I'm curious to see the pitch video submitted for YC application. So if you can share it, that'd be awesome. Just want to see how you simplified the offering in your video.
This is just one of those things which looks evil from 'Employee' perspective but important enough from 'Employer' Perspective. You have to also look at the how these clauses found their way into these contracts.
Certain professions; Legal/Software/IT Services/Accounting; make it very easy for one or group of employees, to just take a company's current clients, offer them a low price, and start a new firm thereby causing losses for the original service company.
Business which got burnt by their employees starting competitive business thereby started adding these clauses into their agreements.
Sometimes competitors itself would poach key employee which is working for a Client X thereby gaining an edge and thats why the clause for 'Client'.
It's much easier for a Company to let a potential employee go then position themselves to a losing client situation.
Also Most software engineers when they leave the company take backup of not only the entire code they've written but also the entire code for the project they've been working on. Thats why the IP Protection clause.
Again, your blog content would be different if you stopped being a Computer Scientist and started your own Company.
Also Most software engineers when they leave the company take backup of not only the entire code they've written but also the entire code for the project they've been working on. Thats why the IP Protection clause.
Great way to get sued. That's going to be logged. Isn't this what got Levandowski in trouble when leaving Google?
I definitely do not do this. In fact, once you stop paying me, I don't care about your code in anymore. It goes in the trash. It's not my problem after that.
I've never even heard of someone doing this. I know people sometimes want samples of their code from past jobs to show future employers, but even that I would explicitly ask about when leaving, and I certainly wouldn't ask for the entire codebase on anything large or meaningful.
Hell... I don't think I'd even want a copy in most cases, it seems like it'd open me up to legal and privacy risks without any actual benefit.
> Also Most software engineers when they leave the company take backup of not only the entire code they've written but also the entire code for the project they've been working on.
Is that really common practice? I don't doubt some people do this but it seems very foolish to me so I'm surprised that you think most engineers do this.
I agree. Doing this would be stupid as hell, since it just opens you up to a lawsuit over stealing company secrets. Having knowledge in your head is one thing. Having actual code is another entirely.
I'm not sure I'd even take most corporate code if it was offered to me. It'd potentially drag me into any future breaches or noncompete violations, and have no upside I can think of. I'm honestly struggling to imagine why devs would bother taking most code when they leave a job.
I have seen people bring in Portable Hard disks and copy the code.
Lets say you have developed a utility messenger bot which alerts you every time SLA of your support ticket is about to be crossed. A developer would like to keep this 'completed+working' code with them to reuse in next projects.
One of my employees left the company and he took all the Unity assets (assetstore.unity3d.com) I had purchased. I realized this when I saw those assets being used in "his" newly released game on Appstore.
These strike me as the likely cases, yeah. Taking company-specific software seems like it's either useless (why would I even want some random inventory management system?) or spectacularly illegal, like taking a stock trading algorithm.
But I can imagine someone wanting random quality-of-life tools, though honestly just asking for those would probably suffice. And people certainly take expensive proprietary assets and programs that employers buy, though I'm not sure that really fits with the top-level fear of "our programmers stealing our data".
Most companies I've worked at recently have some sort of mechanism in place to prevent this. Portable drives disabled, email attachments monitored, etc.
> make it very easy for one or group of employees, to just take a company's current clients, offer them a low price, and start a new firm thereby causing losses for the original service company. Business which got burnt by their employees starting competitive business thereby started adding these clauses into their agreements.
Sure, but this isn't a fair way to solve that problem. You don't need a non-compete to do this. A simple client list clause protects this legally for the employer, without removing employees right to work.
> Sometimes competitors itself would poach key employee which is working for a Client X thereby gaining an edge and thats why the clause for 'Client'.
This is a feature, not a bug. If the company had paid their employees decent wages, they wouldn't be so easily swayed by offers from competitors. Companies don't get to under-pay employees and demand they never get raises from any other company. Companies don't get to own people working in "field X" just because they have a product or service in that field.
This is true in theory but not in practice. I know of a few (somewhat disreputable) big law firms and prop/hedge funds that primarily hire from competitors. They can offer better partnership terms or pay because they don’t spend on research, training, or developing their own talent. Let the competitors do that, and we can skim off the cream talent-wise. It’s good for wages, but is that really fair play? Does it have a chilling effect on R&D investment?
