
Steve Jobs wasn't even okay with Google hiring former Apple engineers - anderzole
http://www.tuaw.com/2014/03/27/steve-jobs-wasnt-even-okay-with-google-hiring-former-apple-engi/
======
spinchange
>Adding a bit more context to these emails, a 2008 article from TechCrunch
details that Hullot and other members from Apple's Paris engineering team were
actually given pink slips.

So he was not okay with Google hiring former engineers Apple _let go._
Unbelieveable.

~~~
allochthon
_Unbelieveable._

At the level of principle, I agree. At the level of practicalities, knowing a
little about Steve Jobs, this is believable, unfortunately.

~~~
soperj
Hopefully history remembers him as the dick he really was.

~~~
protomyth
I doubt it since many historical figures that be look up to were bigger dicks.

~~~
balladeer
Yes, but as long being a dick is concerned Jobs was class apart.

~~~
toolz
I dunno, Gandhi is the most obvious and he was WAY worse than Jobs.

~~~
protomyth
Ask the Dakota about Lincoln and see what they think.

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nezza-_-
I wonder if in the ongoing process of this 'scandal' any numbers will appear
on how many people were rejected because of such agreements. This is such an
unfair move towards people who have great talent who might just be better off
working for Google instead of Apple or vice versa because of their mindset. I
hope for high penalties for the involved companies.

~~~
tsax
Screw 'penalties.' Have you looked at Wall Street over the past decade? Every
month or so there's some 'settlement' with a regulatory agency with some fine
or the other for all kinds of issues. Class-action lawsuits also enrich the
lawyers mostly. It would be best if the engineers themselves would get
compensated, but not sure how it would be possible to identify the plaintiffs.

~~~
JonFish85
And honestly, you'd have trouble convincing many people that wages were kept
all that low. What's the median salary of an engineer in the Valley? [1] would
seem to indicate a starting range in the low 6-figures is common. I don't know
if these things go to juries, but if it came down to that, I imagine that an
engineer complaining of a low 6-figure salary with stock options will convince
a jury that (s)he is really being hurt that much will be very tough.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/record-salaries-for-valley-
pr...](http://www.businessinsider.com/record-salaries-for-valley-
programmers-2013-10)

Edited to fix grammar.

~~~
reboog711
The Valley is also an expensive place to live. I was at a conference in San
Jose; and the organizers donated a portion of their income to a local Charity.

The charity organizer spoke a bit during one of the keynotes and said that any
income under $70K was considered below poverty level due to the cost of
living.

With that said, a 6 figure salary is not hurting, but not rolling in it.

~~~
dopamean
I kind of think the high cost of living thing is not that relevant here. The
cost of living is high because the people who live there make a lot of money.
If they made more money the Valley wouldn't be more affordable for them. It
would just be more expensive.

~~~
slantedview
Not everyone in the bay area makes a lot of money. There are a lot of blue
collar/service workers who don't even know what hackernews is who would kill
to make that 70k a year.

~~~
dopamean
Correct but they have nothing to do with the conversation we're having.

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kolbe
What I'm mostly learning though this saga is that an uncomfortable number of
SV executives are feckless weaklings in the face of a sociopath like Jobs.

~~~
GVIrish
I don't think it's necessarily that other SV executives were weaklings, it's
that they thought the non-poaching agreement was in their interests too. Jobs
was definitely cunning and ruthless but he wasn't all brute force, he set up a
deal whereby these other companies would see things his way due to their own
greed.

I think that scenario played out a couple of times in Jobs' career. He would
do something ruthless or somewhat distasteful, but because the people he was
pushing his idea on stood to profit in some way they agreed with it, even
though it enriched Jobs a lot more than it enriched them.

~~~
derefr
> Jobs was definitely cunning and ruthless but he wasn't all brute force, he
> set up a deal whereby these other companies would see things his way due to
> their own greed.

So, basically, he did the same thing for employees that he did for iTunes
music licensing.

