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airocker parent
So if you are against this, you are okay with Coca Cola’s secret to be divulged by any employee to any competitor? If you cannot let companies maintain trade secrets, you may as well close them down.
sircastor
This implies that any employee at Coca Cola knows and has access to the secret formula, which is of course, not true. And even if it were true, there's a substantial difference between a specific, limited piece of information (such as the recipe for Coca Cola) and broad concepts about operating in an industry.

I work in the Robotics industry. While the algorithm for our path planning would be a trade secret, how path planning is pursued is not. It's a fundamental concept in robotics. To extend the metaphor, it would be as if my company thought that any robotics work that involved path planning would violate their IP, because I did path planning work with them. It's nuanced to be sure, but some companies are very aggressive as to prevent you from having mobility in your career. Sometimes in a genuine effort to protect their IP, but also sometimes to reduce your negotiating power or punish you.

airocker OP
There is a difference between trade secrets and non compete. If you can compete with the company without using trade secrets, like make a drink that people like without using Coca Cola secret, it is fine.
93po
as far as i can tell there are a million sodas that are extremely close to coca cola and coca cola is still doing just fine
sircastor
Getting off topic, there's an interesting This American Life story about the Coca Cola formula, and why there are many extremely close formulas, but no exact replicas.

[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/427/original-recipe

baobun
My head canon of the secret recipe is the Kung Fu Panda ending.

Protagonist gets to open the vault of secret formula after decades working their way to the top. Inside is a Coke label with the ingredients part unprinted.

It was always the brand.

airocker OP
Brand takes money to build. IF an employee took the secret to their rich uncle when coke was small, we would not be talking about Coke. Whatever small the formula was.
airocker OP
I think if the extremely close replicas ever threatened Coke's existence, they would sue. Especially if a former employee started it. I think trade secret protection is the only thing that enables a company to operate. Especially small companies, otherwise only large companies can operate. Any employee with a rich uncle can finish the small company off without this protection.
airocker OP
That’s my whole point. They are not using Coke’s formula
harimau777
But they are using functionally equivalent formulas and Coke is still fine.
airocker OP
if coke did not have deep pockets, it would have gone under without this protection.
93po
there are a million different manufacturers of, for example, hot dogs, and those hot dogs basically taste all the same to everyone, and yet they're all making basically identical hotdogs and doing fine
airocker OP
why downvote this? I have gone through this route and can vouch this is for a good cause, this conversation may mislead people into believing stealing is okay.
detaro
because it's an obvious straw man.
airocker OP
Maybe it is not, you need much more context about the OP to declare this as a straw argument. Confidentiality agreements are generally very boilerplate. If someone is thinking that this is preventing them from working at something, they are possibly just not understanding what stealing means. This guy possibly had similar understanding of laws: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-executive-s...

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