alt Hacker NewsI don't think this is necessarily true. This wasn't purely hiring. They also licensed the technology and paid off the shareholders, which is why it's basically an acquisition in everything but name.
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islewis • yesterday at 6:10 PM
> and paid off the shareholders
does anyone know if the employees who didnt get poached got their equity paid out?
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The problem is each step individually is important to allow companies to do, and follows as a nigh-irrefusable consequence of the previous. You can't ban companies from "poaching" employees, or you end up as an economic hellhole of indentured servants, like Florida, or New York. You can't ban the licensing of a companies technology, since we want innovators who don't necessarily have the opportunity to directly execute on their new technology to still innovate. And you can't ban paying the company for doing so, since that's the whole point.
Meanwhile, the way that plays out is that Google hires all the talent by fairly paying more than the startup can, then can turn around and say "your company is a dead man walking, you can either sell us your tech, or crash and burn with nothing", and the only fiscally responsible decision is to sell.