> If you thought Apple would own your mind forever you'd never work there in the first place.
Only a very small fraction of Apple's employees will ever attempt to be entrepreneurs. It's no threat to the extreme majority of all employees in Silicon Valley. Outsized total compensation and great benefits is all most tech workers in SV are after, entirely reasonably so.
I agree that it will scare off many employees that are heavily inclined toward starting their own thing. It's an interesting question as to whether companies like Apple are better off or worse off in that scenario. People that are particularly entrepreneur-minded often don't make for great employees (I'm in that group).
California is different than many states in the USA. In many places a non-compete agreement can stop you from going to a competing company. That doesn't just affect entrepreneurs, it affects all employees. The end result is employees can't change jobs as easily and wages are depressed. Non-solicitation agreements have a similar effect.
I don't think I'll ever root for companies enforcing non-compete or non-solicitation agreements. But, if Apple can prove that this guy was working/soliciting for his new company on Apple's time or while using Apple equipment then they may have a case, but it should be a limited case.
Where do you think the outsized total compensation came from? Where do you think the cultural entity known as the Silicon Valley came from. Where do you think the phrase "traitorous eight" came from?
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a lot already, and we're trying for something better than that here.
Only a very small fraction of Apple's employees will ever attempt to be entrepreneurs. It's no threat to the extreme majority of all employees in Silicon Valley. Outsized total compensation and great benefits is all most tech workers in SV are after, entirely reasonably so.
I agree that it will scare off many employees that are heavily inclined toward starting their own thing. It's an interesting question as to whether companies like Apple are better off or worse off in that scenario. People that are particularly entrepreneur-minded often don't make for great employees (I'm in that group).