What do Blue Mass Groupies think of Baker and Coakley’s appearance at the High Tech forum in Cambridge?
“Both major-party candidates for Massachusetts governor were clearly out of their element Monday before an audience of about 150 tech workers during a forum at Microsoft’s Cambridge office. They spoke in generalities, sidestepped questions about employee noncompete agreements — a hot-button issue in the tech sector — and left attendees craving substance.
“‘It was terrible,’ said Axel Scherer, a software architect at Cadence Design Systems in Chelmsford. ‘They said nothing. Just empty suits going blah, blah, blah.”
(Boston Globe: Baker, Coakley sidestep hot-button tech questions at forum, by Callum Borchers, Sept 29, 2014)
***
I’m having trouble understanding this reluctance of both candidates to engage on the issue of banning non-competes in the state.
Baker, I understand, as CEO he’s coming from a board room environment, and may find it hard to mend his ways and accept banning non-competes in the state.
But Coakley? What did she have to lose? Is it timidity or lack of political acumen? She is obviously struggling to be popular in the high-tech industry. And it’s not like the non-competes questions came out of nowhere. Taking a stand against non-competes would have been a great way to differentiate against Baker.
***
From the Globe story:
“Baker flubbed a question about collaboration between state government and local universities, which he expanded to discuss cooperative efforts by one school and another. ‘One of my favorite collaborations going on right now is in online education between Harvard and MIT,’ he said. ‘I think it’s called Next. NextEd? EdNext?’ Crowd members called out the correct name, edX, referring to the platform for free online courses the two universities launched in 2012. ‘I know what it is!’ Baker responded, laughing at himself. ‘I just can’t spell it.’
“Meanwhile Coakley was thrown off by an inquiry about Uber, Airbnb, and Tesla, which a questioner described as ‘disruptive’ technologies. ‘Does the use of disrupt telegraph how you feel about these?’ Coakley asked, suggesting a negative connotation. The questioner clarified that his definition of disruptive is ‘improving the delivery of services to consumers.’ Coakley laughed and replied that she is ‘old enough that disrupt was usually a bad thing.’ ‘But I know that it’s a good thing,’ she said. ‘I’ve learned that.'”
Would that definition fly in most tech forums? He got away with it because Coakley (nor apparently Baker) was able to call him on it.
Thanks for the attention to this, though. I think tech audiences are underserved by politicians in general. Conversely, the hostility from tech audiences (“empty suits”) is not fair.
You have to get to know elected officials and all the stuff they deal with. THEN you’re allowed to hate them.
‘Disruptive’ means something that changes the market. It’s a buzz word, used with a positive connotation – supposed to be an improvement.
… both the tech-internal and generic meaning of the word, but didn’t want to create a soundbite that could be used against them later.
Coakley gave the impression that she had heard the word said before but had not really paid much attention to the exact meaning. It signals to me that she has little appreciation for innovation in general.
The term “disruptive” has been in use in the business world (not just tech) for at least ten years. Anyone who reads the business section semi-regularly would have encountered it numerous times.
Apart from the fact that Coakley appeared to have a fuzzy understanding of the term, she didn’t seem to understand the point of the question.
I was at the forum, and Coakley seem to go out of her way to avoid simple declarative statements or responses.
To the degree that I was able to parse what she said, there seemed to be no content.
My presumption was that she erred on the side of caution, but I could be wrong…
If she is unable to make statements on these issues, then we can be assured that she is never going to do anything about them when she is in office. Whether that is because she is afraid of upsetting the status quo, doesn’t understand or simply doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter to me.
“Disruptive” goes beyond “something that changes the market”. I link this term to using technology to rapidly change the established rules of the game.
Craigslist and Monster “disrupted” the newspaper classified business. Completely changed the rules, and in the process, has killed off a lot of newspapers, for better or worse.
Disruptive is not always necessarily better, though the person doing the disrupting thinks it is because they’re the ones cashing in.
It seems to me that the meaning is pretty close to that of “revolutionary”. My guess is that people switched to “disruptive” because “revolutionary” had been overused and lost a lot of its impact. Now we are seeing the overuse of “disruptive”, so eventually some new word will have to be coined.
I always hear “disruptive” used in a very specific way, more than just “revolutionary”, almost smug and smarmy, as if the person doing the “disrupting” has complete scorn for the old way of doing things. It isn’t seen as just improvement. It is seen as actively destroying the old way of doing things. Killing dinosaurs.
Developing a drug that eliminates cancer would be revolutionary. Developing a technology that made nurses unnecessary would be disruptive. I’m not so sure that “disruptive” is good because it is focusing our best and brightest to train their skills on things that eliminate jobs and labor, and in the process make some already wealthy venture capitalists even richer.
