I have personally witnessed the frustrating side of this "no poaching" pact. A close friend was tired of the "Manager Arrogance" at one of these colluding companies.
He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly.
Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S.
The wage hike would have been considerable for my friend (you can guess the two companies - Arrogant vs Top Payer) & he was pretty upset to learn that the real reason was Jobs being a Huge Asshole and bullying everybody into such a blatantly illegal pact.
So this is a very real "wage theft" collusion case.
Unfortunately most of the parties involved had the "good" sense to NOT document it officially so the Smoking Gun might be hard to prove conclusively.
There was even a "no hire" list at one of these companies tacked on the wall of a HR Manager with the Caption "If you hire from there, we will fire (u) from here."
The CIPD and other HR regulating bodies need to permanently disbar any member found guilty of this. and for HR directors the the Judge should name them as "not fit and proper persons to be a director" and probably the CEO on Chairman for good measure.
Of course if the Hr director turned states evidence they might be let off with a slap on the wrist.
If you fall into this group and want to file a claim to be part of the settlement, you have until March 19th to do so (which you can do via the above website).
I'm really glad to see that this issue is getting more coverage in the mainstream press. There was an article/editorial a while back (discussed on HN) from the guardian, but unfortunately, the writer used the incident (the collusion) to go on a rant about how valley leaders are hypocritical libertarians. That (reasonably enough) lead to a long debate about whether the leaders are libertarians even if they are mainly democrats, etc...
This article stuck to the point much better. I do think Mr Levy (quoted in this article) went a little far in suggesting that the engineers are a very well heeled class.
"Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, has the highest average wage in the country,” said Stephen Levy, senior economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “San Francisco and San Mateo are not far behind. It would be a mistake to think of these plaintiffs as an oppressed set of victims."
Agreed, programmers in the bay area aren't dust bowl refugees. However, we need to recognize that the relatively high salaries don't go far in high cost regions (where many of these companies are located), and aren't that high relative to the higher wages typical of these regions.
Application developers in SF earn, on average, a tiny bit less than RNs and a whisker more than dental hygienists (links at end). I'm 100% ok with good wages for nurses and dental hygienists, but keep in mind that these tech companies have been almost frantically lobbying congress to do something about a severe shortage of highly educated programmers and engineers.
Well, first and foremost, how about you stop colluding to suppress their wages? That might attract a few more people into the field.
It's certainly not the case that IT people are hurting terribly but it makes it hard to argue that there is in fact a significant shortage or that we need programs to attract more CS majors rather than, say, simply paying at least as much as some of the other things students choose to major in.
Is there indeed a shortage of app developers because of the low wages? I was always thinking of software as a segment where entry barriers are relatively low - compared to, say, medicine - and pay is exceptionally good. Of course, everybody wants to be paid better, but it doesn't look like software engineers are suffering especially badly from low pay.
> It also offers a portrait of Silicon Valley engineers that differs sharply from their current caricature as well-paid villains who are driving up the price of real estate in San Francisco and making the city unbearable for others.
What? "unbearable"? That seems a little out of place. Would most NYTimes readers have any idea what he's talking about?
From the author's recent articles list:
--
In little more than a decade, Google has become essential and omnipresent. Now the question is whether people will start to resent and oppose it.
--
As entrepreneurs invade regulated industries and evade traditional watchdogs, the question of who is responsible when something goes wrong looms large.
--
Airbnb likes to say that it gives more people the money they need to pay their bills. But new research suggests that as the sharing industry spreads, more people are going to need that money, because they’ll be unemployed.
--
Uber and a Child's Death
--
Hard-hit by recession, many in Europe have questioned whether jobs at Amazon’s warehouses there are good for the economy or dehumanizing.
--
seems to exclusively write negative stories about bay area tech
We could use a bit more self-reflection and a little less shooting the messenger around here.
If you only want to read happy happy joy, disruption yeah, cheerleader stories about how awesome the tech industry is, I suggest TechCrunch.
Our industry has a pervading attitude of treating anybody who is not "us" as roadkill on the highway to progress. That's going to turn against us a lot harder then these few relatively mild articles.
This case is a beautiful demonstration of the dynamics of both "free market" and regulation. Free market dynamics demand (in this case as in all cases) that large players must never compete on prices or wages (as your competitors have the resources to fight back, so competition on price just makes everyone worse off). On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market (antitrust), as well as a tool wielded by capitalists to strengthen their stranglehold (patents).