They’ll say they just want quality employees, but interview with them and they’ll care little about your skills. They always want to know how much business your clients brought you, seek traders with a good "track record", ask how much profit you made, with the implied understanding that you will bring them that business.
IMO it’s fair to strike a balance, so companies can earn some returns on R&D, and employees can get fairly paid. Your employer shouldn’t lock you out of working forever, nor should competitors be able to hire away instantly by paying $x+1.
It seems like this problem is well-solved, though not with simple client-list rules. (I've definitely seen those thoroughly violated in ways no one can really enforce.)
Financial firms, for example, give strict noncompetes but back them with actually-valuable payouts. Employees can't be hired away for inside knowledge or clients, because those connections will decay for 6/12/24 months before they start. But their loyalty is actually incentivized, rather than just compelled with "if you quit you're not employable".
Totally agree. Better to use the carrot than the stick, but it never hurts to have the stick as a backup plan.
Typical problem in finance is you have consistent top performers who are compensated very well and would never leave, you don't really need a non-compete for them, deferred bonus is more than enough, but also bring on junior team members who need to learn a lot of confidential information by necessity.
Hopefully all of the juniors become top performers too, but sometimes they don't. It's the middling guys where you worry about them taking all your secrets to another shop. They aren't very valuable to you, so you won't pay them a big bonus, but also not bad enough to fire, and their knowledge is more valuable elsewhere.
> Also Most software engineers when they leave the company take backup of not only the entire code they've written but also the entire code for the project they've been working on. Thats why the IP Protection clause.
You have a source for this? I would strongly disagree that this happens by "most" software engineers. This is theft and it's completely unethical. I would never do this.
>Also Most software engineers when they leave the company take backup of not only the entire code they've written but also the entire code for the project they've been working on. Thats why the IP Protection clause.
You mean like Anthony Levandowski? I think we all know how that turned out.
I never make copies and no one should. These days companies know when you put in a thumb drive, copy things on, etc. if you do anything like stealing code, they will know for sure. Why risk it?
Agree completely. This is one of the worst things you can do, even if the code isn't particularly confidential. It is such an easy case to win. Worse yet, you expose your new employer to enormous liability and can taint their entire code base if left undiscovered for a long time. If I saw tons of source code of unknown provenance committed by some new guy, I'd be scared shitless.
If you're lucky, it might only cost you millions of dollars:
Yeah, without getting too specific, I'm aware of one particular category of IT consulting firm that has a few big players in the market. One or two of them do indeed have one-year non-compete clauses that basically say that you can't go to another firm in the same space. And anecdotally they aggressively enforce. I've known people wanting to switch firms who basically just took a year off (unpaid).
You can still go to a client (as I've also known people to do) but not a competitor.
I haven't carried cash or wallet for about a year now. All I use is my phone (CommBank app, which uses PayPass network). Whether it's a coffee, snack for my kid, weekly shopping or a night out, I can barely even remember the times I've been caught out. Maybe twice in a year. Only times I take my wallet out the door is if I'm driving (I live in Melbourne and mostly walk or take trams) or going to the Doctors or something that requires ID/Medicare.
Food trucks, weekend markets, everyone has an EFTPOS/MPOS or CommBank tablet in their business now.
Out of curiosity, where do you keep your myki? It's the one thing that ties me to carrying around a thing that can hold my cards.
I don't carry cash, and quite often don't even carry my wallet, but I need somewhere to stash my myki if I'm taking the train & tram to work. Given that it may have anywhere between $100 and $1500 worth of value on it at a time, I don't really just want to throw it in a pocket.
I think your parent poster was stposting. I doubt Ola will allow cash payments in Aus. In India lot of people carry cash hence they allow cash payments from what I've heard.
As someone who has spent a long time in New Zealand it was striking to me how many places you needed cash for in Australia. EFTPOS is not ubiquitous there like it is here.
I would hazard a guess you could make 99.5% of transactions with EFTPOS in NZ - the exceptions might be a few vendors at farmers markets (most take EFTPOS), sausage sizzles/ad-hoc fundraisers, fruit honesty boxes on the side of the road, etc. Maybe only 85% would take credit/debit, though.
From my experience in sydney/melbourne more places take credit/debit than NZ but also more places are cash only. Not as much penetration for EFTPOS.
I was in Canberra for a week late last year and I never used cash, everywhere took debit cards. Some had a surcharge for using debit over eftpos but I didn't see any shops or restaurants that were cash only. Market stalls were, unlike in NZ where mobile EFTPOS is almost everywhere.
