Scooter Startup Lime Sues Hertz For Poaching Engineers (reuters.com) 32
Urban scooter company Lime sued Hertz Corp on Thursday alleging unfair competition and accusing the rental car giant of improperly hiring the startup's senior engineers. Reuters reports: San Francisco-based Neutron Holdings Inc, which does business as Lime, filed the lawsuit (PDF) in California federal court seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction "to recover and protect its trade secrets." It also named Charlie Fang, who previously was Lime's head of engineering, and another engineer as defendants. Lime claimed that Fang, who joined Hertz last year as a senior vice president, violated his employment agreement to not solicit former colleagues after leaving the company.
Hertz said in a statement it "vehemently disagrees with the claims made in the lawsuit." The loss of engineers has "significantly harmed" Lime, which provides short-term e-bike and scooter rentals in about 30 countries. The company said in the lawsuit it now faces "staff shortages, recruiting costs, and critical project delays." Hertz sought to "capitalize" on Fang and his team's knowledge of building "back-end infrastructure for ride-sharing and consumer facing apps so that it could gain a competitive advantage over other companies," according to the complaint.
Hertz said in a statement it "vehemently disagrees with the claims made in the lawsuit." The loss of engineers has "significantly harmed" Lime, which provides short-term e-bike and scooter rentals in about 30 countries. The company said in the lawsuit it now faces "staff shortages, recruiting costs, and critical project delays." Hertz sought to "capitalize" on Fang and his team's knowledge of building "back-end infrastructure for ride-sharing and consumer facing apps so that it could gain a competitive advantage over other companies," according to the complaint.
Free market? (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like you got outbid and are crying to mommy. If you want to retain folks, pay them better than the competition will, and making working conditions good enough that your workers aren't a fertile ground for recruiters. Not exactly rocket science.
Re: Free market? (Score:2)
This. Pay em cash or stock or don't be surprised if they walk.
Re: Free market? (Score:2)
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Stock? From a startup? A startup with a business model that's failed all over the world, because they are selling a physical service but they think they're a "tech company"?
I used to work for one of these. They treated the company as a tech company but it was just a premium fulfillment + delivery service. They crashed as soon as investors flew to US treasury bonds.
If working for a startup, NEVER take stocks as part of your compensation. Cash or GTFO. FYPM.
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Sounds like you got outbid and are crying to mommy. If you want to retain folks, pay them better than the competition will, and making working conditions good enough that your workers aren't a fertile ground for recruiters. Not exactly rocket science.
In general yes.
The two exceptions I can think of are:
1) You're a big player trying to kill a small competitor by hiring away their critical employees.
or 2) You basically want them to recreate the competitor's IP.
The reason these are exceptions is the employees aren't being hired for their skills, but because of their importance to the competitor.
But this sounds more like recruiting skilled employees, which should be ok.
Yep. "Poaching". (Score:2)
When you sue another company for "poaching" what you're saying is that employees are animals, and you refuse to pay competitive wages.
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The word you're looking for is chattle, It's San Francisco, you couldn't pay enough to be competitive with the cost of living and the societal collapse on the streets.
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TFA says they are accusing Fang of hiring away former colleagues, which apparently was against his employment contract.
Are such contracts enforcible in whatever state they are in?
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Are such contracts enforcible in whatever state they are in?
It's in California and generally no. There are a few specific situations where non-compete agreements could be upheld, mostly relating to someone selling a business to someone else then going into competition with that sold business. Talent acquisition by someone who was never at the top of the business... not likely to go anywhere legally.
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You must be paying pretty terribly if they're running to Hertz of all companies.
For those who don't know, Hertz filed for bankruptcy and are involved in dozens of lawsuits over people who have been jailed because Hertz called their legally rented vehicle stolen
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It depends. I don't know the circumstances of the case, but there's a difference between deliberate poaching and normal hiring: poaching is when you go out of your way to specifically target and recruit key people away from a particular competitor, specifically because they are (or were going to be) important for that competitor.
I have absolutely no idea whether Hertz did that, or just posted some job openings and hired some qualified applicants, whi
Dey terks err (Score:2)
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made me giggle
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curious.
what kind of engineers.
f y i.
hertz treated me right during the covid outbreak.
those engineers my find other work.
but the work environment they will go to will not be as professional as hertz.
just saying
Those who can't, sue (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that didn't take long. I wondered what their business model would shift to, after they burned through their venture capital replacing all the scooters that ultimately end up being thrown into dumpsters and lakes.
Scooter Litter (Score:3)
Re: Scooter Litter (Score:1)
Are you ok with the cars parking all over the place? That is, when they are not being driven around killing and injuring pedestrians.
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Nope. Car centric cities are a blight and suck to live in. They suck even worse if the few remaining bits of flat ground leftover are littered with scooter detritus. I’d love if we treated bicycle theft as serious as car theft, if drivers and cyclists actually had to learn the rules of the road, and if vehicle taxes actually reflected the costs of road building and maintenance they incur on society. I could rant further
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I’d love if we treated bicycle theft as serious as car theft
So in a modern liberal American city, that means not seriously at all. Property crimes have been all but legalized in practice.
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Your argument';
There is a bad thing we do, therefore another bad thing is good.
Or something.
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Can't say I've ever seen a pedestrian path or sidewalk littered with parked or abandoned cars. I have, however, frequently seen these scooters (as well as the bikes that *used* to be Lime's main business) laying abandoned, smack in the middle of a walking path. Check out the Burke Gilman Trail around UW sometime and count the scooters that've been left right on the path.
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Can't say I've ever seen a pedestrian path or sidewalk littered with parked or abandoned cars . . .
You've obviously never been to Bucharest.
BAU (Score:2)
This is just business as usual on both sides with NDA and Non Compete agreements and the usual legal actions. So there's nothing to wonder about.
But it is news, just because it's companies we know of. Not really tech news, per se, just business news.
Was Hertz trying to get into the scooter market? The business of rental cars has gone to shit since Uber came along, I understand.
I used to rent cars a lot, in the decades up until around 2010. Mostly for business (but not on any special rate). It was cheap. Now
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Just fro, those non competes have been ruled unenforceable in California.
As an ex-employee I can set up a recruiting table on the sidewalk in front of their HQ and there's not a dammed thing they can do about it.
Easy. Pay more. (Score:2)
California is an at will state and this whole thing about not hiring other companies' employees has long been resolved in the employees' favor.
This suit is trash and dead before it was filed. Too fucking bad if someone else paid more.
As far as trade secrets go, good luck. It's hardly rocket science now to stick a battery and electric motor on anything these days.
Stupid.
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Maybe you don't know what at-will means in California. But since you're too afraid to post under whatever your regular name is there's really no point in going deeply into it with you. In short, you're wrong.
Poached engineers. Yum! (Score:2)
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