It is perhaps worth reminding that the interplay between regulators and the market, and their co-evolution, have taken a different historical path than in Europe. While in Europe big government preceded laissez-faire, or at least, evolved hand-in-hand, the US was largely unregulated for many years. The result was that Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power in the US, advancing the "economy" but at the same time practically enslaving the population. It was after many years of cries for help by the American people, and a long struggle led largely by the press, that Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government, wrestle back some power, and save the people from feudalist oppression.
Ironically, many Americans forgot what the US looked like when the government was powerless, and the market was allowed to roam free. People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about when playing out in the real world.
Obviously, as patent law demonstrates, regulation can be (and is) abused by capitalists. As the world changes, power shifts, and players adapt new strategies in this constant power struggle, both the market and regulation need to evolve hand-on-hand. The big question is what will play the role the press once played in exposing the workings of the intricate system of interests that is the economy?
" On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market "
I don't see any evidence that regulation stopped the behavior in this case. Perhaps the law will be used after the fact to sue or jail some people, but it doesn't seem to be what actually stopped the problem.
As another poster said, the class action date ranges end in 2009 because Facebook (a private company) wouldn't play ball.
Capitalism is a messy system, but it does tend to self correct in the long run.
> Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power ... after many years of cries ... Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government ... People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about
If large players routinely pay top specialists low wages, they will cease to be large pretty soon, since their talent will be leaving for players paying better money and making those players large instead. Some people, of course, are impatient and want their enormous wage to be even more enormous - and now! And they want it while carrying no risk at all. That's where politicians come in - delivering other people's money while moving risk to somebody else is their specialty. Of course, their primary clientele is the same large players, but minor politicians are not above serving smaller audiences and endorsing extensive and complex regulations that would cost large players a tiny bit of their profits while making compliance so hard that smaller players would find it very expensive to compete. Which is all for good, so politicians can proceed with their good work. At the end, everybody wins - impatient people get a tiny bit of cash from large players, lawyers get a huge pile of cash from large players for managing the lawsuits, large players get higher barriers to entry, politicians get votes for restoring the order and everything is great because nobody ever asks where the money comes from.
This is really pathetic. I can understand companies being ruthless in maximizing their profits but this sort of move is seriously counter productive. If the wages are not competitive it also means less incentive for bright youngsters to get into these professions. If this kind of agreements become more common, I think that will be like we killing our future.
Companies do not, usually, plan decades ahead. They manage the next quarter and plan the next three years. Youngsters entering or not a professional area is something that takes 20 years to produce a measurable effect.
Government, is the one that should do the multi decade planning.
Engineers are so highly underpaid for the value they contribute to these companies. What's the average salary, $140k? It should be $300k, half a million total comp conservatively. Even at that amount, employers would still be getting a 50-75% margin on you. It's insane how much we are ripped off. Good eningeers can literally make or save companies 10s of millions a year, but are never compensated for it.
As with earlier numbers: sounds like it should be enough for anybody, but I can think of a number of other companies which have been excluded from the suit which should be included. Cisco comes to mind.
Can Software Engineers in California that weren't working at one of these companies get in on this class action? I mean even if you weren't at one of those companies its easy to see how suppressing wages at the largest companies would suppress wages for the entire industry.
The sad part is that even though this behavior is illegal, no one will actually go to jail for this. Companies will pay a token fine (like Pixar and Lucasfilm did), and it'll be business as usual, but this time no emails and no documentation.
Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change.
> Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change.
That's pretty much it. Does the govt come down on corporations for such acts? One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents. More often than not, it is a fine and then things move on to find and execute a different loophole.
I'm still surprised Google was in on this considering they are developer friendly and are a "do-no-evil" company to a considerable extent. It was probably pressure from Jobs. Developers hurt by this should squeeze them for every penny possible.
Google is no more a "do-no-evil" company than most. They might be slightly above average. Their "employee friendliness", as far as it goes, is blatantly self-serving, designed to create extreme allegiance to the company and possibly long working-hours. This is not in itself "bad", it's just that it isn't altruistic in the slightest, either.
What you have described is Google's "brand image". It is carefully cultivated through PR and marketing to result in you having a positive impression of Google. You could uncharitably call it propaganda.
Google is pretty good at promoting this image, but that's all it is.
