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Yahoo Accused Of Raiding Workers 118

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the business-is-war dept.
wellington map writes "Nuance Communications, a Menlo Park maker of speech-recognition software, has sued Yahoo for unfair competition and theft of trade secrets, accusing the Internet giant of raiding all but one of Nuance's research and development engineers. Nuance said 13 engineers from its Menlo Park and Montreal offices were 75 percent finished with a project that would allow people to search the Internet by speaking their queries into a telephone, rather than typing them on a computer keyboard. Nuance planned to sell the technology to companies like Yahoo."
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Yahoo Accused Of Raiding Workers More

Yahoo Accused Of Raiding Workers

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  • ok... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gcnaddict ( 841664 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @03:07AM (#13697288)
    Its not like yahoo will benefit. All they did was screw another company over. In the end, Google will buy Nuance Comm. and life will be good :)
    • FYI: Nuance Communications has already been taken over [scansoft.com] by its closest competitor, Scansoft. From the looks of this merger, it seems the important factor in people jumping over. I, for one, would rather move to Sunnyvale from Menlo Park, rather than Boston.

  • Lemme Get This Straight (Score:5, Insightful)

    by monkaduck ( 902823 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @03:09AM (#13697291)
    This guy doesn't pay his employees enough, fails to include any clause in their contracts (if they signed any) that prohibits them from making off with tech developed under his banner, and he gets mad at Yahoo! for it? He should be mad at his former partner for setting this up. I get the feeling from the article that he didn't follow through with obvious business procedure (procuring the rights of all technology devolped by the company's employees under contract to said company). There must have been something to make everyone jump ship to Yahoo!.
    • Perhaps that something was the opportunity to work for higher wages at a large, successful tech firm with a proven track record...
    • "[...] fails to include any clause in their contracts (if they signed any) that prohibits them from making off with tech developed under his banner, and he gets mad at Yahoo!"

      IANAL, but in Canada, as far as I recall, there were a few cases of lawsuits for violation of non-competition clauses that were lost based on violation of the clauses violating human rights [un.org]. I don't recall though if they were cases of "stealing" technology though.

      [...]
      Article 23.

      (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free cho
      • I did some research on non-compete clauses as recognized by Ontario courts recently and there's some nice precedents in favor of the employees.

        If you sign a non-compete *after* you're already working there it's much harder to enforce. And if the contract is one-sided in favor of the employer, then the employee can easily challenge it. Seems that if you sign one, it should have as much benefit to you as it does to them.
         
        • Problem is, if it's based in Montreal, it's covered by Quebec law so it's likely different... (for no other reason than because it's in Quebec... We like to do things different around here...)

          But I bet the ex-Montreal employees could counter-sue the guy saying they quit because the envirronement wasn't 70% or more French-speaking...

  • Competition is good (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Treat your devs right and you wouldn't have this problem.

  • Am I the only one who is a little suspcious? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @03:12AM (#13697301) Homepage Journal
    "Nuance said 13 engineers from its Menlo Park and Montreal offices were 75 percent finished with a project ..."

    That sounds like they aren't very finished. Who knows if they would have finished in time, if they were at that stage. Even if I thought I was 75% finished, we know I might only be half finished -- that last bit to finish is always a huge effort, and that's typically where you blow your schedule.

    You figure the business folks suing Yahoo have an interest in making it sound like they were more finished than less -- e.g. if they were 99% finished, and Yahoo! swooped in to recruit the whole bunch, that would look awful.

    So perhaps they were "50% finished" -- however you measure that (sounds like their app is a totally new piece of work, so you can't really estimate it well), and they pump it up to 75% finished.

    Also, why did so many of the guys split to go to Yahoo!? It looks to me like people were itching to leave. Considering this happened after a merger/buyout --and that one camper was pretty unhappy, perhaps the engineers were feeling bad and were looking to move somewhere nicer.
    • Who knows if they would have finished in time, if they were at that stage. Even if I thought I was 75% finished, we know I might only be half finished -- that last bit to finish is always a huge effort, and that's typically where you blow your schedule.
      Yeah, like the old saying "The first half of a project takes 90% of the time, and the last half takes the other 90% of the time.".

