ago
        And neither is alleged. It was a patent that we are discussing which by definition isn’t a trade secret. But you are coming awfully close to advocating for non competes which is explicitly not allowed in CA.
    - lurk2 1y ago
      Acquisitions can be considered anticompetitive. The only thing that appears to differentiate this situation from an acquisition is that the investors didn’t get paid.
      - JustExAWS 1y ago
        Are you suggesting that the FRC should step in when a company offers employment to a large number of employees at another company? How exactly would you propose to put this into law where it doesn’t hurt the employees?
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        How about the fact that both companies are still healthy? And even if you do look at this like an acquisition, acquisitions are almost always not anticompetitive.
  - tshaddox 1y ago
    This is the exact opposite of being anti-competitive.
  - arcfour 1y ago
    This is almost farcical. This is literally the opposite of anti-competitive. Please take a basic economics course and pass it before spouting off about economics online.
- do_not_redeem 1y ago
  As an employee you shouldn't care, but if you're someone who wants technological progress to continue, you should care whether companies with a slush fund of billions are able to bully those with less money.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    You mean like the innovation that someone else here said that was denied a patent in Japan because of prior art? We like software patents now?
    - do_not_redeem 1y ago
      I skimmed this and it doesn't look like a software patent to me. It's a giant long description of the hardware. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/
  - lovich 1y ago
    Massimo did not appear to respond to Apple by trying to compete on compensation with them. The levels.fyi data is showing that they appear to pay their engineers between 140-180 while they are making hundreds of millions in profit. It seems like Masimo wasn’t bullied because they had less money. They decided to run to the government to protect them instead of doing actual competition
runako 1y ago
Masimo was worth ~$16B when this was going down. They are worth $8B today. This is roughly the size of American Airlines. Masimo is not the biggest company, but they are a large publicly-traded company. The company does $2B in revenue and spends close to $800 million annually in sales, general and admin. This is over 3x their R&D budget. (For reference, Apple's R&D spend is higher than its SG&A spend.) Per levels.fyi, Masimo is paying senior SDEs in HCOL $150k. They could 10x the comp to these critical employees without it being more than a rounding error in their numbers. (I don't think they would have had to go to 10x. Most people would practically tattoo a brand on themselves for a one-time bonus of $1m.) Long story short: Masimo does indeed have the money to compete on salary with Apple for this set of employees. They chose to spend the money on attorneys instead. Some companies don't value engineers. That often works, until they end up in an engineering competition against companies that do value engineers.
- boringg 1y ago
  Im not saying they pay them well or not. Theres just not a comparison on comp they could do. That you don't understand the power dynamics between that is something you will hopefully learn about the world as you become more experienced. Apple would just offer more at the end of the day.
  - runako 1y ago
    I understand, and this is timely in the context of Meta making $100m offers. I have no data on this, but I would be highly surprised if Apple offered anybody more than $5m/year. Masimo has that much money. Could Apple go higher? Sure, but again most people who like their jobs are not going to leave once their needs are met. From a competitive standpoint: Masimo has lost $8B in market cap during this kerfuffle. It's entirely possible it would have been rational for Masimo to pay these employees higher than Apple possibly would go in order to not lose those billions in value.
- eitally 1y ago
  I disagree with your assertion that Masimo has the money to compete. Apple's upside to employing these folks to build the tech into the Apple Watch is FAR, FAR greater than Masimo's potential sales growth for existing pulse ox devices (or patent licenses). With Apple Watches being licensed as medical devices for ECG & pulse ox, this gives clinicians even more reason to leverage them with patients for convenient 24/7 home monitoring. It's not the same market Masimo is serving, at all.
OkayPhysicist 1y ago
As long as a company is turning a profit, they by definition can afford to be paying their employees better. As a company you can choose not to, but it also means you get to suffer the consequences, and lose the right to complain that your employees were "poached" when in reality it was simply a matter of you not paying them enough to stay.
- adrianN 1y ago
  If you compete with someone who can afford to lose money longer than you, for example because they have some departments with very high margins and can cross-subsidize, you can win.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  Profit distribution only makes sense to owners of the company. A better way to give employees a share of the profits is to give them shares of the company. But then that also comes at the expense of compensation in dollars. You cannot pay for groceries with company shares. People really like the idea of "When you win, I get money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like that they agree it's bad, but explained like "Companies should be distributing profits to workers" they fall over themselves about how good of an idea it is. Running a business is a gamble and like gambling, you need to put skin in the game to get a share of winnings (and lose your skin in the losses). People are just hyper-focused on the winners.
  - wahnfrieden 1y ago
    https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#range:1989.3,2025.1;quarter:142;series:Assets;demographic:networth;population:1,9;units:levels https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
  - lovich 1y ago
    This has nothing to do with their point. If company X is making a profit and losing employees to a competitor paying more, then company X has effectively chosen to let that happen. They don’t get to complain that they ate their cake and don’t have it anymore.
terminalshort 1y ago
Not my problem. The owners of a small company have no right to force their financial constraints onto their employees.

