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Comment by Gargoyle | Hacker News Reader

I have faith a company like Apple can replace them with people every bit as talented and competent.

It's not always that simple. Execs like this take entire teams of talented subordinates with them. The headline focuses on one person but the real brain drain occurs when that person turns around and starts to poach the absolute best talent from their previous orgs. I've found recruiting and hiring at the very top to be as much (or more) about the individual exec/manager than the company itself.

For what it's worth, Chris Lattner specifically said in his farewell email [1] that "we don’t expect it to impact day-to-day operations in the Swift Core Team in any significant way." If you take him at his word, presumably that would mean the brain drain will be a nonevent.

[1] https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo...

Or it may just mean that the brain drain won't have a direct day-to-day impact, just an indirect, growing decay in capacity and capability as people leave and the team struggles to replace them.

No one said anything about it being simple, just that it can be done when you have the resources and reputation of a company like Apple.

FWIW, a lot of companies have non-solications in place to try and prevent this kind of behavior. They're far from fool-proof, and there is nothing stopping an employee from leaving of their own volition, but I would guess both of them have some sort of agreement in place not to poach talent directly.

What you're describing is not only illegal, but also something for which Apple recently contributed to a half-billion dollar settlement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

a lot of companies have non-solications in place to try and prevent this kind of behavior

If you know of other companies engaging in backroom nonsolicitation agreements with each other, the responsible thing to do for your fellow STEM workers is to call the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and let them know that the Apple/Google/etc. settlement didn't achieve its intended effect.

The type of "no-solicit" that bfstein is talking about is very different from the one you're referring to. The no-solicit contracts that are common in Silicon Valley mean that you, as an ex-employee, cannot directly approach a current employee that you know there and offer them a job at your current employer. The no-solicits that they got in trouble with in the HTEAL were where the company's HR department refused to approach employees at other tech companies. The former is a contract between you and your employer, which is legal and enforceable. The latter was a verbal contract between competitors to the detriment of their employees, which is illegal.

In practice, what most big companies do is they ask incoming employees for the names and personal contact info (and only that) of good employees that they have worked with in the past, and then pass that info on to HR, for a corporate recruiter to make the initial contact. Has the same effect, but no contracts are broken, since the corporation does all the soliciting.

Those contract clauses would be void in California.

Why?

Section 16600: http://www.tradesecretsnoncompetelaw.com/2014/05/articles/no...

(just read the 2nd paragraph. the rest of the article makes the rather obvious point that, if you solicit based on confidential company information, 16600 won't save you.)

This article (and most of the rest of the information I found on the Internet) is referring to solicitation of customers, not solicitation of employees. The few sources I found [1][2] indicate that non-solicitation agreements for employees are very much enforceable, but only if the employee directly reaches out (if the current employee contacts a former coworker about a job, that's legal, and ditto for the former employee's new employer).

[1] http://www.pashalaw.com/legally-poaching-employees-company-a...

[2] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/understanding-nonsoli...

It's entirely standard at tech companies to have a non-solicitation clause in employment contracts that prohibits soliciting other employees up through a fixed period (e.g., one year) after you leave.

IANAL but I did some research on this and to the best of my understanding these are perfectly legal and enforceable in California.

That would be career suicide though.

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