This is bound to happen in any industry where supply of talent exceeds demand AND the powers-that-be can get away with collusion (either by virtue of being 'private' or simply being powerful and thus not give a shit).
So what if one talented employee decided to quit one crappy company 'A' AND is unable to find work at the non-poach pact company 'B'? The place he quit will always find another willing sucker 'coz the supply is ever present (with, at most, a minor reduction in quality).
When supply exceeds demand, you do not need collusion, because there are unemployed workers who you can just hire at your target rate. If that is not enough money to entice them to work for you, then it would still not be enough even if you colluded.
What collusion allows is for the employers to maintain these low prices, even when demand exceed supply.
The drive to maximize profit by those in the executive suite has caused them to do some seemingly clever (according to those in power) things but are in fact stupid in the long term.
A few years ago I overheard a new senior programmer argue with the cfo why developers should get 2 big monitors instead of a small 19". The cfo initially refused to go along. Of course some of it was due to his desire to keep cost down, as every good cfo should. But then he joked every dollar saved would mean more for his christmas bonus. we were a small/friendly company so I guess that's why he felt it was ok to joke about it. But I do believe his ultimate reason was to keep cost down at any 'cost' so that his bonus check would be bigger, as his performance is evaluated on how he manages the cash flow.
What the cfo didn't see was the productivity gain that could be gained by the programmers having bigger monitors. And these programmers were making near 6-figure salary. Their combined man hour cost was greater than his. But a cfo was making a decision to fatten his bonus check. Obviously this was not a good choice for the firm to make but it had been going on for awhile until the new senior programmer spoke up.
And I think this kind of logic in executive suite is probably common everywhere.
Lastly, I think it's about time these big tech companies add profit sharing ON top of the base salary as part of the compensation package. Why should an executive make SO much more than master and phds who are adding real value to the company?
Wouldn't a better idea than putting up a 'no poaching' kind of exit barrier be to give 'bonus every X period of time' kind of incentive, for employees you value and would like to retain?
I wonder if in the world of technology it makes sense to retain a demotivated employee?
> I wonder if in the world of technology it makes sense to retain a demotivated employee?
It absolutely does. The nature of tech work practically demands that every employee develop intimate knowledge of the very specific domain his work touches. It takes so long for new hires to become productive that in most cases the bottom line begs you to hold on to anyone who already has that intimate knowledge.
On the other hand, keeping a tech employee motivated often looks like a fool's game to management. If he's good at what he does, he doesn't see the world the same way as they do. If you're a growth-oriented engineer, it makes sense for you to bounce around different companies so as to maintain a sense of movement and there's not much your employer can do to "maintain your sense of movement" because it's a completely alien concept to them and often presents as "unnecessary shit that will cost time and money and be risky". Your career goals will often clash hard against your company's needs.
End result? This situation where top talent sinks collude to reduce their engineers' inherent negotiating advantage. This practice would be widespread, if only technology weren't such a wide field that any engineer with any desire at all for something better can very quickly find something. It only happened at the top level because that's the only circle in which there is no more upward mobility except among the same cloistered few.
Arguably this helped startups, since an ex Apple guy who couldn't go to Google could found a startup (and then maybe sell to Google later). Still lame though.
Serious question - will this do much? Seems like in the case of a win, the companies will give token amounts (9MM from Pixar for example) and the claimants (given there are 64000) will get a tiny little check.
Am I missing something? Is this worth pursuing for a prospective claimant?
OK, so you can stop the "no poaching" and you'll have:
--> smaller than they should be engineer wages --> higher engineer wages --> even higher engineer wages -->
...
--> absurdly high unsustainable engineer wages -->
...
--> more outsourcing --> even more outsourcing -->
...
--> massive outsourcing -->
...
...
...
--> smaller than they should be engineer wages
...I think the "evil masters" of this "no poaching" pact managed to prevent an engineers' job marked fluctuation. And you think about it, such a fluctuation would only have benefited the foreign outsourcing providers and encouraged the displacement of parts of tech industry outside US ...which imho would've have been a great thing for Europe's tech sector and maybe even for worldwide IT innovation as a whole, since lots of new pseudo-innovations start to sound more and more like "american-inbread ideas".