It depends on when you were in Australia. EFTPOS fees for small amounts were essentially outlawed a year or so ago. That has made a big difference to pushing the final hold-out businesses into cashless in the last few months.
New Zealand for whatever reason I used cash a lot too. Australia you can pay stuff for small sums like $1 on card almost everywhere so no point to carry cash most of the time
NZ's government thinks (or thought, it's changed recently) that the market would sort it out so the current rates are up to 3% for credit and 1.5% for debit, again Mastercard's list is here: https://www.mastercard.co.nz/en-nz/about-mastercard/what-we-...
EFTPOS transaction are generally fee-free for all parties.
I absolutely love exploring all the food and coffee around Melbourne and I can't even remember the last one that didn't take PayPass. Even the market stalls and coffee carts have an MPOS or CBA tablet. Maybe a couple of super hipster places take cash only for the image, but I haven't actually found one yet.
In my experience it's rather the anti-hipster places: cheap Chinese dumplings, Vietnamese noodles etc, typically family run with minimal decor, overhead, wages, cleanliness and tax payments (much easier to underreport cash-only earnings). But often great food if you pick a busy place!
I'd say those businesses will have to evolve or die out. There is a great Japanese place in our town that I stopped frequenting purely because they didn't have an EFTPOS machine, and I often have to cash on me when returning from a customer visit etc. and I wanted a snack to bring home. Since they (finally) installed one after new owners took over, I go back there frequently now.
With PayWave becoming so popular for even $1 transactions at the counter by literally waving your debit card at a machine, I haven't carried significant cash in my wallet for years now.
When they say “cash only” everyone seems to understand it means “we dodge our taxes”. But the food is usually pretty cheap. I’d say they probably won’t evolve unless they start getting prosecuted for tax avoidance...
I totally understand the undercurrent of the 'cash only' operators - but I think that there will always be a portion of your customers who will use cash (travelling tourists etc.) as well as a large chunk who will want to use some form of electronic payment.
Far better for a business IMO to offer both - then they can still pocket most of the cash transactions without declaring, yet still show legitimacy to the ATO by having electronic payment records, which should keep the auditors at bay.
Our town is popular for market and pop up stalls all over the place, and while these used to be cash only for nearly as long as I have lived here, I have been noticing that a lot of them now have portable EFTPOS machines, or smartphones connected to Square or other payment swipers. Especially those that sell clothing or items >$20 because locals just don't seem to carry large notes around any more on a casual basis.
With all due respect, I'd say this is definitely a product of your specific location/life circumstances. I live in one of the biggest cities in North America and "cash only" is not a hurdle for restaurants here.
This forum is not like reddit for snarky/sarcastic comments. OLA folks are smart enough to cater to each individual local market. And all the drivers will be from local cities there.
I think all users are now used to email confirmation. With mobile and notifications its much easier to just click them once.
Ill be more irritated if it prompts me to go in my mailbox when I'm in middle of something. I'll be like- 'you fool why didn't you do this during signup itself.'
Think in terms of modes. Right now Im in signup mode. Then Im in 'Do work' mode. Dont make me go from 'Do work' mode to 'signup admin stuff' mode again.
Also now I expect each site to have option for google/facebook logins. The only reason I still have my facebook account active is that it makes one click login on most sites easier.
As a newcomer to Javascript frameworks I totally love Meteor JS. I come from Java backend programming and My Job/Client always worked on proven not so recent frameworks like Spring etc. I always wanted to learn the Javascript frameworks but the vast options there are made it very difficult. Too many JS frameworks, Too many choices. I started learning Angular and they decided to do a makeover which requires learning from start. Even React isn't something quick to master.
But Meteor, it just made my move into Javascript webapps so easier. I'm seeing results instead of that paralysis of am I learning the right framework. I'm also almost 80% done with my niche Classified ads site.
I have always hated Amazon Video. I don't think Amazon even comes close to Netflix from user perspective.
There is always the confusion of which video is free and belongs to Amazon prime (free) and which ones need to be purchased. Compare that to netflix - You see it, its yours to watch.
Amazon originals are a torture chamber, I cant even name one. Compare that to Netflix - I renewed my membership just to watch House of Cards.