Wow you must work for a company with incredibly deep pockets. No way can massimo compete on salary with apple. Only people in the game who can do that are google facebook apple chatgpt etc.

scarface_74 1y ago

And as a hypothetical sought after employee, how is that my problem? If another company wants to roll a shit ton of money up to my doorstep, why shouldn’t I take it? Should I be treating my employer “like family” and care about “the mission”?

hu3 1y ago
It's about the company anti-competitive behaviour. No one said anything about the employees.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  The company is being “anticompetitive” by offering someone more money? Should we now make that illegal too?
  - Dayshine 1y ago
    Well, we've made other situations where companies offer people money illegal. Such as bribery, or paying someone to steal trade secrets.
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      And neither is alleged. It was a patent that we are discussing which by definition isn’t a trade secret. But you are coming awfully close to advocating for non competes which is explicitly not allowed in CA.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    Acquisitions can be considered anticompetitive. The only thing that appears to differentiate this situation from an acquisition is that the investors didn’t get paid.
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      Are you suggesting that the FRC should step in when a company offers employment to a large number of employees at another company? How exactly would you propose to put this into law where it doesn’t hurt the employees?
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      How about the fact that both companies are still healthy? And even if you do look at this like an acquisition, acquisitions are almost always not anticompetitive.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  This is the exact opposite of being anti-competitive.
- arcfour 1y ago
  This is almost farcical. This is literally the opposite of anti-competitive. Please take a basic economics course and pass it before spouting off about economics online.
do_not_redeem 1y ago
As an employee you shouldn't care, but if you're someone who wants technological progress to continue, you should care whether companies with a slush fund of billions are able to bully those with less money.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  You mean like the innovation that someone else here said that was denied a patent in Japan because of prior art? We like software patents now?
  - do_not_redeem 1y ago
    I skimmed this and it doesn't look like a software patent to me. It's a giant long description of the hardware. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/
- lovich 1y ago
  Massimo did not appear to respond to Apple by trying to compete on compensation with them. The levels.fyi data is showing that they appear to pay their engineers between 140-180 while they are making hundreds of millions in profit. It seems like Masimo wasn’t bullied because they had less money. They decided to run to the government to protect them instead of doing actual competition

runako 1y ago

Masimo was worth ~$16B when this was going down. They are worth $8B today. This is roughly the size of American Airlines. Masimo is not the biggest company, but they are a large publicly-traded company. The company does $2B in revenue and spends close to $800 million annually in sales, general and admin. This is over 3x their R&D budget. (For reference, Apple's R&D spend is higher than its SG&A spend.) Per levels.fyi, Masimo is paying senior SDEs in HCOL $150k. They could 10x the comp to these critical employees without it being more than a rounding error in their numbers. (I don't think they would have had to go to 10x. Most people would practically tattoo a brand on themselves for a one-time bonus of $1m.) Long story short: Masimo does indeed have the money to compete on salary with Apple for this set of employees. They chose to spend the money on attorneys instead. Some companies don't value engineers. That often works, until they end up in an engineering competition against companies that do value engineers.

boringg 1y ago
Im not saying they pay them well or not. Theres just not a comparison on comp they could do. That you don't understand the power dynamics between that is something you will hopefully learn about the world as you become more experienced. Apple would just offer more at the end of the day.
- runako 1y ago
  I understand, and this is timely in the context of Meta making $100m offers. I have no data on this, but I would be highly surprised if Apple offered anybody more than $5m/year. Masimo has that much money. Could Apple go higher? Sure, but again most people who like their jobs are not going to leave once their needs are met. From a competitive standpoint: Masimo has lost $8B in market cap during this kerfuffle. It's entirely possible it would have been rational for Masimo to pay these employees higher than Apple possibly would go in order to not lose those billions in value.
eitally 1y ago
I disagree with your assertion that Masimo has the money to compete. Apple's upside to employing these folks to build the tech into the Apple Watch is FAR, FAR greater than Masimo's potential sales growth for existing pulse ox devices (or patent licenses). With Apple Watches being licensed as medical devices for ECG & pulse ox, this gives clinicians even more reason to leverage them with patients for convenient 24/7 home monitoring. It's not the same market Masimo is serving, at all.

OkayPhysicist 1y ago

As long as a company is turning a profit, they by definition can afford to be paying their employees better. As a company you can choose not to, but it also means you get to suffer the consequences, and lose the right to complain that your employees were "poached" when in reality it was simply a matter of you not paying them enough to stay.

adrianN 1y ago
If you compete with someone who can afford to lose money longer than you, for example because they have some departments with very high margins and can cross-subsidize, you can win.
Workaccount2 1y ago
Profit distribution only makes sense to owners of the company. A better way to give employees a share of the profits is to give them shares of the company. But then that also comes at the expense of compensation in dollars. You cannot pay for groceries with company shares. People really like the idea of "When you win, I get money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like that they agree it's bad, but explained like "Companies should be distributing profits to workers" they fall over themselves about how good of an idea it is. Running a business is a gamble and like gambling, you need to put skin in the game to get a share of winnings (and lose your skin in the losses). People are just hyper-focused on the winners.
- wahnfrieden 1y ago
  https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#range:1989.3,2025.1;quarter:142;series:Assets;demographic:networth;population:1,9;units:levels https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
- lovich 1y ago
  This has nothing to do with their point. If company X is making a profit and losing employees to a competitor paying more, then company X has effectively chosen to let that happen. They don’t get to complain that they ate their cake and don’t have it anymore.

terminalshort 1y ago

Not my problem. The owners of a small company have no right to force their financial constraints onto their employees.