Jobs was told anti-poaching idea likely illegal

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/21/us-apple-lawsuit-idUSTRE80K00G20120121

by FluidDjango • 15 years ago

84 51 15 years ago

Its disgusting to see that in this day and age that large companies can be actively engaged in such collusive anti-competitive practices. I dont care who they are or whether or not they knew that what they were doing was illegal - the architects of this 'gentlemans agreement' should have time in jail for this.

spindritf• 15 years ago

Jail time for agreeing not to cold-call employees of another company? ~~There is no evidence for anything more, and I don't know if there is any evidence that they actually followed through~~ (the history of cartels show that those agreements were rarely adhered to strictly, it seems even more unlikely considering how those companies are hurting for talent).

Edit: OK, kryptiskt has a point.

kryptiskt• 15 years ago

> Jail time for agreeing not to cold-call employees of another company?

There are evidence of worse than that:

"The evidence states that the defendants agreed not to poach employees from each other or give them offers if they voluntarily applied, and to notify the current employers of any employees trying to switch been. They also agreed not to enter into bidding wars and to limit the potential for employees to negotiate for higher salaries."

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/damning-evidence-emerges-in...

debt• 15 years ago

Apple creates such innovative products yet seems to subscribe to such regressive social policies. I have trouble gauging whether their products should be considered progress when things like this anti-poaching policy come to light.

kstenerud• 15 years ago

They're a large corporation with shareholders to satisfy. With so much economic incentive to cheat it's not very surprising that they do. Disappointing, but not surprising.

va_coder• 15 years ago

What is theft?

Apple is suing multiple companies in the name of IP theft. Well I think these anti-poaching agreements are a form of theft. Employees did not receive fair market salaries.

It's not black and white, but you can't say Apple is 100% correct in going after IP theft and yet they are 100% innocent in pursuing these non-poaching agreements.

moonchrome6• 15 years ago

>Employees did not receive fair market salaries.

Wait - what ? When consumer groups decide to boycott a product does that mean they are denying the producer a fair market price ?

ryanmolden6• 15 years ago

Consumer boycotts are rarely about price, if the price of a good is too high people simply don't buy it, which is a clear signal to the seller. A boycott is not denying anyone any right as there is no 'right' that people are compelled to buy the product you are offering.

Contrast this with what this case alleges, that Apple, Google, etc.. entered into an active agreement that not only would they not actively recruit (I am fine with that agreement) but more so they would not even hire if someone came to them completely 'out of the blue' but happened to work for one of these other companies currently. Further, they would actually alert the employer, likely so the employer could take some action against their property...I mean employee.

The stupidity of ideas like this is they are counterproductive. If your employees are 'shopping around' or seriously entertaining recruitment offers it likely means they are unhappy in your employ. In this case it is best for everyone for them to go elsewhere. You know how you retain good employees? By giving them challenging work, minimizing stupid bureaucratic taxes, avoiding silly office politics, paying them fairly and treating them with basic dignity and respect. What a concept.

gergles• 15 years ago

I wonder how the Google fanboys will reconcile this with "Don't Be Evil". Colluding to keep salaries low and to prevent career mobility for your employees is pretty fucking evil in my book.

pyre• 15 years ago

  > I wonder how the Google fanboys will reconcile
  > this with "Don't Be Evil"

Nope. This isn't likely to start a flame war/pointless Internet argument at all...

SquareWheel• 15 years ago

I'm not sure I understand why these anti-poaching agreements are or should be illegal. I understand the argument to be that, with no where else to go, they can lower the salaries of highly-skilled employees. But isn't there always somewhere else to go? If Apple employees can't go to Adobe, there's always Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and a sea of startups.

Apologies for my ignorance on the matter, but I'm just not seeing what the big deal is.

thurn• 15 years ago

Unless you can't get a job at those companies, or don't want to work at them, or they also get involved in the collusion. Then you're actively being hurt.

3pt14159• 15 years ago

I agree. If natural persons can form collectives, guilds, and unions why can't corporate persons do the same? This is, of course, assuming that there is no special grant or license issued by the government to engage in that form of work.

thomaslangston2• 15 years ago

I don't believe corporate persons should have the same rights as natural persons and I'm not alone in that belief.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...

tikhonj• 15 years ago

Basically, they can't do that because it would undermine the market. The entire point of the market is to allocate resources effectively; if its rules allow multiple players to collude in an effort to change the results, it stops being effective.

thomaslangston2• 15 years ago

Well were do you draw the line? Do 100% of open jobs have to be affected, 90%, 80%?

