Exactly. Just as long a you never work in consumer electronics ever again, there will be no problems. If you want to work in consumer electronics, you need to stay with Apple. Simple.
And, you know what would happen if Apple tried this (and it didn't get thrown out for Apple's employee's basic human rights? At first, likely not much, but as employees try to leave apple and get stopped, it would be a HUGE red flag to any potential talent that might otherwise want to work for Apple. As a computer engineer, I would refuse to work for any company that said I could never work in the field. If they did that, I'd have no recourse about what to do if the situation went south. What if my manager was a jerk? What if I wanted to move somewhere else for personal reasons and Apple didn't do business there? What if I never got a raise, despite deserving one? I'd be stuck working for Apple forever. No thanks, Apple would quickly lose potential engineers, and the experienced engineers would leave Apple in droves.
And of course, without these engineers, Apple wouldn't be able to make great products.... They'd manage the next 5 years okay... Releasing minor updates when they can of their products, but eventually the markets would speak, and Apple's value would tank. In the tech industry you're only as good as your latest product, and when your latest product is a couple years old, you have next to no value.
Of course, engineers hired by Apple have to sign NDAs (just like everywhere else), and sometimes sign basic non-compete agreements that say they can't work on very similar projects at other teams (although I think CA law voids these non-compete agreements). The main goal is to prevent IP theft... If Google used these engineers to steal designs from Apple, or find out Apple's plans, that is illegal (and many companies have gotten in serious trouble over that). Of course, most big companies are VERY careful to avoid this, as the costs can be huge.
Notice how Google lied again to Apple by saying they were not making a browser. Google is had been practicing lying for awhile now. Also notice how they said the people can not respond to a google posting but someone who they already hired gave them a list of safari engineers and they were actively going after them.
Yep, because when a competing company asks what products I'm working on, I would always be honest.
If I were a software engineer I would love to be courted by companies who wanted my services. As a person with some skills (no matter what they are) I sell my work for money. I work to get money to live my life. I don't live to support some conglomerate and their profits. Any agreement a company made to stifle my life and my ability to earn money would be an act of aggression toward me. It would be a betrayal. If I worked for a company that I liked and they did all they could to prevent me from learning of other opportunities, I would get very angry. I would lose all trust for them and any semblance of allegiance to them.
Why should any company be allowed to block another company from offering me more money or some better opportunity? If Apple or any other company wants to prevent the loss of employees then they need to give their employees an equal or better reason to stay. When they won't do it then the employees should do what is best for themselves and change jobs. Corporations don't care about people. They care about profits. The second you aren't needed you will be kicked to the curb. Never believe otherwise.
If I were a software engineer I would love to be courted by companies who wanted my services. As a person with some skills (no matter what they are) I sell my work for money. I work to get money to live my life. I don't live to support some conglomerate and their profits. Any agreement a company made to stifle my life and my ability to earn money would be an act of aggression toward me. It would be a betrayal. If I worked for a company that I liked and they did all they could to prevent me from learning of other opportunities, I would get very angry. I would lose all trust for them and any semblance of allegiance to them.
Why should any company be allowed to block another company from offering me more money or some better opportunity? If Apple or any other company wants to prevent the loss of employees then they need to give their employees an equal or better reason to stay. When they won't do it then the employees should do what is best for themselves and change jobs. Corporations don't care about people. They care about profits. The second you aren't needed you will be kicked to the curb. Never believe otherwise.
This could cost a lot. Potentially every employee employed by any of the companies in the cartels involved - if proven - could sue for loss of earnings for the years the alleged cartel operated. And interest. That could run into billions across the industry.
This could cost a lot. Potentially every employee employed by any of the companies in the cartels involved - if proven - could sue for loss of earnings for the years the alleged cartel operated. And interest. That could run into billions across the industry.
Steve Jobs caught in another conspiracy. Maybe Bromwich needs to be looking into all of Apples hiring and salary administration too.
Agreed, but this is exactly the reason why the DoJ is after them.
Yes, it would have been disruptive. Yes, it brings security/trade secret issues.
No, you can't start doing that kind of things, because it's one of the strengths of capitalism, the very doctrine that enabled those giants to be giants in the first place...
I disagree. Many of the advancements of tech has come from partnerships between honorable people. Google gained a lot from their Apple partnership, they were also given access to employees that they would not have had otherwise. If this was a non partner company I could see the problem. I can assure you that Apple will take more and more on house if they can't expect their partners to not actively go after the employees the send to work with them. I
It was a conspiracy to reduce someone's pay, or potential pay. Jobs had two options.
1) shout at Google and engineer a cartel.
2) Offer much more money to the engineers who were being targeted. If they were that good they were worth it. After all companies are often bought for millions, with the talent attached, often for the talent.