Think about Uber. Techies love this, even liberals love it. I’m not exactly sure why – it is a technology that is wiping out cab drivers – a blue-collar job if I’ve ever seen one. It is eliminating various consumer protection laws, replacing them with a “rating” system which amounts to “if you got screwed, your only recourse is to leave a bad review and the market will sort things out”.
Some aspects of Uber are great. The service is much easier to use, the level of service is generally much higher, it’s often much faster, and usually much cheaper than a normal cab. In my experience I also feel much safer in an Uber than in a taxi. I know my wife does as well. Being able to track the car and have some record of the driver is a huge benefit.
There are problems, though, as seen in some cities, most notably NYC, where Uber drivers are getting squeezed.
As far as impact on the taxi industry, however, GOOD. It’s a corrupt outdated industry that has resisted change for decades and not adapted to serve customers well or result in many great jobs. Taxi jobs are increasingly low-wage and onerous, which is why you see many drivers switching to Uber because they can earn more and control their hours (although this is starting to be a problem as Uber continues aggressive expansion).
The government response should not be to try to block Uber. It should be to embrace the innovation while ensuring proper consumer protection and public safety laws (background checks, regular inspections, etc.). Uber, more than anything, exposed how bad the taxi industry is, and we should be trying to fix that – maybe starting with the ridiculous medallion system.
My jury’s still out on Uber, but most of your points re: taxis are undeniable. They cost way too much, for one thing. Not sure about the corruption charge, but they certainly have suffered from lack of competition.
I agree, there are great things about Uber, especially on the customer side. Uber is starting to show what might be its true colors though with the squeezing of the supply side, though. It’s not clear how they will develop. Uber’s founder comes off as a libertarian jerk, which is not a good sign. They have, however, provided the taxi industry all it needs and more to change, so hopefully they will.
re: corruption – The Globe had a big piece about some of the bad activities in the market.
It describes an innovation– specifically an innovation that completely displaces a pre-existing market structure.
I suppose it is true that disruptive isn’t necessarily better– but the reality is that an innovation is not really disruptive unless, after the innovation, it does not make sense to keep doing things the “old” way.
My favorite example is the digital camera. In 1990, I had a nice camera, and if I chose to use it I would buy a $5 roll of film, and then later spend another $5 to develop the roll of film. I might later spend $2 enlarging one or two “keepers” from the roll of film. Now, as the owner of a digital camera, I spend $0 on film, and $0 to develop it. I may spend $2 to enlarge the one or two shots I like. Though I spent more years than most as a film purist, in the end I changed because it didn’t make sense to keep spending money on film and developing.
This process was lousy for companies like Polaroid and Kodak and their employees, because these went very quickly from profitable and well-paid, to out of business.
The same way you can spend $50 to place a classified ad in the newspaper, but get better results from a $0 ad on craigslist. Why would I spend money on the newspaper ad?
Yes, that is a good example of a disruption that was beneficial to everyone, although I still remember when a job at Kodak or Polaroid was considered a really good gig. I don’t know anyone who works for a digital camera company, those jobs are not in this country.
My readings on people who talk about disruption these days really seem to be focused on doing it in more of a mean-spirited way. They look for situations like Bain capital sniffs out a corporate opportunity. Then they talk about “writing an app” to disrupt. Their primary goal is all about the profit potential, not in moving the world forward. I was reading an article about someone trying to “disrupt” the laundry market – and they came across like self-righteous, privileged little pricks looking for a big score.
I put the word “disruptor” into the same category as “serial entrepreneur”. I don’t have respect for that because the fact that someone can do something serially tells me that they are doing this for the money and the thrill of the kill, not for passion about what they are doing.
I agree entirely. The term is being drained of all meaning; people use it to mean “very lucrative” and little else.
A potentially more complex disruptive innovation may follow the more widespread use of solar panels for electric power, or at least it has been suggested that such a cycle may occur.
As customers install panels, the electricity they draw from the grid decreases, and so does their electric bill. But the utility doesn’t just charge for the power itself, it charges for all of its various fixed costs: transmission, wire maintenance and the like. These costs do not decrease just because customers use less electricity from the grid, and must be made up elsewhere. So, those costs are spread across the remaining customers, which causes the rates paid by existing customers to increase. This, in turn, drives additional investment in solar panels, potentially causing a damaging disruptive cycle.
Fixed costs are recovered through a customer charge.
And also, the distributed generation backs out the most-expensive generation. That doesn’t increase electric rates, it reduces them.
it is a problem that is easily fixable, so long as they completely change the pricing mechanism and the regulatory structure upon which the pricing mechanism is based, pursuant to which all charges are assessed as a function of usage. That sounds like disruptive innovation to me.
Back on the camera issue, the digital camera market (both still and video) got blown out by the phone.
In essence you got a free video camera and a free camera when you bought you phone.
