Chapter 43: The Poach
The first engineer left on a Tuesday. The second left on Thursday. By Friday, Sarah was standing in Daniel’s office with a look that could strip paint.
“Park Jihyun and Lee Dongwoo,” she said. “Both gone. Both to Mobion.”
“Mobion?”
“Mobion. They’re offering 40% salary increases, sign-on bonuses, and—this is the part that makes me want to set something on fire—equity in a Samsung-backed company.” Sarah sat down in the chair across from Daniel’s desk with the controlled violence of someone who was channeling rage into posture. “They didn’t just leave, Daniel. They were poached. Targeted. Mobion knew exactly who to go after—our two best backend engineers. The ones who built the core compilation module.”
“How did Mobion know who to target?”
“Because our engineers have LinkedIn profiles. Because the tech community in Korea is small. Because Park Jiho, despite his ceasefire coffee, is still a competitor who wants to win.” Sarah’s voice was ice. “The ceasefire was about pricing, not talent. He found a loophole and he drove a truck through it.”
Daniel sat back. The news hit him in layers—first the operational impact (two senior engineers gone, months of institutional knowledge walking out the door), then the strategic impact (Mobion now had people who understood Nexus’s architecture from the inside), and finally the personal impact (he’d shaken Jiho’s hand and agreed to compete fairly, and Jiho had immediately competed unfairly).
In my first life, this happened too. But later—during the Series B growth phase, when we were big enough that losing two engineers was an inconvenience, not a crisis. At this stage, with 25 employees, losing two senior backend developers is like losing two legs.
“Can we counter?” Daniel asked.
“Counter what? They’re already gone. Jihyun started at Mobion yesterday. Dongwoo starts Monday.” Sarah’s fists were clenched on the armrests. “And they took knowledge with them. Not code—our IP protections prevent that, thanks to Soyeon. But they know our architecture. They know our approach. They know the trade-offs we made and why.”
“That knowledge is two months old by the time Mobion can use it. Your architecture evolves faster than they can copy it.”
“That’s optimistic.”
“It’s realistic. You refactored the compilation engine three times in the last six months. By the time Jihyun explains the old version to Mobion’s team, you’ll be on a new version.”
“That assumes I have a team to build the new version with. I just lost twenty percent of my senior engineering staff.”
Daniel was quiet for a moment. The office hummed around them—keyboards, phones, the low murmur of a company that didn’t yet know two of its pillars had been pulled out.
“Call a team meeting,” he said. “All hands. In thirty minutes.”
“What are you going to say?”
“The truth.”
The all-hands meeting happened in the conference room—all 23 remaining employees packed into a space designed for twelve, some standing, some sitting on the floor, one person sitting on the 800,000 won chair (Marcus, naturally).
“Two of our engineers have left to join Mobion Technologies,” Daniel said. No preamble. No softening. The room’s energy shifted—people who hadn’t heard looked shocked; people who had heard nodded grimly. “Park Jihyun and Lee Dongwoo. They were offered significantly higher compensation and they accepted.”
“Are we in trouble?” asked Jung Soojin, one of Sarah’s junior engineers. She was twenty-three, six months out of KAIST, and had the wide-eyed concern of someone who had just discovered that startup life included not just free snacks but also existential crises.
“We’re hurt, not in trouble,” Daniel said. “Losing two senior engineers is painful. It slows us down. It means more work for everyone who stays. I’m not going to sugarcoat that.”
“Are they going to copy our code?” another engineer asked.
“No. Our code is protected by IP agreements that Soyeon drafted. If they reproduce anything proprietary, we sue. But they’ll share knowledge of our approach, which is harder to protect.”
“What do we do?” Marcus asked. Not because he didn’t know—but because the room needed to hear the answer from Daniel, not figure it out themselves.
“Three things.” Daniel went to the whiteboard. “One: we hire replacements. Immediately. Sarah has a shortlist of candidates. Interviews start Monday.”
“I have seven candidates,” Sarah confirmed. “Three from SNU, two from KAIST, two from industry. All vetted. All better than the people we lost.”
“Two: we accelerate the architecture refresh. The compilation engine that Jihyun and Dongwoo knew is version 2.3. Sarah’s been working on version 3.0, which uses a fundamentally different approach. We move the 3.0 timeline up by two months.”
“That’s aggressive,” Sarah said.
“Can you do it?”
Sarah looked at her remaining engineering team—eight people who were watching her with the focused attention of soldiers waiting for orders. “With the new hires? Yes. Without them? Also yes, but I’ll need more coffee.”
“Three:” Daniel turned back to the room. “We don’t retaliate. We don’t poach Mobion’s people. We don’t badmouth Jihyun or Dongwoo. They made a career choice. We respect it and we move on.”
“Why?” Minho asked from the back of the room. His voice was calm, but his eyes were hard. “They walked out on us for a Samsung paycheck. Why do we respect that?”