Yep and he chose #1 which is why Apple is being investigated by the DOJ...
Besides, When you're earning 10 bucks an hour, driving down wages is understandably fretful. But when you're earning 75 bucks an hour, it doesn't quite have the same weight of outrage.
Those kinds of workers would typically be salaried employees, not hourly wage earners.
And, you know what would happen if Apple tried this (and it didn't get thrown out for Apple's employee's basic human rights? At first, likely not much, but as employees try to leave apple and get stopped, it would be a HUGE red flag to any potential talent that might otherwise want to work for Apple. As a computer engineer, I would refuse to work for any company that said I could never work in the field. If they did that, I'd have no recourse about what to do if the situation went south. What if my manager was a jerk? What if I wanted to move somewhere else for personal reasons and Apple didn't do business there? What if I never got a raise, despite deserving one? I'd be stuck working for Apple forever. No thanks, Apple would quickly lose potential engineers, and the experienced engineers would leave Apple in droves.
And of course, without these engineers, Apple wouldn't be able to make great products.... They'd manage the next 5 years okay... Releasing minor updates when they can of their products, but eventually the markets would speak, and Apple's value would tank. In the tech industry you're only as good as your latest product, and when your latest product is a couple years old, you have next to no value.
Of course, engineers hired by Apple have to sign NDAs (just like everywhere else), and sometimes sign basic non-compete agreements that say they can't work on very similar projects at other teams (although I think CA law voids these non-compete agreements). The main goal is to prevent IP theft... If Google used these engineers to steal designs from Apple, or find out Apple's plans, that is illegal (and many companies have gotten in serious trouble over that). Of course, most big companies are VERY careful to avoid this, as the costs can be huge.
Phil
Recognise the pattern and you'll stop responding to the poster soon.
This is about poaching and actively recruiting. No one prevented these people from pursuing opportunities at different companies. I don't quite get the outrage or what the DoJ's interest is in this.
Exactly. Just as long a you never work in consumer electronics ever again, there will be no problems. If you want to work in consumer electronics, you need to stay with Apple. Simple.
I suspect that the people Google was interested in poaching would be making far more than a mere $75/hr by at least several multiples. Apple, along other big companies, may have broken the law here, but I seriously doubt they cared much at all about "keeping wages down". Apple probably viewed it as a trade secret issue, but primarily they probably didn't want the disruption that would come from losing key people.
Yes keeping wages under control was important too, evidenced by Meg Whitman's comments( HP) to Eric Schmidt.
Google isn't the only company given ultimatums by Steve Jobs over employees either. Palm was threatened with retaliatory patent lawsuits if they didn't agree not to poach Apple employees. To Palm's credit they apparently told him to get lost in so many words. In contrast Sergey Brin and Eric Schultz were way too concerned with not upsetting Mr. Jobs and did absolutely the wrong thing. Google deserves whatever they get for this one, as of course Apple and any of the other conspirators do. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/01/angry-over-employee-poaching-steve-jobs-threatened-palm-with-patent-suit/
Legally, does it matter if this anti-poaching practice is maintained within a single large corporation. i.e., location or department X will not make an offer to an employee in location or department Y without all the managers agreeing, etc. before it is made. Including interviews.
Is this wrong to hold down the ability of individuals to transfer within a large corporation, say 30-40,000 people ? If practiced, this stifles the ability of individuals to go up or go around those on the ladder.
Those kinds of workers would typically be salaried employees, not hourly wage earners.
Unimportant distinction. They were still restricting the upward compensation movement of their employees by colluding with another company. Whether the primary goal was to keep wages down or not is not important.
I'm sure many in Apple Legal were not very happy with Jobs doing this.
In short, Sergey was CC'ing Campbell to act as an intermediary because the guys doesn't have the balls nor principles to respect someone who gave mentoring advice when he was nothing but a pissant student at Stanford.
In short, Sergey was CC'ing Campbell to act as an intermediary because the guys doesn't have the balls nor principles to respect someone who gave mentoring advice when he was nothing but a pissant student at Stanford.
Respecting Steve Jobs requests is what's landed them in court over poaching agreements. They never should have capitulated. Yeah, they shoulda had more "balls" and done the same as Palm. Bad on Google for not doing so, and absolutely a case of doing evil IMO.