Now that’s disruptive
The pricing structure, heck the ownership structure, was totally revamped in the 1990s.
We are seeing the boom in renewables as a result of that.
In a distant place and time (1992), a presidential candidate marked himself as utterly clueless (and headed for defeat) when he clearly had no clue what a bar-code scanner was. It was immediately obvious that he had NEVER set foot in a grocery store.
How on EARTH can Martha Coakley not know how our “Innovation community” uses the term “disruptive technology”? The depth of her ignorance about our local economy and its drivers is staggering.
The term is much more than buzz-word, it is a technical term of art in economics, business, and technology spheres. A “disruptor” is a technology or product that introduces chaos (in a technical sense) into a market or industry.
For example, a consumer market is often dominated by a handful of large and established providers, and the providers and consumers have reached an equilibrium that is reflected in both the corporate structure (compensation, delivery channels, development processes, etc) and consumer expectations.
Sometimes, a newcomer finds a way to service the very low end of that market with dramatically improved margins. The newcomer begins to siphon off the bottom end of the market, making comfortable profits as it does so. The established players often encourage this development, because the margins on the lost business are small or negative, and the established players relish the opportunity to focus on their much more profitable high-margin high end.
By the time the large company figures out that the advantages of the new competitor are not limited to the low end, it’s too late. The market enters a period of chaos. Product prices are slashed, by all players. Product volumes multiply. Wholesalers can’t keep up, retailers don’t know how much shelf space to allocate for each. The business dealings are even more unpredictable. Acquisition and takeover efforts spawn and multiply, some friendly and some hostile. Employees are laid off from old firms, only to be snapped up by new ones. Nobody knows whether the end result will be good or bad or something in between.
Much of the time, after a period of extreme chaos, the newcomer becomes the market dominator, the market stabilizes around a new equilibrium with new structures and players (both producers and consumers), and the stage is set for another round.
Digital Equipment Corporation was a disruptor in the 1970s. Apple was a disruptor in the 1980s, and again decades later (Steve Jobs is remarkable not only because of his resurrection from the business dead, but because he has led more than one distruption).
The Boston area “innovation economy” and our academic institutions that support and sustain it are ALL ABOUT creating, recognizing, nurturing, and executing disruptive technologies.
How could Martha Coakley not know this?
Everyone understands what a scanner is. I’m not sure people outside tech really think much about disruptive technologies.
She should at least know about some of the big players with significant regulatory challenges that her office should have been involved with. That’s at least Uber and AirBNB, and to a lesser degree Tesla, which is fighting some of the most ridiculous state regulations across the country. At least there are many straight-faced arguments to be made in support of regulations applying to “sharing economy” services.
One comment on your definition, though. While I agree that it is the usual interpretation of the term, The tech industry (less so here than in SV) is starting to go overboard with “disruption” and applying it in almost any instance of a new product or service. There’s an obsession with disruption that is leading too many companies to create solutions for problems that don’t exist, and the money is following them big time. Examples include the new family of parking apps that allow users to trade public parking spaces.
I see this trend growing along with a distinct libertarian edge throughout much of tech. They think they are the best and brightest and can solve the world’s problems, and all government is doing is getting in the way.
Of course, there is some truth to government being anti-change and anti-innovation, and the Gov candidates didn’t do much to change that, but there’s also a problem of some people in tech living in a strange bubble. I’m not sure about the attendees at this event, but at some tech events you’ll see groups of young men (it’s still always men) horrifyingly uneducated about core areas of public policy that they don’t see impact their day to day.
With regard to non-competes, I am still confused. It’s one of the few issues that techies get fired up about, but one that can be solved (for the most part) without much government help. I work in the tech industry and have seen them and signed them. The same companies whose CEOs are outspoken about ending non-competes are often still having their employees sign them. The VCs lobbying the legislature to ban non-competes could all prohibit them within their portfolio companies. They have not, and in fact, many require them in their financing agreements.
The problem is that investors *are* avoiding MA start-ups to some degree over this issue, but not enough to make it totally obvious that there is a problem. Even if there are CEOs who lobby for this while still requiring non-competes for their companies (and it would be nice to know who you are talking about here), it is likely that they feel they are in an arms race with their competitors and would prefer there was some way to disarm without getting screwed.
We do know that MA often loses out to CA in where start-ups choose to locate, where investment dollars go, and where companies go when they start to become large. This may be part of the puzzle.
BTW, I do not think it unreasonable for VCs to require non-competes with officers and a handful of key employees of start-ups they are funding. It is another matter to burden every employee with such an agreement.