Pragmatically, I think Apple and Google are both big enough that collusion between them is going to have an effect on the market, even if no one else is "in on it". Idealistically, I don't like a companies of any size colluding. It seems to undermine principals of the open market.

jlcx• 15 years ago

It seems to me that the issue with this is the potential deception. If you know that two companies have this agreement, and you work for one of them, you will know that trying to switch between them won't get you anything good, so you'll look elsewhere instead. What if these agreements were allowed, but had to be shared with employees? Would such a requirement be legitimate and sufficient?

rue• 15 years ago

Collusion is bad even for free markets (let alone other economic models), but rather than enter that lengthy argument, I'll point out one thing: they did this in secret.

I'd be somewhat more understanding of your argument, if the companies had publicly declared they were colluding to keep wages down and prevent employee mobility amongst themselves.

How do you figure prospective employees would have reacted to that?

jroseattle• 15 years ago

> I understand the argument to be that, with no where else to go, they can lower the salaries of highly-skilled employees. But isn't there always somewhere else to go?

Sure, but let's change the context of the list and see if it makes a difference. Consider the following:

"If {some-company} employees can't go to {another-company}, there's always fast food, gas stations, grocery stores, logging and a sea of startups."

As absurd and bizarrely absolute as this sounds, the notion is the same: there's a list of alternatives that is deemed acceptable by parties other than you, the employed.

Still interested in letting others determine the available sources of your livelihood?

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

"They also agreed not to enter into bidding wars and to limit the potential for employees to negotiate for higher salaries."

But... but... but...

If companies can't be allowed to limit salary negotiations, how else can they claim there's a shortage of skilled talent in the US, necessitating importing cheaper labor?

Macsenour3• 15 years ago

This completely fits with what we know about Jobs, he felt laws didn't apply to him. I hesitate to say this is an "Apple" policy when it was Jobs calling another CEO and proposing a gentleman's agreement.

smokinn• 15 years ago

Why do you hesitate to say it was an Apple policy? The whole HR staff at both companies were involved. The fact that it was personally negotiated by two people at the top has no bearing on the fact that the companies were abiding by it.

These types of whole-company-on-board policies change departments permanently as well. If HR were willing to poach they would have ended up with "specialists" whose entire jobs were to basically "infiltrate" (either literally or externally at social functions) other companies, figure out who to poach and get them. None of those exist at those companies because of this policy.

molmalo2• 15 years ago

I think that qualifies as industrial espionage. There are laws that forbid that behavior. And it is punishable with jail time. I don't know how many CEO's are willing to bet their necks doing that.

Macsenour3• 15 years ago

I hesitate because there is a difference in my mind between a stated policy and something that is discouraged from the top due to a phone conversation or one time email.

jeffdavis• 15 years ago

I'd be interested to know what "anti-poaching" actually means. It could mean several things, which I'm listing from most reasonable to least reasonable:

* Don't try to sabotage the other company's projects by explicitly recruiting key people at crucial times for the project; but it's fine to hire for your own company's productivity.

* Don't use the competing company as just a pool of candidates (e.g. stand outside their door asking people to apply to your company); but if you happen to find them through other means (e.g. they come to you, you find them at a conference, etc.), then hire them.

* Don't ever hire directly from the other company.

* Don't hire someone from a competitor even if they already left.

* Don't hire someone that ever worked for a competitor.

So, how far do the actual agreements go? Did I miss a potential level of "anti-poaching"?

Macsenour3• 15 years ago

I agree with the first 3, as part of the "policy", not sure about the last 2. I don't think the last 2 could be considered poaching.

wycats• 15 years ago

This headline is a good example of the problem with the passive voice. My first assumption when reading the headline was that an Apple lawyer told him that. A better headline would be something like:

"Palm CEO Told Jobs Anti-Poaching Pact 'Likely Illegal'"

In general, using the passive voice in a news context anonymizes the subjects of a particular story. In this case, the headline writer probably did so in order to make Jobs the only subject of the headline, but it hides very important information about the story.

You're probably thinking that the first sentence provides the information, but studies show that a large percentage of news readers read only the headline (I suspect that is especially true about news aggregators), and that there is a precipitous decline in readership in every sentence thereafter.

As a result, newswriters usually pay a lot of attention to making sure that headlines and article ledes have as much pertinent information as possible. As it should be.

molmalo2• 15 years ago

I think the reason behind this title it to attract more eyes to the story. Jobs sells. Palm CEO ? Who care what palm' CEO says?

Yahoo News is a notorious example of using the titles to make people read the full story. And I think it's pretty common elsewhere.

baddox• 15 years ago

How does this have anything to do with the passive voice? They could easily have written "Jobs told by Palm CEO that deal was likely legal."

Jobs was told anti-poaching idea likely illegal

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