    • So perhaps they were "50% finished" -- however you measure that (sounds like their app is a totally new piece of work, so you can't really estimate it well)

      Measuring progress on an app dev project is easy. You just need a Project Manager who knows what he or she is doing---yes this is a huge qualifier, but we do exist.

      1. Create a work breakdown structure, down to the appropriate level
      2. Track progress of each work package (50/50 is not one-size fits all, people!)
      3. Keep Earned Value numbers updated
      4. Take appr

  • Typo, or Useless? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by darklordyoda ( 899383 )
    Do they mean "microphone", or is this some sort of weird unholy spawn of VoIP and Internet search?

  • Survivors, lifeboats blamed for shipwreck. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @03:23AM (#13697331)
    So, these people realise their on a sinking ship and get out, taking a job with another company. Apparently, conditions are bad enough that once one guy got the idea, everybody sees fit to join him. Probably they forsaw the product never getting finished, the company being unable to attract new hires, and tanking. So then the company gets in trouble, isn't able to get people to fill the positions left vacant, and who's to blame? Of course, the people who saw it all coming and got out of there; and the company that hired them..

    Would I be wrong in thinking these engineers probably warned management multiple times that they weren't happy, that their employer should be doing a better job, that they should be getting the sort of facilities they now have at yahoo? And would I be wrong in thinking their employer just shrugged and said "meh", since what do these engineersy, non-MBA type people know? In other words, that they're a really shitty employer? I think the fact they're sueing their barely ex-employees almost proves it.
    • Or perhaps they just saw how useless and pointless the technology was. So you get some search results by using your telephone. You now have to type them into a computer to actually use the search results - so it's slower, more expensive and worse than typing the query. Unless the system was also going to read you the resulting web page over the phone, too. In any case, I thought that sort of thing was already being done by systems developed for the blind.

      • It can't be just that (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @05:25AM (#13697574) Journal
        I've personally seen only one company before where the employees pulled a mass exodus like that, and let me tell you the boss was a _total_ asshole. He treated people like dirt. He just had to remind everyone that he's the boss and you're the peon, he pulled unreasonable demands like that everyone brings a sleeping bag and noone leaves until they're ready with some piece of software that the idiot fancied he wanted until tomorrow, he overrode any decision of those he delegated to do something, and berating was for him apparently like breathing.

        It was one experience that made me feel a _lot_ better about my own employer at the time. I mean, geesh, whatever minor complaints I had, by comparison to that asshole... ooer, I was having a dream job.

        And that's the thing that's IMHO necessary to really see an exodus like that.

        Otherwise people leave, yes, but gradually. Just being in an useless project takes some time to sap your will to go on, and it takes different time for different people. People can go on for years just being comfortable in one place. And while there's a visible minority that just jumps from job to job for more pay with no regrets, a lot of us nerds prefer not taking a risk if we don't have to. A workplace that's not quite perfect can be preferrable to plunging into the unknows. So again, any turnaround for minor grievances and boredom will tend to be slow and gradual.

        What we have here is basically a situation where everyone leaves as soon as the first one tells the others "hey guys, I got hired at Yahoo and guess what? They're hiring! Blow that joint and come over here." That tells me that they already wanted badly to leave, and probably just uncertainty kept them there.

        The wake of a dot-com bust has left a lot of people just too affraid to leave even a bad job, and has given a lot of managers the idea that they can finally be the assholes they always wanted to be. And it even works for a while. But it just begs this kind of situation to happen: it only takes one "hey guys, this other company is hiring and they're not assholes" to just remove that barrier of fear, uncertainty and doubt keeping everyone in.

        And much as I'd like to think that at least one manager has now learned a valuable lesson, he didn't. He'll blame it on Yahoo, he'll blame it on the employees, etc, and the go back to doing the same again.

        • Otherwise people leave, yes, but gradually. Just being in an useless project takes some time to sap your will to go on, and it takes different time for different people.

          I would disagree. This is only anecdotal, but from what I've seen it tends to go in waves.

          Firstly, a particular event can trigger the discontent that's lying dormant, to a greater or lesser extent, in any organisation. That could be the appointment of an unpopular boss, a failed project or another round of layoffs - the 'jump before you'r

      • You now have to type them into a computer to actually use the search results - so it's slower, more expensive and worse than typing the query.

        Actually I would presume that Yahoo! is building some sort of VoiceXML [voicexml.org] application.