Yes, but for the VCs all investing in MA companies and opposed to non-competes (the New England VC association led the lobbying), why couldn’t they agree to end them at least for the companies they invest in? I understand that they think the companies might be at a disadvantage, but given the small nature of the community, I’d think that companies poaching employees free of non-competes while enforcing their own non-competes would quickly get some of the worst reputations and would likely have to pay much higher salaries to get around that. I just guess that this is one of the times that the market could effectively police itself, especially when leading proponents are also some of the most powerful people in the industry.
BetaBoston did a little (and incomplete) survey of local tech companies. Many use them and some CEOs say they are against them but forced to use them because of funding agreements.
The tech industry is split on the noncompetes, with larger companies like EMC favoring them, and that’s why the law hasn’t been revised despite some efforts by Gov. Patrick in that direction. I’m not surprised by Baker’s and Coakley’s positions.
As a side note, there are a lot of techies contributing to this blog, but some of the candidates who support revisions to the law have received some rough treatment here! (Kayyem, Brownsberger, and I believe Cheung were for revisions).
I don’t think that it is true in general that larger tech companies favor non-competes, and I don’t think there is anything like an even split. I have never had to sign a non-compete in over 20 years at small, medium and large tech companies around Boston, and I would be highly unlikely to ever sign one. I think that most start-ups and companies that care about innovation know that it is a huge turn-off and will hurt their recruiting efforts in what is now a seller’s market for talent.
I believe that non-competes are much more common in the financial services sector and other non-tech industries. That is where most of the opposition is coming from.
In any case, I am disappointed that Coakley ducked that question. It indicates that she either just doesn’t really care about the issue, or is too scared of pissing off some of her moneyed donors, probably both. Yet another reason I probably will leave that spot in the ballot blank.
It is impossible to work in biopharm without signing a non-compete.
Many larger employers include nationwide boilerplate knowing full well that it is mostly unenforceable (while non-competes are allowed in MA, their language must be carefully crafted to conform to state law). Most employees don’t have legal counsel when signing these agreements, and don’t have counsel when deciding whether or not the agreement is enforceable when they seek their next job.
One wrinkle is that many startups tie stock agreements to VERY restrictive non-competes.
I strongly encourage ANY technical professional to establish a close and cordial relationship with an employment attorney. It is well worth a few hundred dollars to have competent advice going into a new job.
My naive understanding is that to be enforceable the non-compete agreement has to give some extra compensation in exchange for the non-compete, thus it is often attached to stock grants or bonuses.
I did have one employer offer me a very small number of shares that came with a non-compete attached. It probably would have still not been enforceable but I turned it down anyway. When I said no thank you, he got upset and accused me of being a non-team player!
One big problem I have with non-competes is that the ones I have seen don’t define what a competitor is, and it is often not at all obvious.
I came across my first non-compete in 1983. My attorney at the time (fortunately I had one), a senior partner in a very prominent State Street practice, chuckled when he read it and said “My understanding is that we outlawed involuntary servitude some years ago”. When I asked how I should handle the negotiation, he said “What negotiation? Just sign it. What they don’t know won’t hurt them”.
As I understand it, an overriding principle that governs non-competes is that the agreement cannot prohibit the employee from working in his or her chosen field. That means that overly broad definitions of “competitor” or “protected property” are not enforceable.
The typical practice in my own experience (both as employer and employee) is that the actual consequence is that the employee forwards a letter from the former employer to the new employer stating the existence of the agreement, a specific enumeration of the “protected” intellectual property, and a reasonable (1-3 year) time limit for the restriction. In most cases (at least in the biopharm industry), that’s enough for both sides — the letters are then filed and forgotten.
When there IS an issue, it is nearly always (a) only applicable to relatively senior, and therefore highly-compensated, employees and (b) readily solved by throwing money at it. The new employer often reaches a cash settlement with the old employer and life goes on.
I view non-competes as primarily a revenue generator for lawyers (for better or worse). I’d love to see them go away (the non-competes, not the lawyers), but in practice I think their role in suppressing the Massachusetts economy is greatly overstated.
In particular, the choice of Bay-area vs Boston deals is driven by much more fundamental factors like developer culture, investor profiles, and so on. Investors generally prefer local to remote deals, especially for early stage companies, and so the Bay area tends to stabilize around more disruptive, especially software, deals than the Boston area.
I don’t think non-competes have much real influence.
Many years ago, a friend of mine who worked at a well known film manufacturer in their IT department sought a similar position with another company that manufactured office machines. (Both Fortune 500)
To his surprise, a VP from his film company was the person to tell him that he was going to get an offer from the office machine company. As it was explained to him, the two corporations had a “gentleman’s agreement” not to solicit employees from each other and so the office company reached out to the film company to tell them that they did not solicit but would be offering this guy a job because he came to them on his own.
I hear this sort of thing is common in today’s tech world as well. Just another way to keep working people in their place.
