Comment by toomuchtodo
5 years ago
Assume I am an employee. Assume I take a year or two of these internal decisions during my tenure at an org to my next employer. Would you be equally upset that my work experience was used elsewhere? Where is the line between your trade secret and my hard earned work experience?
Because that’s what work experience is: showing future employers where not to make mistakes that were previously learned in the course of work. That knowledge (that has a half life) is part of my compensation, arguably the most valuable of my total comp.
Lots of CEOs/Owners will definitely be salty about that. And they're not totally wrong to feel that way. You pay someone a bunch of money only to watch them walk and help your competitor take your market share. It's understandable why that's upsetting. But they should have the maturity to understand that's how the world works and not throw a tantrum.
> You pay someone a bunch of money only to watch them walk and help your competitor take your market share. It's understandable why that's upsetting.
No, it really isn't because that's how business works. This is like getting upset that my plumber might fix my competitors' pipes, too.
That's not at all an analogous situation
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Being upset about something and acting on it are 2 very different things.
I don't know many people who would not be upset about investing many hours into something only to have someone copy it in 24 hour period and repost it with only slight modifications as theirs.
Acting on that, however, is a very different story. If someone is going to act on such emotions they shouldn't be a CEO to begin with probably.
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It’s almost entirely within the employer’s power to make it worthwhile for key employees to not leave for their competitors.
That wouldn't upset me because that is simply knowledge not implementation.
As I said in the other reply, my post is at an emotional/personal level (as an owner/creator and also employer), not necessarily a legal or more political one. On that basis i 100% side with the author here.
I was merely saying this situation definitely smells like one where there's more to the story than "big bad replit picking on poor innocent open source guy". Just the tone of his writing seems, and the "one of most difficult interns" gives me gut reaction that he might actually be someone who tries to be pushy while being nice.
> Just the tone of his writing seems, and the "one of most difficult interns" gives me gut reaction that he might actually be someone who tries to be pushy while being nice.
You took a single sentence out of an entire article with plenty of other supporting evidence to construct a reality where someone in a similar position as you would have cover.
It's extraordinary.
You're acting as if my reaction is based on one sentence. It's most certainly not. I read the entire post, looked at all the screenshots, looked between the lines of the words, looked at the emotion behind why/what is being said.
My current "constructed reality" is that the author built something in a very short time, likely liberally re-using design decisions from his previous employer. And that the CEO, who is a douche, got emotionally upset over this, probably from his perspective/shared history which is something NO ONE ON HN CAN SEE, and there's likely more to the story. Emotionally I can understand why this might upset Replit CEO. One can be frustrated, while still being mature enough to not let it affect action, and certainly not threatening to sue or any of that.
HN is so black and white sometimes it's painful. Just because I can relate emotionally to one person being frustrated, doesn't suddenly mean I fully support all their actions or live in some fantasy land tiny projects should be sued for exaggerated claims
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If you ever move between two big tech firms, they'll sit you down in a room with a lawyer who clarifies exactly where that line is.
IANAL, but roughly, general knowledge is ok, but specific results aren't. If you were party to user research findings at company A, it's likely against your NDA to tell company B "we should do X" based on the remembered outcome of that research.
this is precisely why companies poach employees from their competitors...