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leoc
Don't forget, by the way, that when Steve Jobs left Apple to found a new
company in a line of business perilously close to Apple's he took a number of
important Apple people with him, despite giving a misleading promise not to do
so.

~~~
MBCook
Jobs had a personal scorched-earth vendetta against Google ever since they
stabbed him in the back with Android (as he seems to have viewed it).

I imagine if he thought there was any way he could accomplish it he would have
banned Google employees from buying Apple products or getting within 1000 feet
of an Apple store.

~~~
doktrin
Your comment doesn't apply here. Android was released in 2008 and these emails
were written in 2006.

This is not correspondence between companies at war. On the contrary, Apple
was leveraging their strategic partnership with Google to block the hires.

~~~
smacktoward
Google acquired Android Inc. in 2005:
[http://www.webcitation.org/5wk7sIvVb](http://www.webcitation.org/5wk7sIvVb)

So it was before the shape of Google's mobile ambitions became clear, but the
acquisition made it pretty obvious that Google had _some kind of_ mobile
ambitions.

~~~
doktrin
There is nothing to indicate Google & Apple relationships soured before 2007,
when Android was unveiled. Prior to that, by all public accounts they enjoyed
a relatively amicable partnership.

Moreover, simply having a mobile ambition isn't that big of a deal in and of
itself. Jobs viewed the close imitation of iOS features as being tantamount to
theft. I'm thinking of grid layout, multitouch, swipe to unlock, etc. This is,
at least by his own account, what lay behind all the "thermonuclear war"
hyperbole.

~~~
ben1040
Yep. Recall even that Eric Schmidt was on hand for the iPhone reveal in 2007
and went on stage to tout the device's integration with Google services.

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fidotron
There are two things here that are new. Firstly it's got an international
angle, and laws around the world do definitely differ on things like poaching
and anti-competes.

More interesting is Alan Eustace's comment about the value of the Apple
relationship to Google, in 2006. Were they really that close? I struggle to
think of why they viewed their relationship as of particular strategic
importance at that time.

~~~
sytelus
Apple was putting Google Search and Maps in front and center of iPhone
experience among other things. This would be hugely valuable relationship,
ofcourse.

~~~
minwcnt5
The iPhone didn't come out until 2007.

~~~
mynameisvlad
That partnership didn't come about on the day the iPhone was released. It had
to have been brewing for quite some time.

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johnrob
I think these poaching agreements had more to do with IP than salary
escalation. The interaction here makes it clear - the employees were no longer
with apple, hence there was no hypothetical counter offer to give.

~~~
rhizome
There are already laws against transmitting IP, there was no agreement
necessary to deal with it. Risk-minimization, perhaps, but companies have been
dealing with business secrets since before the Industrial Revolution. Frankly,
I think an unexamined angle is the fragility of these companies that the
agreements imply.

------
qq66
The tone that Eustace, a Senior Vice President at Google, uses with Jobs is
beyond deferential.

"Based on your strong preference that we not hire the ex-Apple engineers,
Jean-Marie and I decided not to open a Google Paris engineering center. I
appreciate your input into this decision, and your continued support of the
Google/Apple partnership."

I'd be surprised to see one of my peers use this kind of tone with the
President of the United States.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
The POTUS seems a tad more sane than Jobs with regards to taking offence to
trivial matters.

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jroseattle
Wow Google, as if your embarrassment couldn't go any further on this story.

Not to get dramatic, but we're talking about dignity, integrity, the moral
center to understand the difference between right and wrong. Didn't _anyone_
at Google have the ability to get beyond groupthink?

All that money and resources and control and influence, and the only thing
that mattered to everyone was....getting more of it. How sad for all of you in
those companies to act like this and affect the livelihood of others, all in
the name of a few bucks.

Funny thing about money; it's so damn expensive.

~~~
abc_lisper
Very well put :)

The surprising thing is people tend to get worse as they get richer.

------
laureny
> This is such an unfair move

Which unfair move?

