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The solution here is the same as the solution when Zuckerberg complained about employees leaving their jobs too quickly[1]: Pay your employees more. Figure out

by bps4484 13y ago

The solution here is the same as the solution when Zuckerberg complained about employees leaving their jobs too quickly[1]: Pay your employees more. Figure out what kind of value they bring, and the amount of cost if they were to leave, and adjust their wages accordingly. Make no mistake about it, the ultimate goal of stifling competition is to depress wages. While maybe described as "disrupting operation", it is really just allowing a company to not pay an employee what they are worth. Analogously, if 2 companies sold widgets, one in state A and one in state B, and they each had a near monopoly in each state, if they each made a closed door agreement not to enter into each others' states so they could each maintain their near monopoly, I think people, and courts, would certainly cry foul. Certainly competing would disrupt each others' operations, but the competition would bring better products and better prices to both states, and that's the point. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-were-starting-a-company-now-i-would-have-stayed-in-boston/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-w...

gress 13y ago
You missed my point. The cost of losing a particular employee at a particular point in time can be far greater than the individual contribution they will ever make. That cost is transient because it depends on the state of a particular project. The value of the employee becomes the value of disrupting the project to the competitor. Matching the offer would be an option, but it would cause massive distortion within the company since the retained employee wouldn't be contributing that much more than their colleagues. I don't see any justification for your statement that better products would result from this.
- mrgriscom 13y ago
  That is the nature of at-will employment.
  - gress 13y ago
    What point are you making?
    - mrgriscom 13y ago
      My point is that if the employee has no guarantee of continued employment over the period where the company still benefits from the IP that employee created, why should the company have any right/expectation to the employee's continued employment during a period that is critical for the company? Employees can and should be expected to leave at any time in the absence of a contract to the contrary.
  - rmc 13y ago
    Even in countries with out "at will employment" (y'know the EU), can still be distrupted by an employee leaving. You usually only have to give 1 months notice for when you leave a job.
- bps4484 13y ago
  "The cost of losing a particular employee at a particular point in time can be far greater than the individual contribution they will ever make. That cost is transient because it depends on the state of a particular project." I think what you're trying to say here is that if a competitive company can time it right they can derail a project by scooping away talent at the right time (say, right before a product launch) which will cause greater harm at the moment than what the employee is "normally" worth (by "normal" I mean an average of their normal value output). I agree with this, but it is a failure of the company's compensation structure if this is the case. For instance, project base bonuses (upon completion of the project) should relieve some of this pressure because they would only get paid out upon completion of the project. Regarding "better products" do you mean in my analogy, or our real world case of companies competing for talent? In the analogy, the competition causes both company A and B to beat each others' products in order dominate the market (either by lowering price and improving the product). In the case of companies competing for talent, the "product" is really the overall compensation package. Some combination of salary, options, benefits, etc will attempt to be found that will keep the employee where they are.
  - gress 13y ago
    Thanks for clarifying - I would like to believe that you are right - but I still have concerns about things like project base bonuses, because there is still a giant distortion around employees who happen to end up on key projects being overvalued compared to other employees without whose contributions the key projects couldn't exist, arguably mirroring the inequalities we see in the larger society and leading to disintegration rather than increased cooperation. With regard to better products, I hadn't understood that you were referring to the compensation package as the product. That makes sense as an analogy. Your position makes sense, but I'm not at all sure that the market mechanism really optimizes in the way you hope.

by bps4484 13y ago

gress 13y ago

You missed my point. The cost of losing a particular employee at a particular point in time can be far greater than the individual contribution they will ever make. That cost is transient because it depends on the state of a particular project. The value of the employee becomes the value of disrupting the project to the competitor. Matching the offer would be an option, but it would cause massive distortion within the company since the retained employee wouldn't be contributing that much more than their colleagues. I don't see any justification for your statement that better products would result from this.

mrgriscom 13y ago
That is the nature of at-will employment.
- gress 13y ago
  What point are you making?
  - mrgriscom 13y ago
    My point is that if the employee has no guarantee of continued employment over the period where the company still benefits from the IP that employee created, why should the company have any right/expectation to the employee's continued employment during a period that is critical for the company? Employees can and should be expected to leave at any time in the absence of a contract to the contrary.
- rmc 13y ago
  Even in countries with out "at will employment" (y'know the EU), can still be distrupted by an employee leaving. You usually only have to give 1 months notice for when you leave a job.
bps4484 13y ago
"The cost of losing a particular employee at a particular point in time can be far greater than the individual contribution they will ever make. That cost is transient because it depends on the state of a particular project." I think what you're trying to say here is that if a competitive company can time it right they can derail a project by scooping away talent at the right time (say, right before a product launch) which will cause greater harm at the moment than what the employee is "normally" worth (by "normal" I mean an average of their normal value output). I agree with this, but it is a failure of the company's compensation structure if this is the case. For instance, project base bonuses (upon completion of the project) should relieve some of this pressure because they would only get paid out upon completion of the project. Regarding "better products" do you mean in my analogy, or our real world case of companies competing for talent? In the analogy, the competition causes both company A and B to beat each others' products in order dominate the market (either by lowering price and improving the product). In the case of companies competing for talent, the "product" is really the overall compensation package. Some combination of salary, options, benefits, etc will attempt to be found that will keep the employee where they are.
- gress 13y ago
  Thanks for clarifying - I would like to believe that you are right - but I still have concerns about things like project base bonuses, because there is still a giant distortion around employees who happen to end up on key projects being overvalued compared to other employees without whose contributions the key projects couldn't exist, arguably mirroring the inequalities we see in the larger society and leading to disintegration rather than increased cooperation. With regard to better products, I hadn't understood that you were referring to the compensation package as the product. That makes sense as an analogy. Your position makes sense, but I'm not at all sure that the market mechanism really optimizes in the way you hope.