Engineers wouldn't price themselves so high that they would be outsourced: that only happens to people who don't have any room left to let their wages fall, either because they already earn too little to sustain themselves or there is a legal price floor (e.g., minimum wage). An engineer making $200k isn't going to starve from taking a 50% pay cut, and they'd certainly rather take that than no job at all.
What can the villains in this drama use as power to force their illegal price fixing on reluctant companies?
Just what you'd expect.
"Mr. Jobs proposed a no-poaching deal to Edward T. Colligan, Palm’s chief executive. Mr. Colligan responded that such a deal would be unfair to employees as well as “likely illegal.” Mr. Jobs then threatened to unleash Apple’s patent lawyers on Palm."
Yep. It's our badly broken patent system yet again.
Interesting, since most of Palm's ideas on smartphones pre-dated the iPhone. No wonder we've changed the patent law to first to file, rather than first to invent.
This is the 99% lead charge that annoys me the most. (especially since many of the people leading it aren't 99%'ers they just think they are)
The assumption is that the only places to work are the big companies. Anti-Poaching agreements are rarely about the Money and more about the "I won't steal your trade secrets if you don't steal mine" types of "we can't patent this stuff" stand offs.
It is also protection against having a company put another company out of business by "poaching".
You look at some of the teams at companies and you can see where a group of 10 guys went from company to company. When they all left most the time that company failed. You can't withstand a blow of having 40% of your team walk, and take everything they were working on to a larger competing company.
"Salary Fixing" doesn't work. Someone always offers 15% more to get better talent and when that eats in to the talent pool everyone else has to ante up as well.
Silicon Valley just feels entitled. Yeah it costs more to live there, but the expendable income of SV engineers is vast compared to engineers anywhere else in the US, and the world.
suprgeek|12 years ago
He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly.
Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S. The wage hike would have been considerable for my friend (you can guess the two companies - Arrogant vs Top Payer) & he was pretty upset to learn that the real reason was Jobs being a Huge Asshole and bullying everybody into such a blatantly illegal pact.
So this is a very real "wage theft" collusion case. Unfortunately most of the parties involved had the "good" sense to NOT document it officially so the Smoking Gun might be hard to prove conclusively.
There was even a "no hire" list at one of these companies tacked on the wall of a HR Manager with the Caption "If you hire from there, we will fire (u) from here."
walshemj|12 years ago
Of course if the Hr director turned states evidence they might be let off with a slap on the wrist.
ma2rten|12 years ago
raverbashing|12 years ago
birken|12 years ago
(a) for Apple from March 2005 through December 2009;
(b) for Adobe from May 2005 through December 2009;
(c) for Google from March 2005 through December 2009;
(d) for Intel from March 2005 through December 2009;
(e) for Intuit from June 2007 through December 2009;
(f) for Lucasfilm from January 2005 through December 2009; or
(g) for Pixar from January 2005 through December 2009.
Source: https://hightechemployeelawsuit.com/faqs/#q0
If you fall into this group and want to file a claim to be part of the settlement, you have until March 19th to do so (which you can do via the above website).
raverbashing|12 years ago
geebee|12 years ago
This article stuck to the point much better. I do think Mr Levy (quoted in this article) went a little far in suggesting that the engineers are a very well heeled class.
"Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, has the highest average wage in the country,” said Stephen Levy, senior economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “San Francisco and San Mateo are not far behind. It would be a mistake to think of these plaintiffs as an oppressed set of victims."
Agreed, programmers in the bay area aren't dust bowl refugees. However, we need to recognize that the relatively high salaries don't go far in high cost regions (where many of these companies are located), and aren't that high relative to the higher wages typical of these regions.
Application developers in SF earn, on average, a tiny bit less than RNs and a whisker more than dental hygienists (links at end). I'm 100% ok with good wages for nurses and dental hygienists, but keep in mind that these tech companies have been almost frantically lobbying congress to do something about a severe shortage of highly educated programmers and engineers.
Well, first and foremost, how about you stop colluding to suppress their wages? That might attract a few more people into the field.
http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b...
http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2013/12/17/what-the-most-co...
acdha|12 years ago
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm
It's certainly not the case that IT people are hurting terribly but it makes it hard to argue that there is in fact a significant shortage or that we need programs to attract more CS majors rather than, say, simply paying at least as much as some of the other things students choose to major in.
smsm42|12 years ago
nerfhammer|12 years ago
What? "unbearable"? That seems a little out of place. Would most NYTimes readers have any idea what he's talking about?