I’m reasonably sure that the exchange you describe is illegal. It was a violation of the applicant’s privacy. It could be interpreted as an illegal restraint of trade. I’m pretty sure that Apple got into serious trouble with state of CA for doing just this sort of thing.
Any employee who is laid off needs to know what to look for from their employer, what sort of clauses are ok in a severance packages, how to properly apply for unemployment compensation, and so on. Any female employee or anybody over 50 should be acutely aware of their rights under various anti-discrimination statutes. Many employers will significantly sweeten their severance package in exchange for a release from anti-discrimination claims — often, a mere mention of the topic is enough (if the employer knows that that the employee knows, the employer often already has a pre-approved extension available).
In a field like high-tech, a contributor or manager really SHOULD have an attorney who understands employment and intellectual property law.
Seriously!
I work in a company that has a “gentleman’s” agreement with several other similar firms that they will not poach and/or interview each others employees without checking first.
Nothing in writing or official, but it exists.
Like kickback schemes, such unofficial “no poaching” agreements have always existed. In many states (I invite an attorney to chime in) they are also illegal.
I’m just saying….what’s all this nonsense about “high tech” and universities? those are for places like Nevada where Tesla is going and Atlantic City where they are converting the empty abandoned casino halls into universities.
Hmm..
Possibly this is why health exchanges and the like have been so hard for government to build: members of our political class know less than they need to about tech.
Baker not remembering edX is not that big of a deal. See above and answer below.
Is everyone going from the Globe article? I know someone who was there (a tech person) and he thought Baker did really well, and Coakley did not.
“Disrupt” in 2014 is a very common word all over the business world. Coakley’s not in the business world so I can see why she has no idea what it really means. If you think it’s important, then she’s behind the curve.
So Peter Kadzis (formerly Phoenix, now everywhere) said “Obamacare computer” (exact quote) this morning on Fox25. How important is technology to someone like him?
Massive Open Online Courses
I don’t really care if Baker does not know what edX is, but when he pulls that out as an example and can’t come up with the name he looks foolish.
so he’s not used to repeating it.
As a campaigner he’s been hammering home the same points for months.
All candidates misspeak or can’t remember. It’s just the nature of the game.
One thing that strikes me about both this issue and the casino issue is the relative lack of any response on this site from Coakley supporters or from anyone associated with the campaign.
I was a Berwick supporter, delegate, and convention whip. That likely means I’m tagged as a safe vote in Coakley’s universe, but it might be nice to be asked.
But, more important, I’m a software guy. Heavy manufacturing isn’t coming back to Massachusetts in any desirable future; if Boston is to arrest its slide toward becoming an unimportant provincial town, the Akron on the East, it’s going to need to depend on science and engineering.
In that context, you’d have expected the campaign to brief their candidate decently. A question about non-competes is going to be an obvious possibility in any tech setting, and questions about Uber and AirBNB are going to be likely in the vicinity of any tech campus. Nor are these questions very difficult to answer — either on the scene, or in damage control here on BMG.
This is a disturbing lapse.
There are even more than two sides to this issue.
Everyone talks about “investing in employees” and non-competes give the employer more confidence to do that (there’s a old joke about not investing in companies where the assets ride the elevators). Employee might not get as much training or exposure.
It’s not just a technical issue. Would you want your salespeople to be able to jump ship to your competitor at anytime with all that proprietary information in their head?
There would be substantial ramifications through business.
Consultants of all stripes (and temps) typically cannot go to work at client with some compensation going to the firm. Those firms would suffer as they lost staff.
Most likely there would be other legal strategies developed.
There’s many more points. it’s (getting rid of them) not just good for tech businesses and employees, bad for employers.
Pure and simple. I can see the validity of a non-compete with a partnership if one partner wants to sell the shares, but to tell a laborer that their sort of labor is now confined puts labor at a serious disadvantage.
I would support non-competes a bit if companies were run by stake holders and not share holders.
Non-competes are different than non-disclosure or confidentiality agreements. If an employee signed an NDA, he or she would be violating that if he or she shared that information with the new employer. Non-competes are unnecessary bars on working when there are legitimate protections (which no one wants to eliminate) that protect what the employer fears to lose.
like maybe weaknesses of the product, or selling methodologies. They might know who doesn’t like the company’s services and might like to switch,
I’m only suggesting that an employee may have a lot of valuable proprietary information in their head. Companies may then have to adjust to the thought that all employees could be “informants” one day and feel a need to adjust accordingly, and that’s not helpful.
A lot of that might be covered under an NDA. Customer information, at a minimum, would. Of course, it’s hard for someone to segregate that knowledge from how they work, but there are protections, even if disclosure would be hard and expensive to prove.
I get that companies would want to keep that person from a competitor, but they shouldn’t be able to have broad ability to restrict that person’s ability to make a living. If corporate espionage was a big problem, we might need them. For the modern tech world, it’s not necessary.