Actually it is not, all I said is the pay to pull someone out of a competitor is not what the person is worth or value of doing the job they do, it is the value of slowing your competitor down. To put numbers around it, if the engineer was making $50K at apple and Google offer him $200K to leave, they person is now not worth $200K nor is the job is doing has a market value of $200K. the $200K the cost Google is willing to pay to slow Apple down. The FTC is claim that company were trying to keep wages below the $50K which the real value of the job the person was doing when in fact they were agreeing not to drive salary up to the $200K mark. I see this happen personally, company try and recruit talent away and they offer them some big number and they come back to their current employer and say they were just offer X will they match it to stay. If the original company does match and the it get out to other employees they all get the bright idea of doing the same thing to inflate their pay and companies get into a situation of deciding to pay or let them go. I even send a particular nationality of engineer actually sit in the conference room and write on a white board how much they were getting paid, (forget some we junior engineer only been out of school for a few years and others had way more experience in terms of yrs and knowledge) and they all decide that since they were all engineers they should be paid the same pay just because they we doing similar work. Talk about causing problems since now the more experience people then demand more if they gave the newer people more money.
Trust me this was not about trying to keep people's wages below the market, it was to keep companies from activity recruiting their employees and driving wage up to take or keep the person. I work on one company and we hire a tour bus with big signs of it that said come on in with your resume we ready to hire and park the damn thing right outside our competitors builds in various areas of the country. Talk about some nasty legal letters.
So this is not new, but hell the government is going to make an example of all these companies, even those is nothing illegal about saying you agree not to activity recruit a person, you can not say they can not hire the person if they walk in your door on your own which it what looks like google did when they got Steve's nasty call, but steve's call is hearsay.
Comments
Hearsay evidence
Exactly. Just as long a you never work in consumer electronics ever again, there will be no problems. If you want to work in consumer electronics, you need to stay with Apple. Simple.
And, you know what would happen if Apple tried this (and it didn't get thrown out for Apple's employee's basic human rights? At first, likely not much, but as employees try to leave apple and get stopped, it would be a HUGE red flag to any potential talent that might otherwise want to work for Apple. As a computer engineer, I would refuse to work for any company that said I could never work in the field. If they did that, I'd have no recourse about what to do if the situation went south. What if my manager was a jerk? What if I wanted to move somewhere else for personal reasons and Apple didn't do business there? What if I never got a raise, despite deserving one? I'd be stuck working for Apple forever. No thanks, Apple would quickly lose potential engineers, and the experienced engineers would leave Apple in droves.
And of course, without these engineers, Apple wouldn't be able to make great products.... They'd manage the next 5 years okay... Releasing minor updates when they can of their products, but eventually the markets would speak, and Apple's value would tank. In the tech industry you're only as good as your latest product, and when your latest product is a couple years old, you have next to no value.
Of course, engineers hired by Apple have to sign NDAs (just like everywhere else), and sometimes sign basic non-compete agreements that say they can't work on very similar projects at other teams (although I think CA law voids these non-compete agreements). The main goal is to prevent IP theft... If Google used these engineers to steal designs from Apple, or find out Apple's plans, that is illegal (and many companies have gotten in serious trouble over that). Of course, most big companies are VERY careful to avoid this, as the costs can be huge.
Phil
Notice how Google lied again to Apple by saying they were not making a browser. Google is had been practicing lying for awhile now. Also notice how they said the people can not respond to a google posting but someone who they already hired gave them a list of safari engineers and they were actively going after them.
Yep, because when a competing company asks what products I'm working on, I would always be honest.
If I were a software engineer I would love to be courted by companies who wanted my services. As a person with some skills (no matter what they are) I sell my work for money. I work to get money to live my life. I don't live to support some conglomerate and their profits. Any agreement a company made to stifle my life and my ability to earn money would be an act of aggression toward me. It would be a betrayal. If I worked for a company that I liked and they did all they could to prevent me from learning of other opportunities, I would get very angry. I would lose all trust for them and any semblance of allegiance to them.
Why should any company be allowed to block another company from offering me more money or some better opportunity? If Apple or any other company wants to prevent the loss of employees then they need to give their employees an equal or better reason to stay. When they won't do it then the employees should do what is best for themselves and change jobs. Corporations don't care about people. They care about profits. The second you aren't needed you will be kicked to the curb. Never believe otherwise.
This could cost a lot. Potentially every employee employed by any of the companies in the cartels involved - if proven - could sue for loss of earnings for the years the alleged cartel operated. And interest. That could run into billions across the industry.
This could cost a lot. Potentially every employee employed by any of the companies in the cartels involved - if proven - could sue for loss of earnings for the years the alleged cartel operated. And interest. That could run into billions across the industry.
Steve Jobs caught in another conspiracy. Maybe Bromwich needs to be looking into all of Apples hiring and salary administration too.
Yep and he chose #1 which is why Apple is being investigated by the DOJ...
Those kinds of workers would typically be salaried employees, not hourly wage earners.
That's ridiculous.