“Because we’re not Samsung. Samsung retaliates. Samsung plays power games. Samsung wins by making enemies afraid. We win by making friends want to stay.” Daniel looked around the room—at the faces of people who had chosen a startup over the safety of a chaebol career, who worked late not because they had to but because they believed in what they were building. “Every person in this room is here because they chose to be. Not because we offered the most money or the biggest brand. Because they believe in what we’re doing. That’s our advantage. That’s the thing Mobion can never buy.”
The room was quiet. Not the anxious quiet of a company in crisis—the settled quiet of a team that had just been reminded why they were a team.
“Any questions?” Daniel asked.
Soojin raised her hand again. “Can I have Jihyun’s monitor? It’s the 27-inch one.”
Sarah almost-smiled. “Yes. But you have to maintain his code for a month as penance.”
“Deal.”
The meeting ended. People filed back to their desks. The energy in the office was different—not relaxed, but focused. The focus of people who have been told the truth, who understand the stakes, and who have decided to stay anyway.
Daniel called Jiho that afternoon.
“Park Jiho.”
“Daniel Cho.”
Silence. Three seconds of it, during which both men calculated exactly how much the other knew and how much they were willing to acknowledge.
“You poached my engineers,” Daniel said.
“I recruited talented people who were available on the market.” Jiho’s voice was smooth. Professional. The voice of a man who had prepared for this call. “There’s no non-compete clause in their contracts, which I verified before extending offers.”
“There’s a ceasefire.”
“The ceasefire was about pricing and market positioning. Talent acquisition was never discussed. If you’d wanted a non-poaching agreement, you should have asked for one.” A pause. “Oversight on your part, Daniel. Not mine.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened. Jiho was right—technically, legally, the ceasefire hadn’t covered hiring. Daniel had assumed good faith. Jiho had exploited the gap.
In my first life, I would have retaliated. Poached his people. Launched a PR campaign. Made it personal. And the war would have consumed both companies.
Not this time.
“You’re right,” Daniel said. “It was an oversight. It won’t happen again.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the next time we meet, I’ll have a non-poaching clause drafted by a law student who makes Samsung’s legal team look like amateurs. And if you test it, she’ll bury you in litigation so deep you’ll need a submarine to find your stock options.”
Silence again. Longer this time.
“Your legal advisor. The SNU law student.”
“Kim Soyeon. She says hello.”
“She doesn’t seem like the ‘hello’ type.”
“She’s not. But I’m being polite on her behalf.”
Jiho exhaled. Not a sigh—something more resigned. “Daniel, for what it’s worth, I didn’t enjoy this. The engineers came to us through a standard recruiting process. I didn’t specifically target them.”
“But you didn’t stop it when you realized where they were from.”
“No. I didn’t. Because I’m trying to build a company too, and sometimes building means doing things you’re not proud of.” Another pause. “Does the ceasefire still hold?”
Daniel thought about it. The anger was still there—hot, sharp, justified. But anger was a resource, not a strategy. And Daniel had learned, across two lifetimes, that the decisions made in anger were the ones you regretted in clarity.
“The ceasefire holds. Amended to include a non-poaching clause. Soyeon will send the draft by Friday.”
“I’ll review it.”
“Review it quickly. She doesn’t like waiting.”
“Nobody in your company likes waiting. It’s your brand.”
“Speed and quality. That’s the brand.”
“I know.” Jiho’s voice softened. “Your engineers—the ones who stayed. They stayed because they want to. Not because they have to. That’s something money can’t buy.”
“I know.”
“Don’t lose that.”
“I won’t.”
The call ended. Daniel set his phone on the desk and stared at the ceiling for a long time. The anger was fading, replaced by something colder and more useful: resolve.
The ceasefire was naive. Not wrong—naive. I assumed good faith from a competitor because I wanted to believe that business could be conducted without casualties. And it can. But only if the rules are explicit, not implied.
Soyeon was right when she said trust is a two-way system. Jiho trusted me not to undercut his pricing. I trusted him not to poach my people. He kept his end. I assumed mine was implied. That’s my mistake.
Lesson learned. The hard way. The only way lessons ever stick.
He opened his laptop and drafted an email to Soyeon: Need a comprehensive non-poaching agreement by Friday. Include penalty clauses, enforcement mechanisms, and whatever else your legal brain deems necessary. Make it airtight.
Soyeon’s reply came in four minutes: Already drafted. I’ve been expecting this since the ceasefire. Attached. Review at your convenience.
Of course she already had it drafted. She’s Kim Soyeon. She probably had it drafted the day after the ceasefire coffee.
Daniel laughed. It was a tired laugh, the kind that comes at the end of a bad day that could have been worse. The engineers were gone. The knowledge was out. But the team was intact, the architecture was evolving, and Soyeon had a non-poaching agreement ready before he’d even asked for it.
Not a perfect day. But a survivable one.
And in the startup world, surviving was the first step to winning.