No agreement that prevents an employee from working in their chosen profession is enforceable (generally). Employers know this.
The implications of salespeople changing companies have been known for as long as there have been companies and salespeople. One reason sales people are paid as much as they are is because their portfolio comes with them to each employer. Many, some sales people tell most, customers are loyal to the salesperson first, the company second, and a product or product line third.
This is also a reason why commissions and “incentives” are typically a MUCH larger portion of the compensation package of a sales rep. The current employer wants to do everything possible to encourage the sales person to make EVERY sale possible as soon as possible — in part, to discourage sales people from “banking” prospects in anticipation of their next job change.
Bear in mind that in most situations, the sales person brought as much into the company as he or she takes away when they move on.
Once again, non-competes strike me as a business irritant and little more.
but all of those issues can be dealt with in a new law. I don’t see an evidence that CA law has resulted in economic doom for that state. In any case, Coakley and Baker have appeared to have decided to sit on the sidelines on this issue.
It’s like no place else in the country. I wouldn’t draw conclusions from it. As far as MA is concerned we’d have to look to TX or NC for other tech centers.
If I was them I’d sit on the sidelines too. The business community and the legal community (both who want the status quo) are much more important to their efforts.
That is a lazy hand-waving answer. What is so magical about CA that would mean we would have problems that they do not?
In CA most conditions that we would hand wring about here are horrific on the face on them.
Housing is un-effing believable expensive.
Living costs in general are much higher.
Public transportation sucks.
Traffic is terrible. Commutes are outrageous.
Most of the tech people don’t even send their kids to the local schools. Menlo Park for example is 18% Hispanic and their schools are 75% Hispanic (and poorly rated, too)
Yet people still want to work there.
So your statement
has no value.
Yes, CA is expensive. Boston is also quite expensive. Boston is much closer to CA than TX or NC in cost of living. But what does that have to do with non-competes in any case?
Are you arguing that non-competes somehow put a damper on business growth that prevents Boston from becoming too desirable?
I’ve worked on both coasts, in high tech, both as an entrepreneur and as an employee. Here are some points you seem to overlook:
– Weather: CA does not have hurricanes, snowstorms, cold weather. Yes, it has earthquakes and fires, but nobody seems to care. The average high-tech worker in CA is STRONGLY attracted to the weather.
– Beautiful people: Like it or not, the perception is that CA has more beautiful women and more handsome men in comparison to MA.
– More open lifestyle: Rightly or wrongly, the bay area has always been perceived as a place that is more receptive “open”, “alternative” or “unusual” lifestyles. It is no accident that the sexual revolution of the 1960s arguably began in San Francisco.
– West-facing, vs East-facing, coastline. Something magical happens when the sun is close to ocean. In Massachusetts, that can only be experienced at sunrise. In the bay area, that happens at sunset. There is no possibility of any MA region successfully competing with, for example, Half Moon Bay at sunset — a rich variety of ocean-front restaurants, bars, jazz, whatever, a quick ride from both SF itself and most of the peninsula.
– More accessible creature comforts: More and better restaurants. More and better wine. More and better vegetables.
– More outdoor activities: MUCH better skiing closer. MUCH better water sports, nearby. More places to walk, ride bikes, swim, run … pretty much everything outside.
The folks in CA told me that they don’t care much about housing because they spend so little time indoors that it doesn’t matter. Salaries are higher to balance higher costs of living, and the likelihood of making enough money from your own startup that you don’t care is astronomically higher. Many of the workers we’re discussing are in the bay area because they don’t have and don’t want children. Many more are happy to pay for private schools.
My view is that we need to find ways to leverage the assets we already have, and build our economy around those strengths. That’s why slashing public transportation funds, public education funds, raising property taxes on universities, and all that sort of thing is so counterproductive (in my view).
– Yes, all the candidates should have been prepared. I’m not sure I agree that disruptive technologies and non-competes should have automatically been anticipated.
– Even within this thread, we differ on the exact definition of disruptive. So maybe we could cut the candidates some slack on that. Uber, for example (as I understand it) makes disruptive use of existing technology. And it competes on price in an old school way. From a policy point of view, the main issue is how it competes with regulated taxi services.
– As a former CEO, Baker should have wiped up the floor on this one. He apparently didn’t, so Coakley wins by default.
– I’m not disturbed by the lapse, but I might be if I less political and more technical. There’s a slight whiff of entitlement throughout the thread. Politicians can’t know everything. But I do agree that they need to be better on tech topics.
Maybe politicians can’t know everything, but coming to a high-tech forum in Boston as unprepared as they apparently were is a lapse for each candidate.