And, you know what would happen if Apple tried this (and it didn't get thrown out for Apple's employee's basic human rights? At first, likely not much, but as employees try to leave apple and get stopped, it would be a HUGE red flag to any potential talent that might otherwise want to work for Apple. As a computer engineer, I would refuse to work for any company that said I could never work in the field. If they did that, I'd have no recourse about what to do if the situation went south. What if my manager was a jerk? What if I wanted to move somewhere else for personal reasons and Apple didn't do business there? What if I never got a raise, despite deserving one? I'd be stuck working for Apple forever. No thanks, Apple would quickly lose potential engineers, and the experienced engineers would leave Apple in droves.
And of course, without these engineers, Apple wouldn't be able to make great products.... They'd manage the next 5 years okay... Releasing minor updates when they can of their products, but eventually the markets would speak, and Apple's value would tank. In the tech industry you're only as good as your latest product, and when your latest product is a couple years old, you have next to no value.
Of course, engineers hired by Apple have to sign NDAs (just like everywhere else), and sometimes sign basic non-compete agreements that say they can't work on very similar projects at other teams (although I think CA law voids these non-compete agreements). The main goal is to prevent IP theft... If Google used these engineers to steal designs from Apple, or find out Apple's plans, that is illegal (and many companies have gotten in serious trouble over that). Of course, most big companies are VERY careful to avoid this, as the costs can be huge.
Phil
Recognise the pattern and you'll stop responding to the poster soon.
Those kinds of workers would typically be salaried employees, not hourly wage earners.
Yes but, by using simple math, you can break their wage down into an hour figure for easy comparison.
Exactly. Just as long a you never work in consumer electronics ever again, there will be no problems. If you want to work in consumer electronics, you need to stay with Apple. Simple.
Would someone please ban this obvious troll?
Yes keeping wages under control was important too, evidenced by Meg Whitman's comments( HP) to Eric Schmidt.
Google isn't the only company given ultimatums by Steve Jobs over employees either. Palm was threatened with retaliatory patent lawsuits if they didn't agree not to poach Apple employees. To Palm's credit they apparently told him to get lost in so many words. In contrast Sergey Brin and Eric Schultz were way too concerned with not upsetting Mr. Jobs and did absolutely the wrong thing. Google deserves whatever they get for this one, as of course Apple and any of the other conspirators do.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/01/angry-over-employee-poaching-steve-jobs-threatened-palm-with-patent-suit/
Adobe too got on Apple's radar after having contact with one of it's employees, with Mr Jobs issuing a veiled threat to go after any and all of Adobe's top talent if they wouldn't agree to a no-poaching agreement. Adobe rolled over just like Google.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/google-apple-class-action-poaching-steve-jobs-wage-theft
Is this wrong to hold down the ability of individuals to transfer within a large corporation, say 30-40,000 people ? If practiced, this stifles the ability of individuals to go up or go around those on the ladder.
Comments ?
Those kinds of workers would typically be salaried employees, not hourly wage earners.
Unimportant distinction. They were still restricting the upward compensation movement of their employees by colluding with another company. Whether the primary goal was to keep wages down or not is not important.
I'm sure many in Apple Legal were not very happy with Jobs doing this.
Eloquently said.
Thats a distinction without a difference.
Actually it is not, all I said is the pay to pull someone out of a competitor is not what the person is worth or value of doing the job they do, it is the value of slowing your competitor down. To put numbers around it, if the engineer was making $50K at apple and Google offer him $200K to leave, they person is now not worth $200K nor is the job is doing has a market value of $200K. the $200K the cost Google is willing to pay to slow Apple down. The FTC is claim that company were trying to keep wages below the $50K which the real value of the job the person was doing when in fact they were agreeing not to drive salary up to the $200K mark. I see this happen personally, company try and recruit talent away and they offer them some big number and they come back to their current employer and say they were just offer X will they match it to stay. If the original company does match and the it get out to other employees they all get the bright idea of doing the same thing to inflate their pay and companies get into a situation of deciding to pay or let them go. I even send a particular nationality of engineer actually sit in the conference room and write on a white board how much they were getting paid, (forget some we junior engineer only been out of school for a few years and others had way more experience in terms of yrs and knowledge) and they all decide that since they were all engineers they should be paid the same pay just because they we doing similar work. Talk about causing problems since now the more experience people then demand more if they gave the newer people more money.
Trust me this was not about trying to keep people's wages below the market, it was to keep companies from activity recruiting their employees and driving wage up to take or keep the person. I work on one company and we hire a tour bus with big signs of it that said come on in with your resume we ready to hire and park the damn thing right outside our competitors builds in various areas of the country. Talk about some nasty legal letters.
So this is not new, but hell the government is going to make an example of all these companies, even those is nothing illegal about saying you agree not to activity recruit a person, you can not say they can not hire the person if they walk in your door on your own which it what looks like google did when they got Steve's nasty call, but steve's call is hearsay.