From the author's recent articles list:
--
In little more than a decade, Google has become essential and omnipresent. Now the question is whether people will start to resent and oppose it.
--
As entrepreneurs invade regulated industries and evade traditional watchdogs, the question of who is responsible when something goes wrong looms large.
--
Airbnb likes to say that it gives more people the money they need to pay their bills. But new research suggests that as the sharing industry spreads, more people are going to need that money, because they’ll be unemployed.
--
Uber and a Child's Death
--
Hard-hit by recession, many in Europe have questioned whether jobs at Amazon’s warehouses there are good for the economy or dehumanizing.
--
seems to exclusively write negative stories about bay area tech
bowlofpetunias|12 years ago
If you only want to read happy happy joy, disruption yeah, cheerleader stories about how awesome the tech industry is, I suggest TechCrunch.
Our industry has a pervading attitude of treating anybody who is not "us" as roadkill on the highway to progress. That's going to turn against us a lot harder then these few relatively mild articles.
dhoulb|12 years ago
pron|12 years ago
It is perhaps worth reminding that the interplay between regulators and the market, and their co-evolution, have taken a different historical path than in Europe. While in Europe big government preceded laissez-faire, or at least, evolved hand-in-hand, the US was largely unregulated for many years. The result was that Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power in the US, advancing the "economy" but at the same time practically enslaving the population. It was after many years of cries for help by the American people, and a long struggle led largely by the press, that Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government, wrestle back some power, and save the people from feudalist oppression.
Ironically, many Americans forgot what the US looked like when the government was powerless, and the market was allowed to roam free. People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about when playing out in the real world.
Obviously, as patent law demonstrates, regulation can be (and is) abused by capitalists. As the world changes, power shifts, and players adapt new strategies in this constant power struggle, both the market and regulation need to evolve hand-on-hand. The big question is what will play the role the press once played in exposing the workings of the intricate system of interests that is the economy?
crazy1van|12 years ago
I don't see any evidence that regulation stopped the behavior in this case. Perhaps the law will be used after the fact to sue or jail some people, but it doesn't seem to be what actually stopped the problem.
As another poster said, the class action date ranges end in 2009 because Facebook (a private company) wouldn't play ball.
Capitalism is a messy system, but it does tend to self correct in the long run.
mindslight|12 years ago
I'm confused - which side used the time machine?
smsm42|12 years ago
tn13|12 years ago
sergiosgc|12 years ago
Government, is the one that should do the multi decade planning.
hga|12 years ago
I believe that more than anything else, that's responsible for the Bay Area's long term technological ecosystem success.
twic|12 years ago
pyrrhotech|12 years ago
wildpeaks|12 years ago
collyw|12 years ago
cgriswald|12 years ago
dredmorbius|12 years ago
patrickmay|12 years ago
leoc|12 years ago
wavesounds|12 years ago
doktrin|12 years ago
Out of curiosity, why do you want to?
discardorama|12 years ago
Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change.
denzil_correa|12 years ago
That's pretty much it. Does the govt come down on corporations for such acts? One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents. More often than not, it is a fine and then things move on to find and execute a different loophole.
gizmo686|12 years ago
thinkcomp|12 years ago
http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1860459
curiousDog|12 years ago
pron|12 years ago
mratzloff|12 years ago
Google is pretty good at promoting this image, but that's all it is.
tostitos1979|12 years ago
discardorama|12 years ago
Except, today it's more like "Don't be evil*
* except where permitted by law and/or required for profit"
shiven|12 years ago
So what if one talented employee decided to quit one crappy company 'A' AND is unable to find work at the non-poach pact company 'B'? The place he quit will always find another willing sucker 'coz the supply is ever present (with, at most, a minor reduction in quality).
gizmo686|12 years ago
What collusion allows is for the employers to maintain these low prices, even when demand exceed supply.
dba7dba|12 years ago
A few years ago I overheard a new senior programmer argue with the cfo why developers should get 2 big monitors instead of a small 19". The cfo initially refused to go along. Of course some of it was due to his desire to keep cost down, as every good cfo should. But then he joked every dollar saved would mean more for his christmas bonus. we were a small/friendly company so I guess that's why he felt it was ok to joke about it. But I do believe his ultimate reason was to keep cost down at any 'cost' so that his bonus check would be bigger, as his performance is evaluated on how he manages the cash flow.