Some of our BMG community may not be aware of all this, but terms like “disruptor” and “disruptive” DO have very well-defined answers — there are correct and incorrect answers. A candidate and his or her staff should know them, even if we here (or journalists) don’t. What would we say about a business leader who clearly had no clue about what the term “compound interest” meant?
Surely the succession of high-profile hi-tech failures in the last year provides SOME evidence of why technical competence is an absolute requirement of governor and/or governor’s staff.
When the high-tech/biopharm/financial services industry has a cold, the entire region’s economy is deathly ill.
A prospective governor surely does need to be better on tech topics.
Does it introduce well-defined chaos?
But this is nevertheless an unforced error by Coakley– going to a group of people with specialized interests and concerns, and who play a significant role in the local economy, a role that liberal government types want to grow because that role tends to produce high-paying jobs, and saying “I cannot be bothered to learn about your specialized interests and concerns. Please vote for me, because as governor I will look after your interests and concerns, whatever they are, better than that guy over there.”
She might as well have said “What, was I supposed to stand out in the cold and shake hands?”
The only saving grace for her campaign is that the other candidate was also unprepared.
What a great pair of candidates these are.
When I say “in a technical sense”, I mean the formal definition of chaos — a pattern that is apparently random, yet emerges from a sequence of strictly determined rules.
Economists model markets and industries. Those models look a lot like meteorological models used for hurricane forecasting or climate predictions. No one run of a model is particularly reliable — but an ensemble of runs of different models gives a remarkably clear and accurate picture of an envelope that will contain the actual solution.
A “disruptor” causes a period of rapid change and oscillations in a market model. That period is chaotic in nature — it emerges from well-defined rules, it has well-defined limits, it lasts for a predictable period, and so on. It is NOT random. The post-chaotic equilibrium is very different from the pre-chaotic state.
So, in answer to your question, yes — it introduces well-defined chaos into the market.
Historian Jill Lepore has conveniently provided us with a useful bibliography on “disruption” and its dissemination both as a buzzword and as a potentially useful concept to economic history.
Her original article in the New Yorker, which calls a lot of Clayton Christensen’s methodology into question, is pretty interesting.
It came out June 23rd, so now we know that neither Charlie Baker nor Martha Coakley were relaxing after their respective conventions with a nice breakfast on the terrace and a pile of all the New Yorkers that they hadn’t read yet. That kind of bothers me.
Well said.
But I think you will admit that this counterintuitively named concept falls outside the realm of the layperson. I am somewhat familiar with it, but not so comfortable that I could repeat your definition, and I’ve worked in and around tech for a long time.
At some point, there’s some slack to be cut for the AG, on tech concepts. I would say it’s hard to pinpoint. Disruptive is right on the border.
No, the libertarian-leaning tech constituency was offered no compelling reason to vote for Coakley, none what so ever. She sounded like an old cigar chomping pol trying to make sense of what ‘young people’ wanted to hear. Completely out of her league on this questions. Hardly surprising to find an HMO CEO was unfamiliar with modern technology and extracting efficiencies-but the fact that Coakley had no idea what she was talking about at all makes this a win by default for Baker. At least that safe socially moderate Republican has some idea of what MOOCs are, even if he gets the names wrong. And a big win for McCormick (though really, this was a play to his base which was about as wide as the conference hall it was held in)
Great piece.
http://www.boston.com/business/news/2014/09/30/here-where-martha-coakley-stands-noncompete-clauses-wait-nobody-has-any-idea/2zIAhktR93Wt4IjUS1p3nN/story.html
… “I got caught being ethically challenged but I still want to convince myself I’m not evil and I still want to make money off my exploitation.” Uber is a perfect example as they have distinguished themselves among the herd of very ethically challenged entrepreneurs by the speed with which they discarded their ethics when challenged.
The very issue of non-competes illustrate this as it is nothing more than saying “I want to be able to steal someone elses ideas, like they do in California, without it being illegal…’
The “high tech” industry, of which I have been a part for almost twenty years now, is made up of people. They are no different from other people. A bio-tech entrepreneur is just a greedy biologist. Henry Ford wasn’t a particularly stellar human. Neither is Elon Musk. When Google came out with their ‘don’t be evil’ slogan, years ago people wondered, aloud, at the distance between ‘don’t be evil’ and ‘be good’… and the fun that Google’d have with that. There is nothing special about ‘high tech’ that requires a candidate, any candidate to act as though they’re visiting Hogwarts or meeting with the Illuminati. And, not unlike lawyers, high tech entrepreneurs exploit gray areas a lot. They get to wave some beeping, blinky, sleek and futuristic handheld device (far be it from me to call it a ‘wand’) and call it ‘disruptive’ to excuse what would, in other contexts, be nothing more than childish behavior in pursuit of profit.