  • What else do you do? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @03:54AM (#13697394) Homepage Journal
    OK, for whatever reason, all your engineers desert one day.

    Do you look in the mirror and figure that you really fucked it up big? Are you really going to tell that to the shareholders --- sorry guys, I lost your company.

    No -- you reach for your lawyer, claim you got "raided" and try to build the biggest sympathy case you can.

    And if it works, when you are over, you tell folks, "I went up against Yahoo!. They got horribly dirty and tried to raid us. They succeeded in raiding 92% of the staff. But I fought back, we settled and the investors were happy. The only reason we didn't lose everything was due to my nerves of steel."
    • You missed the part where a year later you get hired away by another company in an unrelated space because of your "superior reputation for team-building".
    • Having recently been part of a mass exodus after a substantial layoff, there might be another scenario to play. He may say "I went up against Yahoo!. They got horribly dirty and tried to raid us. They succeeded in raiding 92% of the staff. But seeing as we were totally screw, we sold the company and the investors were happy. The only reason we didn't lose everything was due to my nerves of steel." Anyone left with the company below top brass will be screwed, but the investors will be happy and the boss wi
      • would fall for this BS. If there is a mass exodus, if I was top brass, I would be certain that the boss is at fault. I've seen good (as good as possible) PHBs retaining a group of 20 developers, 3 months salary behind, for one year, everyone with work proposals outside doubling their wages.
        • Exactly. Think about the enthusiasm at a startup that is doing well, but lacks money. People fucking make sacrifices until it is clear that it is a dead duck. They don't have much to lose but a few months pay and some time. If anything, they improve their marketability as they finish.

          I have to figure the guy in charge of managing those folks drove them all out.

  • Completely overblown (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @04:07AM (#13697425)
    So Nuance already has a speech engine with telephony support. And they were going to tie it in with a Yahoo web service. It is both an easy thing to implement (ignoring the speech recognition for a moment) and an impractical use of the technology (from both a marketing and engineering perspective).

    The problem is accuracy of the speech recognition which is known to be less than usable. And it is expected that anyone, with no previous training of the speech recognition engine is going to be able to speak any query including proper names into a low bit rate channel (telephony) and the engine will work? I think a few people are getting the cart before the horse on this one.

    Speech recognition is really, really, really, really, really, really, really hard. And only usable under optimum conditions and when you can give the engine hints on what the user might say. Neither of which will be true for this usage of the technology. So this is a tempest in a teapot to be sure.

    And do these guys get to leave with the entire speech recongition engine? That doesn't sound right. It is Nuance's flagship product. I would imagine that Yahoo will still have to license a SR engine from Nuance (since they just merged with Scansoft) or IBM.

    And finally, why is this better than some WML or similar application designed for a phone that can leverage graphics and text on the screen? It seems that this is a complicated piece of technology looking for a problem to solve.

    • And finally, why is this better than some WML or similar application designed for a phone that can leverage graphics and text on the screen?

      Because WML sucks rocks, not all phones have screens, and because many more people (at least here in the mobile-backwards US) are comfortable talking into a phone than puzzling their way through tiny screens.

      It's not at all clear from the article what sort of application Yahoo! has in mind, but I know that Nuance has been working with speech reco in telephony appl

    • I have dealt with speech recognition software a whole bunch of times on the phone. My cell phone company uses it for their tech support. The system is remarkably annoying to use, however I have to admit that the speech recognition part works most of the time.

      The other day, I used 411 directory assistance to look up a phone number. The system is completely based on voice recognition, and it worked great.

      -a
    • And only usable under optimum conditions and when you can give the engine hints on what the user might say. Neither of which will be true for this usage of the technology.
      What's so hard about hearing the word "porn", unless the user meant "corn".
      /Wouldn't catch me doing that kind of search at home, office, or otherwise.
  • I feel sorry for the guy, yahoo should pick him up too and be done with it.

    Arash
    • I wonder what happend to the one engineer...

      I would imagine that his workload has increased, and he's now facing one *heck* of a deadline. On the plus side, he's on a good footing to demand a raise.

    • I doubt that yahoo would be interested without more time to investigate. Who knows, maybe he was part of the problem.

