Comment by grundoon
4 years ago
The story I heard (I worked at Borland briefly in 1999): Microsoft would send a limo to the Borland HQ to pick up engineers for interviews on their lunch breaks. Borland sued, Microsoft settled for many millions, but basically instead of buying their rival outright (for assimilation into the Borg, lol), they just bought the talent. Last I knew Borland had changed names at least twice (Inprise, Embarcadero) and still existed, in some remnant form.
Amusingly Steve Ballmer got the hump when MS engineers started leaving for Google
As did Google when Google engineers started leaving for Facebook, and FB when their engineers started leaving for Uber/Lyft/AirBnB/Stripe/Coinbase/etc, and so on. It's pretty much a revolving door now, where many engineers have worked at all these companies and sometimes even come back to their home base.
CA's prohibition against non-competes and the DoJ's lawsuit against anti-poaching agreements is basically what makes Silicon Valley work.
Oh that definitely happened, but we don't have quotes from Google like this:
Not that the giants haven't tried to be a cartel when it comes to labor. Including Jobs at Apple.
Borland sold their software division to Embarcadero, which appears to have been a big payday for top execs as they jumped out. However, Embarcadero did do a decent job of keeping the ship afloat and running things, though Delphi got very expensive. Idera then bought Embarcadero, but appears to allow it to have a high level of autonomy.
Another maybe interesting detail:
At some point there was an attempted pivot as well or maybe it was just what Embarcadero always had focused on.
I wasn't yet working in software then I think but there was an interview or paid article or something I think were someone told that the future of software laid not in languages and IDEs but in Software Lifecycle Management.
In a way they were right:
Today all major languages have free and open source implementations and Atlassian and a few others seems to have found larger or smaller sweet spots in what I think is Software Lifecycle Management or something.
That said what could Borland do at that point? It probably felt worse for them to bet the farm but in my opinion it absolutely isn't the most bone headed moveI have seen.
That said: The ads not so long after for "Delphi con" or something similar with large "No toothbrush required", that didn't exactly seem smart to me. I think by then everyone who used their products were grown up serious business programmers.
> At some point there was an attempted pivot as well or maybe it was just what Embarcadero always had focused on. [...] that the future of software laid not in languages and IDEs but in Software Lifecycle Management.
That was after they'd changed their name from Borland to Inprise, before they sold out to Embarcadero. I think that, in contrast to this, Embarcadero still bought them mainly for the IDEs.
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I remember I started getting a bunch of emails from an "Embarcadero." I didn't remember subscribing, and the unsubscribe didn't work, so I just wrote a filter to skip the inbox and send them all to spam. I must have subscribed to something from Borland at some point.
Interesting, do they make a similar effort to hire IntelliJ staff? I mean they could offer a much higher sallary than what they would get in Russia. Or is it all due to having the top guy, who is in the know on who-is-who?
What was the basis of the lawsuit?
"In the past 30 months, Microsoft has hired at least 34 of Borland's top software architects, engineers, and marketing managers", according to a complaint prepared by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. These actions have been undertaken “for wrongful purposes: to acquire Borland confidential information and to inhibit Borland's competitive position,” the filing states.
Borland's lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages and an immediate end to Microsoft's unfair practice of targeting Borland employees in order to hamper the company's ability to compete. The suit claims that Microsoft's activities are illegal under California Business & Professions Code Section 17200.
https://www.eetimes.com/borland-sues-microsoft-for-unfair-co...
> Saying that he "just wants Microsoft to leave us alone," Borland International (BORL) CEO Delbert Yocam today filed a lawsuit against Microsoft (MSFT), claiming that the software giant is hiring away Borland's key employees to put it out of business.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/borland-sues...
Ruthless. Just pure evil to target one specific company like that!
Not really. Borland could have issued attractive stock based retention packages to the employees they wanted to keep, and forced Microsoft to acquire the company or go away.
This was on Borland for not adequately valuing their staff.
Borland was losing over a hundred million in revenue while Microsoft was offering seven figure signing bonuses. There's no way they could have paid more than what MS was, since MS was using their war chest to kill the company.
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I remember hearing rumors that microsoft would pay some developers $1 million a year and tell them to just take a vacation instead of work at borland.
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Long term this kind of practice is bad for engineers the same way Wal-Mart driving other retailers out of town with low prices due to their size was bad for small businesses and small towns in the 90s and 00s.
how do I upvote a comment more than once?
You're acting like the employees were forced into the limos at gunpoint. People have free volition. Offering someone a better opportunity is not remotely 'evil'.
"What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job‽" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDbvVFffWV4
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It's anti-competitive.
There's a difference between hiring talent because you want talent, and hiring talent to undermine a smaller competitor.
It's an analogous to dumping.
That is evil.
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Is it?
Hooker offering good time is still quite evil.
Praying on the low instincts of people like simply more pay (even if a lot) -- more pleasure is considered rather evil.
Cam girls praying on low self esteem man.
Isn't it the same? Throwing money at people who will grab it because they are thirsty?
We can argue that Borland developers were underpaid and Borland was evil - because they were used. Again "Is it?".
That is just such complex question that I am not proposing an answer...
It's not ruthless -- it's business.
If the fault lies on anyone, it's the employees who accepted the offers. If they really thought it was "evil", they would have denied the offer on moral grounds or in loyalty to their employer.
Do you not frequently get offers for more money than you are currently making at your employer? I would be a massive asshole if I accepted and left a job every time I got one of those -- especially in this market!
Since they succeeded in hiring so much of their company away, it seems none of them felt particularly attached to Borland or their work there, compared to a salary.
The only "evil" in the situation is how easily some (most?) people will abandon you the moment they get a better opportunity.
I suppose Borland could have matched salaries or tried to keep their employees in whatever way (maybe they did, who knows?) but at the end of the day either they didn't, or it wasn't enough for those engineers.
>The only "evil" in the situation is how easily some (most?) people will abandon you the moment they get a better opportunity.
As if your company wouldn't fire you the moment it was more lucrative to do so.
> It's not ruthless -- it's business.
It's not like these things are mutually exclusive.
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> It's not ruthless -- it's business.
Targeting all employees of a smaller company to destroy them is considered unfair business practice in some countries (legitimately IMHO). It's similar than selling at loss until your smaller competitor is out of business.
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You can take a job and leave if they pay you more. That is fine. Microsoft isn't really only trying to gain talent. They want to drain the life blood out of their competition so they can get ahead. That intention is evil
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>"The only "evil" in the situation is how easily some (most?) people will abandon you the moment they get a better opportunity."
To keep feeding bosses while loosing potential raise? Thanks but no thanks
Why do you think they only targeted Borland like that?
MS was trying to pivot away from their 90s platforms, and Borland was a potential destination for customers jumping ship from stuff like VB.
It was a different time. Even dinosaurs like IBM were still competitive in some verticals.
Because the objective of Microsoft's recruitment was not just to acquire talent, it was to diminish their leading competitor.
In a nutshell: Because Borland, more than anyone else, had hugely superior development tools (compilers and IDEs) for Windows.