Charlie Baker is employed by General Catalyst, a VC firm specializing in giving money to the ethically challenged and I suspect that Charlie Baker might even know where a few of the high-tech bodies are buried… That explains his reticence to say anything substantive. And I suspect that Martha Coakley knows a crook when she sees one –and she has tact– which explains why she didn’t connect with this audience.
I get that you nurse great hurts from the ethically-challenged hi-tech industry. I get that you apparently need to believe that if “GOP=evil” then “DEM=good”. I even get that you come down in favor of non-competes — though I must say that yours is the first claim I’ve seen that desiring to move from a low-paying hi-tech job to a better paying hi-tech job makes one an ethically-challenged intellectual property thief.
The fact that, to you, “disruptive” is apparently a magic incantation out of the world of Hogwarts reflects your lack of awareness of current economic and business theory and practice. That’s ok, you’re not running for governor. The fact that you connect your ignorance about that with your quaint and mistaken ideas about life in hi-tech — no doubt inspired by your own painful experiences — is again your own issue.
I see ZERO evidence that Martha Coakley “knows a crook when she sees one”. If that were true, there is simply NO WAY that Michael McLaughlin, John O’Brien, Sal DiMasi, and a VERY LONG list of other crooks could have perpetrated their crimes literally under her nose while she was Attorney General.
That dog won’t hunt.
…Aren’t you the guy who get’s all a lather whenever some cop gets a new gun? Somebody, somewhere, considers military weaponry in the hands of local cops as ‘disruptive technology’. Are you opposed to casinos? That, too, is ‘disruptive technology’. Newt Gingrich re-invented politics in the 1990’s by being ‘disruptive’. James Cameron considers his contributions of 3D to be ‘disruptive’ to cinema. I think he’s nearly ruined the entire industry.
Still think ‘disruptive’ is only and always ‘good’? I don’t. In fact, it rarely is…
I repeat — and I don’t limit my condemnation to the hi-tech industry, my experience notwithstanding — the use of the term “disruptive” is merely cover for breaking the rules and getting away with it. That’s all it is. There’s nothing special about the hi-tech industry other than some new product everybody gushes over allows them to justify the behavior: look, over there, a shiny new iPhone! Pay no attention to the 13 yr old Chinese girl who put 300 of them together over the course of her last 12 hour shift. Hey, look, Uber does something cool! Never mind the shortcuts and anti-competitive practices they’ve put in place. Google isn’t evil! Yay us. It isn’t good either… so what is it?
Martha Coakley goes to a ‘hi-tech’ conference (and I’ve been to my share and then some) where everybody pats themselves on the back for how clever they are — including how cleverly they navigate the grey areas — and fails to connect. And you are shocked at this? This is not Martha Coakleys fault.
1. I don’t think you are getting what “disruptive” means in this context, Mr. Vezzini, inconceivable as that may be. It has zero to do with rules, or the breaking of rules, and has no moral component at all. People who do not know what the hell they are talking about keep using the word to mean “profitable” even though it does not mean what they think it means.
2. The point of all this is that this was a missed opportunity by the candidate. Why would the candidate go to the conference if not to make a connection with the attendees? Isn’t there an election next month, in which the candidate is hoping to get more votes than the other candidates? If the failure to make a connection with potential supporters is not the candidates’ goal, then who is supposed to do that?
3. If the candidate shares your view of what “disruption” means, then why did the candidate not denounce the entire high-tech business sector, which spends its time seeking disruptive innovation, as an evil that would be better banished from the Commonwealth?
They were all crooks, and Baker’s knows it, and Martha too, but she’s too tactful to say. Gotcha. Tact is a valuable trait in our chief law enforcement officer.
How’s the voter outreach going?
…
I did not say that anybody at the conference was a crook, although given half the chance I don’t doubt their willingness. I don’t regard this behavior as any different from any other collection of people too smart for their own good, hi- lo- or anywhere- tech…. I did say that Uber and others were ethically challenged and that the article makes clear that those in attendance think this makes them effective and profitable. They are, again, not acting differently than many in business and have the built in cover of spiffy devices, new ideas or ‘progress’ to make themselves feel better about their behavior. The article quoted genuflects before the underlying premise of wholesome geeks toiling for the greater good when in fact quite the opposite is true.
Martha Coakley was not likely to connect with the audience that was there because she knows a crook when she sees one and they upend the notion of crook into hero worship: they like to think ‘disruptive’ is something they’d like to do. In short, keeping quiet — that is to say, having tact — is probably the only behavior on her part that wouldn’t draw whiny persiflage from the geek set. I guess even that didn’t help all that much.
But the point is that, with such a disconnect, there is hardly any likelihood that Coakley could have scored any points with this crowd.
That you’ve scored any points with this audience.
Martha needs better cheerleaders. This is some sad stuff.