What the cfo didn't see was the productivity gain that could be gained by the programmers having bigger monitors. And these programmers were making near 6-figure salary. Their combined man hour cost was greater than his. But a cfo was making a decision to fatten his bonus check. Obviously this was not a good choice for the firm to make but it had been going on for awhile until the new senior programmer spoke up.
And I think this kind of logic in executive suite is probably common everywhere.
Lastly, I think it's about time these big tech companies add profit sharing ON top of the base salary as part of the compensation package. Why should an executive make SO much more than master and phds who are adding real value to the company?
smprk|12 years ago
I wonder if in the world of technology it makes sense to retain a demotivated employee?
vinceguidry|12 years ago
It absolutely does. The nature of tech work practically demands that every employee develop intimate knowledge of the very specific domain his work touches. It takes so long for new hires to become productive that in most cases the bottom line begs you to hold on to anyone who already has that intimate knowledge.
On the other hand, keeping a tech employee motivated often looks like a fool's game to management. If he's good at what he does, he doesn't see the world the same way as they do. If you're a growth-oriented engineer, it makes sense for you to bounce around different companies so as to maintain a sense of movement and there's not much your employer can do to "maintain your sense of movement" because it's a completely alien concept to them and often presents as "unnecessary shit that will cost time and money and be risky". Your career goals will often clash hard against your company's needs.
End result? This situation where top talent sinks collude to reduce their engineers' inherent negotiating advantage. This practice would be widespread, if only technology weren't such a wide field that any engineer with any desire at all for something better can very quickly find something. It only happened at the top level because that's the only circle in which there is no more upward mobility except among the same cloistered few.
twic|12 years ago
zcarter|12 years ago
Know who (with)holds information
Avoid information asymmetry
Nate75Sanders|12 years ago
rdl|12 years ago
tomzinter|12 years ago
Am I missing something? Is this worth pursuing for a prospective claimant?
nnq|12 years ago
--> smaller than they should be engineer wages --> higher engineer wages --> even higher engineer wages -->
... --> absurdly high unsustainable engineer wages -->
... --> more outsourcing --> even more outsourcing -->
... --> massive outsourcing -->
... ... ... --> smaller than they should be engineer wages
...I think the "evil masters" of this "no poaching" pact managed to prevent an engineers' job marked fluctuation. And you think about it, such a fluctuation would only have benefited the foreign outsourcing providers and encouraged the displacement of parts of tech industry outside US ...which imho would've have been a great thing for Europe's tech sector and maybe even for worldwide IT innovation as a whole, since lots of new pseudo-innovations start to sound more and more like "american-inbread ideas".
ceras|12 years ago
wnevets|12 years ago
puppetmaster3|12 years ago
tosseraccount|12 years ago
MarkPNeyer|12 years ago
shitlord|12 years ago
WildUtah|12 years ago
Just what you'd expect.
"Mr. Jobs proposed a no-poaching deal to Edward T. Colligan, Palm’s chief executive. Mr. Colligan responded that such a deal would be unfair to employees as well as “likely illegal.” Mr. Jobs then threatened to unleash Apple’s patent lawyers on Palm."
Yep. It's our badly broken patent system yet again.
RachelF|12 years ago
mrtree|12 years ago
People should be virtually rioting for this.
doktrin|12 years ago
This isn't breaking news. It's just the latest development in an old and ongoing story.
pekk|12 years ago
hanswesterbeek|12 years ago
JoeAltmaier|12 years ago
drakaal|12 years ago
The assumption is that the only places to work are the big companies. Anti-Poaching agreements are rarely about the Money and more about the "I won't steal your trade secrets if you don't steal mine" types of "we can't patent this stuff" stand offs.
It is also protection against having a company put another company out of business by "poaching".
You look at some of the teams at companies and you can see where a group of 10 guys went from company to company. When they all left most the time that company failed. You can't withstand a blow of having 40% of your team walk, and take everything they were working on to a larger competing company.
"Salary Fixing" doesn't work. Someone always offers 15% more to get better talent and when that eats in to the talent pool everyone else has to ante up as well.
Silicon Valley just feels entitled. Yeah it costs more to live there, but the expendable income of SV engineers is vast compared to engineers anywhere else in the US, and the world.
Zigurd|12 years ago