Amazon, Google, Facebook they all fall into this same problem of having a consistent UI across all their offerings. This constraint of consistency leads to a UI design which might not be the best for that particular product. Netflix because it offers just one thing, video streaming, can design UI best for discovery and personalization and wins compared to Amazon video any given day.
There isn't much confusion at all if you don't have any filters then it's clearly marked on the thumbnail of the video.
When you search you can select filters.
Depending on the app you use (browser, amazon firetv, mobile, smart tv etc.) you also (at least on my browser, phone and tv) select in the settings to filter out paid content.
Amazon has damn good originals: Alpha House(please make season 3!!!), Hand of God, Bosch, Mozart in the Jungle and TMITHC as well as some of it's new pickups like Sneaky Pete and Patriot (the Patriot pilot and premise was amazing) are much better than most Netflix offers(which for the most part offers allot of esoteric comedy / stand up shows and well orange is the new black which I've never bothered to watch).
At least to my subjective tastes before the Marvel ("webinatic universe?!") shows came about Netflix only had The House of Cards (and well Marco Polo) as far as originals go.
It's not the same level of production value or acting as many Netflix ones
I disagree with that. I thought the production values were quite high. The sets and costumes were amazing. The actors were first rate, but mostly unknown (probably to keep costs down).
I use Amazon (and Netflix) on my PS4 and I've never been confused about which video is free and which requires payment.
If the video is free, the button says "Watch now" or something.
If the video isn't free, there are one or two buttons saying "Buy SD for $XX.XX" and "Buy HD for $XX.XX".
The reason I personally like Amazon Video is that if a movie or TV show isn't free, 99% of the time they have it available for purchase, so I can still watch it. If Netflix doesn't have a movie or TV show, there's no recourse within Netflix, I have to go to another site or open a different app.
Also, to me Amazon's Transparent was on par in quality with Netflix's originals. I don't really use Amazon for their original content at the moment though.
I feel the opposite. Aside from original content, it "feels" that amazon has everything netflix has (at least for what I care about) + the option to see newer movies for a fair price (though I hate the games they're playing with burying the prices in submenus). Netflix has become my 2nd goto place after Amazon when I'm browsing for something to watch.
The trade-off is going to be different for different people.
If being able to take movies with you on your commute or on the plane is important, it doesn't matter if Netflix's UI is better since it isn't even accessible.
If on the other hand, you are mainly interested in streaming at home or where you have Wi-Fi, you could debate the merits of Netflix UI vs. Amazon UI.
Amazon has found a way to make any advantages Netflix has irrelevant for some set of users and some scenarios. And it looks like it is hard for Netflix to follow. The question is whether it will drive enough trial and adoption for Amazon.
Most people relate Netflix to 'movies'. I have been an on - off customer of Netflix and thoughts of leaving it often crosses my mind.
But the only thing which keeps me on it are the TV shows, seasons and seasons of it. I'm currently watching Mad Men , that's 6+ seasons I want to watch. I love the luxury of just catching up on a 30-45 min TV show while I'm multitasking, eating, playing PS4 etc.
I think Netflix or competitors who want loyal customers ,expanding library of TV shows should be their prominent strategy.
I would suggest - giving out free episodes for every season, atleast 2 and see the signups go up.
It depends where you are. In the UK, their selection of TV is much more limited than the US - for example we don't have your example of Mad Men. Their original shows are very good though, and they have a decent selection of British TV (ironically they have more BBC shows than BBC's own streaming service).
Their selection of popular/well known movies has been decreasing over time though, as they've been losing some of those licences. But there's enough of them that it's good enough for "I want to watch some movie, let's see what's on Netflix".
> they have a decent selection of British TV (ironically they have more BBC shows than BBC's own streaming service).
> Their selection of popular/well known movies has been decreasing over time though, as they've been losing some of those licences. But there's enough of them that it's good enough for "I want to watch some movie, let's see what's on Netflix".
Not sure I agree with either. They have some old UK TV, but not that much. BBC offers almost no archive tv on iPlayer, so that's not much of a comparison! And I had to spend a significant amount of time trying to find any film I wanted to watch. My impression of the services was a bit like renting access to 10-15 box sets (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, some BBC Dickens adaptations, etc), and about 50 randomly selected, vaguely entertaining films. I had it for about 4 months before running out of anything I wanted to watch.
Same here, I think I've watched one movie on it in the two years I've had it. I almost always have a show playing in the background though. I don't have a TV and haven't for years.