      I've seen this happen before and the one who commented that it was probably slave driving management that caused the exodus is usually spot on. I mean come on now, Nuance just got bought, and these guys don't have a clue if they have a job next week. Refining your running skills just plain makes sense. As to taking their knowledge with them, as long as its not in the hardware form, and on

  • Raided? (Score:5, Funny)

    by halcyon1234 ( 834388 ) <halcyon1234@hotmail.com> on Sunday October 02, 2005 @04:12AM (#13697436) Journal
    Okay, I must be behind on the current lingo... because when I read "Yahoo raided 12 engineers", I get an image of them hooking 12 engineers together to make some sort of Super Redundant Engineer.
    • If the price is right this could be a 'killer app,' allowing companies to hire one Super Redundant Engineer to replace that 90% of their current engineering staff who are redundant already.

      KFG
    • Okay, I must be behind on the current lingo... because when I read "Yahoo raided 12 engineers", I get an image of them [...]

      I got the picture of them sending in armed tac-squads... kind of like the intro movie to System Shock: Laser sights, rifles, scared hackers with their hands up, scary phrases on their computer screens like "REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE".

      Less fictionally, to me raided still means what happened to Steve Jackson Games [sjgames.com].
    • Ooh! I want to be the hot spare in that array. That would be a sweet job.

  • work for however you want (Score:4, Interesting)

    by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @04:25AM (#13697460)
    the thing is, people will work for whoever they want. fair enough they can't steal idea's and tech from their former employers. but companys do NOT have the right to devalue you through overly strict non compets in order to prevent you improving your position in life. that goes against every ideal of any capitalist nation. increasingly i see corperations attempting to turn employment into the new serfdom. they demand total loyalty from employees while reserving the right to lay off 1000's just to pump up profits a few %.

    bottom line, is if i have experience in something and i'm good at it, i'll work for ever i want and anyone who has anything to say about it can just fuck off.

    • So lets say I have an idea. Its a good idea, maybe a great idea. And lets say I hire a couple of people who know what they are doing to research it, check out the competition. Then I put in the money to get a premises, get equipment installed, and get some HR people to find and hire some engineers to implement the idea. Using their training and skills to complete it, while collecting a healthy wage every week, and being instructed on what exactly these ideas are. When the work is done, the marketing and sa

      • I think that's what non-compete clauses are for.

        The article didn't say anything about a non-compete clause. There should have been one, and if there is, it's actionable, and if not, it's not actionable.

        Non compete clauses are basically OK as long as:
        (1) They are not overly broad;
        (2) You still have avenues for a similar level of employment; and
        (3) It's not for an unreasonable duration

        OR they pay you a huge severance in one way or another to compensate for your unemployability.

      • Before I can get the last part going though, some nimrod middle manager decides he isn't getting enough attention and power, and takes the whole kit and kaboodle to a much larger and more powerful company, with marginal interest in my field.

        If you have been treating your employees right, then most of them won't follow that "nimrod middle manager". If they do, then that means that you were the "nimrod top executive" who shouldn't have been allowed to run a company in the first place, no matter how good your

  • What about the output? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bad to the Ben ( 871357 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @04:34AM (#13697479)
    If they were going to allow querying of search engines via telephone, how where they going to have the results returned to the customer? Where they going to have the computer at the other end "read-out" the results? Surely that would take a large amount of processing power, be hard for the user to take in (too much information being spoken without the ability to ask to repeat, like you would with a human), and take forever (computers talk slow: "You...have...(pause) [new voice]three[/new voice] (pause)...search...results. (pause)To...read...aloud...press...). If they were planning on using it with mobile phones and displaying the results on the screen, why not just browse with WAP (or a similar tech) to Yahoo's site and search the normal way?

    Unless, of course, they meant for users to query by microphone whilst sitting at the computer. In that case, why not just use existing voice recognition software to tell your computer to go to Yahoo! and search for what you want?

    Doesn't make sense to me. IMHO, it's redundant and it's not even finished yet. I can see why the engineers left.

    • computers talk slow: "You...have...(pause) [new voice]three[/new voice] (pause)...search...results. (pause)To...read...aloud...press...

      ... Please... be... reminded... you... are... being... charged... a... small... [new voice] large fee of $5.99 [/new voice] a [new voice] minute [/new voice]... for... this... service. (pause) Have... a... nice... day...