Google could have gone ahead and hire these people anyway. Nothing prevented
them from doing so except their decision to not risk angering Jobs.

~~~
jjoonathan
This isn't about being intimidated by Jobs, it's about colluding to defeat an
iterated prisoner's dilemma that lies at the heart of the value proposition of
free market economics. They _are_ capable of thinking more than one move
ahead.

Jobs's wrath was a tiny concern next to the prospect of losing tens or
hundreds of millions a year to engineers that could suddenly start playing big
companies off one another.

~~~
psbp
I've read all the released documents, I get the impression that most of this
was instigated by Jobs. Sure they played along for this purpose, but the
threats and escalation started with the Job's emails in 05.

------
martin1b
Sounds to me like Steve was a serious control freak.. Article after article,
it's the same thing... Don't get me wrong. The stuff his company did was cool,
but cheesh..

------
frade33
As a CEO, this situation is more than complex. There are times when you are
working with 'partners' or anyone in the same industry. And you can not avoid
collaborating with each other. Apple needed Google, as much as Google needed
Apple.

However then there is the ugly part, since your partners are in the same
industry, they are ultimately your competitors too. It's not about laws or
specific rules. It's about human nature, you will be less pissed if someone
hooked up with your Ex, but things could be entirely different, if your Ex is
hooked up with one of your friends.

This is perhaps not a smart analogy, but it's somewhat relevant, remember a
time when Eric was on Apple board, and then they went on to launch Android? It
certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth and incites a war.

~~~
mempko
So what you are saying is that the "everyone acts in their self interest" free
market ideology is bullshit and that we are all in fact people after all?
Avoiding the ravages of the market is important for profit. Capitalists always
hated the market when it comes to their own business...

~~~
frade33
I am not saying what Apple did was right. Actually this is anti-competition
and as a consumer I hate it. However I was making a totally different point,
being a CEO of small enterprise myself, I just pointed out, that perhaps I
would have the same restrictions in place, but it does not justify them.

------
pbreit
I'd be surprised if any CEO was OK with former employees going to an arch
competitor.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
It's perfectly legal for them to not be OK with it. It's not legal to get the
competitor to agree not to hire them.

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_greim_
Can someone speculate as to why Jobs would have been opposed to this? The only
thing I can come up with is that Jobs was trying to minimize the amount of
times that "I know a guy at Google" was spoken in the halls of Apple.

~~~
evan_
He might not have wanted engineers to carry knowledge of Apple's programs and
projects to a competitor.

~~~
bane
Every employee signs an NDA, problem solved.

~~~
gress
You forgot the /s

------
dannyr
I hope Apple and Google would get penalized aside from paying penalties.

Both companies have plenty of cash so even a $100 million penalty won't make a
difference.

I don't have any idea though on what they could be penalized with aside from
money.

~~~
me2i81
I always thought collusion was one of those things for which executives could
be personally prosecuted and jailed if they were found guilty, but I'd guess
it depends on the jurisdiction.

------
raghus
Steve Jobs wasn't okay with Google hiring anyone who ever applied for a job at
Apple. Or really, even people with last names that began with "Mac"

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slantedview
Worse than the anti-competitive angle of this story is the idea that Jobs
prevented engineers, with families, from obtaining jobs. That's just
inexcusable.

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jaunkst
Don't know a clever way to say this but.. Bureaucracy sucks. List a million
reasons why it impedes a happier life.

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jburwell
Do no evil?

~~~
gaius
Do know evil

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l0stb0y
Just when I thought Jobs couldn't be a bigger scumbag! Someone dig up his
grave and make an example of him in front of all of Silicon Valley. It's what
he would have done.

~~~
jtfrench
Now I see what pg was talking about comment moderation. C'mon guys. Let's
class it up.

~~~
MBlume
I'm confused, has "pending comments" not been fully activated yet?

~~~
MBCook
I have over 1000 karma, and I've never seen it. I know it was given a quick
trial after it was first announced, but from my surfing since then it doesn't
seem to have been turned back on.