    • Re:What about the output? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There are other ways of sending information to a mobile phone: SMS would be the logical alternative.
    • Probably because using a numeric keypad is hard to enter stuff with. If the voice query worked well it would be a lot faster especially for > 1 word searches. It would of course have to work very well for it to be anything other than a gimmick, but hey, maybe it does.
    • You're actually making a bigger, better point than even you might realize, because you've touched on a major issue that's affected the world of research today. The problem is that people forget that the purpose of research is to satisfy human desires. You may have a very roundabout way of doing that, but you should never forget that as a final goal. If you can't stop at any time and answer the question "How will this give people what they want?" ... you're probably wasting valuable resources on the resea

  • I'll bet Nuance's HR manager.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by stygar ( 539704 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @04:42AM (#13697498)

    ...is really regretting the number of times he used the "I think 3% is a pretty good raise in the current business climate" line during the last performance review cycle.

    Hmm, an HR drone on pogey - I like the sound of that.

  • Dude, you lost! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999@NOspam.yahoo.com> on Sunday October 02, 2005 @05:10AM (#13697546) Journal
    Scenario: this startup approaches Yahoo to be bought out. Yahoo, being a survivor of the Bubble, feigns interest (or perhaps is genuinely interested - we may never know). Nuance previews the technology they've developed to apply search queries over the phone. Yahoo doesn't care for that particular technology, but likes the engineers. They don't like all the engineers, and they don't like the management.

    Rather than fund technology that won't fly, paying millions of dollars to a bunch of know-nothing empty suits, they decide to hire the engineers to work on something else, or on a better way to do the same thing.

    The reason we may never know whether this was an underhanded theft of technology or a bunch of valiant sailors deserting a sinking ship is that Yahoo may now offer a settlement to the Nuance suits. They'll get their money, shut up, and go away. Yahoo gets the good parts of Nuance, but doesn't have to pay really big bucks to the parasites.

    Or Yahoo could play hardball and stick to the story I've just painted. They could end up paying less to the lawyers than the Nuance suits would cost. And any publicity is good publicity.
  • I think I've figured out where their "75%" figure comes from:

    1. Purchase speech recognition software
    2. Purchase telephone
    3. ???
    4. Profit!

  • Stop whining (Score:5, Funny)

    by oman_ ( 147713 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @06:24AM (#13697697) Homepage
    Oh come on. This just gives them an excuse to get even CHEAPER engineering talent from places like India and Russia! These self-important engineers are doing them a favor by leaving. I mean they still have all the money-counting talent in house which is what's really important right?

  • ...but when I viewed the page, there was this topical ad [freeimagehosting.net] beneath the article. Do you think that someone is hoping to jump in and pick up the pieces when these two flame each other out? :)

  • What happened to the article... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tarwn ( 458323 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @07:02AM (#13697779) Homepage
    I was going to respond to one or two other posters, until I realized that about 90% didn't make it past the first section ofthe article...either that or we are reading completely differant articles...Somehow I am missing the "they should have gotten a raise", "the company was a sinking ship", "the company was looking to get bought out by Yahoo", etc comments that I have seen so far...

    Tech company that already has speech products on market and is working on better one, is bought out by competitor. VP of R&D ``began agitating for more authority'' as company is being acquired. Denied. Pissed off VP. Said VP then emails his resume and list of 13 coworkers to himself as well as a proposed organizational plan for a new R&D dept. Also starts swapping emails with Yahoo. Goes off to a job at Yahoos brand new speech lab, soon followed by all of the people on his list...

    To me this sounds like they were gutted by yahoo, but passively. It doesn't look (from this one article) that Yahoo actiavely recruited them away, but that one pissed off manager asked Yahoo to more or less bribe him, then took everyone he needed to build a new speech lab...I think, if this article portrays things acurately, that the VP is at fault, but that Yahoo might be a little complicit for accepting his plan.

    As far as the article claiming this type of litigation is "emerging over the last year", I have to disagree. Maybe it was only newsworthy for the past year, but it was going on before that. Hell, my company was sued two years ago because one of our guys got two other previous coworkers hired on. Their original company attempted to sue us, though I believe it was thrown out since we are in another field completely, didn't actively recruit them, etc. Kind of the opposite of the article in fact (even numbers wise, we hired 3 out of 30+ I think).

    • Re:What happened to the article... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @10:34AM (#13698487) Journal
      And the moral of the story is : If your VP of R&D has an excellent working relationship with all the Senior Software Engineers working on the flagship project your company is developing (this guy is known as Enterprise Technologist where I work) - don't piss him off.

      Pretty simple.

      Lets face it - most hard core tech geeks don't work for a specific company or even a specific technology ... we work for a great alpha-technologist. I would follow my alpha-tech into a burning building and not even ask why until after the fact. Those of you that are truly happy at work know the guy I'm talking about - those of you that don't know what I am talking about are either the alpha-tech with a devoted following, or probably pretty unhappy at work.

      Sounds like Nuance should have made the guy an executive.

  • Good for the engineers! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @07:12AM (#13697816)
    I have a feel for what was happening here, reading between the lines of TFA. Top management was busy negotiating a merger with ScanSoft under which they stood to make a fortune. To maximise their profit from the deal, they wanted to make the company's financials look as good as possible. So, postpone any remuneration increases for staff and any capital expenditure on new equipment. Basically, the executives could not have cared a dime for whether the staff was happy provided they got their dream deal.

    The R&D department, after bitching about what is happening for months, finds a way that they can cut themselves a much better deal. Now the executives are bent out of shape because the employees will not agree to get shafted for their benefit.

  • Key Point: Nuance was being bought by Scansoft (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02, 2005 @09:45AM (#13698283)
    When the 13 engineers went to Yahoo, Nuance was being acquired by Scansoft. That acquisition has since closed and Nuance is now part of Scansoft. Scansoft is infamous for buying out its competitors, "laying off" all the acquired employees, and "retiring" the acquired products. They've done it over and over again.

    For example: Last year Scansoft bought a company called Rhetorical. Rhetorical sold a speech synthesizer that was better and cost less than Scansoft's. Just one year later Rhetorical is a dead product. Scansoft has fired all but one Rhetorical employee and they are pushing Rhetorical customers to buy the less-capable Scansoft RealSpeak speech synthesizer for a higher price.

    Thanks to this notorious reputation, the Nuance engineers knew they had at most one year of employment left after Scansoft takes over. Scansoft would probably pay them to finish the project - but they almost certainly would then get canned.

    Would you stay in these circumstances? I wouldn't.

    PS: Yahoo isn't the only one hiring speech research engineers left and right. Google has hired dozens of speech engineers from Nuance, Scansoft, and other companies in the last year. Remember the guy in China Google hired that Microsoft got all pissy and sued Google about? Guess what he and many of his Chinese co-workers were hired to do at Microsoft originally: Speech research.

  • Would this qualify as forced retention? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There seems to be an increasing amount of forced retention [wikipedia.org] in the industry, where employees get sued over leaving. Microsot seems to be doing it wholesale, and now some startups are too... Usually, if employees leave, it means that the company they left has a problem -- not that the new company is doing something wrong (although there are examples of the latter). I've seen mass exoduses where a big company wants to kill a little company, so they hire away key employees (often making up jobs). It is a way of
  • Once again, emotional attachment to code evaporates when exposed to a paycheck. That 75% finished code will never see the light of day and 12 of 13 developers don't care.

    Once again, code ownership will spawn lawsuits. How much of this can society really afford?

    While I'm ordinarily inclined to feel bad for the victim of such obviously anti-competitive practices, it's hard to feel bad for software owners. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

    Here's a good reason to use free software: It can't be

  • If they had said "co-owners" I would have understand why they are upset, but the wording "worker" make the whole thing sound like, "we can get them in droves, so don't pay them too much".

    Regards, Tommy

  • I wouldn't want to work for ScanSoft either. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was a long-term intern at another company when they got bought by ScanSoft and ScanSoft tried to screw me over too. Interns don't get any benefits, but I had negotiated with the company that was being bought to get paid holidays (not vacation, just holidays). ScanSoft tried to take that away. Unfortunately for ScanSoft, they didn't make me sign a new contract when they took over, so I just stomped my feet a little and they gave in. It couldn't have amounted to more than a couple hundred dollars overall, s
  • You mean you can get information? For free? On the phone?
    No way!

    Interestingly enough, this tells us a LOT about what services Yahoo! plans! to! offer! in the future. It was an obvious next service offering, but this lawsuit confirms it.

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