
Jobs was told anti-poaching idea likely illegal - FluidDjango
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/21/us-apple-lawsuit-idUSTRE80K00G20120121
======
va_coder
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.

~~~
moonchrome
>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 ?

~~~
ryanmolden
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.

~~~
moonchrome
>A boycott is not denying anyone any right as there is no 'right' that people
are compelled to buy the product you are offering.

As opposed to labor where you have a right to compel any company to hire you ?

~~~
ryanmolden
Where did I say you should 'compel' someone to hire you? All I said (or rather
implied) is that if you go to a place advertising employment opportunities,
you pass all of their tests/criteria for hire and then they don't hire you
because you work for someone with whom they have made one of these secret
agreements, that is a dysfunctional market. The fact these agreements were
generally secret says a lot about the people making them and the fact that
they knew full well it would be viewed _very_ unfavorably by their employees.
When you are instituting something you need to 'keep secret' from your
employees maybe you should really think hard about the validity of what you
are doing.

~~~
moonchrome
>The fact these agreements were generally secret says a lot about the people
making them and the fact that they knew full well it would be viewed very
unfavorably by their employees. When you are instituting something you need to
'keep secret' from your employees maybe you should really think hard about the
validity of what you are doing.

And what about employee who goes to a job interview in secret - does that
reflect on validity of his actions ? Again, the double standards are really
bugging me with these sort of things, it's OK if a consumer does something, if
a union pushes on employers and legislators to protect labor and act
monopolistic/like a cartel - but when it's the other way around then all the
sudden the moral fabric of the society is falling apart. It's likely that
competing corporations are doing this because they are loosing more than they
are gaining by stealing employees from each other. As long as they can't
influence the legislators people will break the pact when it suits them,
cartels have a very hard time enforcing their agreements and break up because
of incentives for any individual entity to cheat. For the record I'm not an
employer, I just hate double standards.

~~~
ryanmolden
It depends I suppose. If your employer has absolutely no idea that you aren't
happy, then I would say there is a communication breakdown going on. If your
employees are 'testing the water' so to speak, and you are treating them
fairly and paying them fairly then they will discover that in looking at other
options, no harm, no foul. If you are treating them poorly, paying them
poorly, etc.. they will also discover that, but then again they _should_
discover that.

I think this situation of employees looking around could really only upset
people who desire the kind of blind company loyalty that simply doesn't exist
anymore, for multiple reasons including a lack of loyalty/dedication from the
employer.

Double standards implies treating two people in identical situations
differently. This is not the case here as employees and employers aren't in
identical situations, there is a definite information/power asymmetry in play.

Also, on one hand, there is a collusion between two parties. For an employee
'looking around' there is no collusion. Now if that same employee secretly
tried to get his co-workers to quit and leave the employer high and dry at
some vital point (or really any point), then they would be acting like just as
big of douchebags as the kind of people that make these sort of agreements.
But I haven't heard that is happening. I have basically heard companies say
'ohhh it is hard to retain super talented people because others are always
trying to lure them away', yep, that sounds accurate. The solution isn't 'I
know, let's all agree to NOT take each others good employees' but rather 'how
can we stem attrition by understanding _why_ these talented people are leaving
and taking steps to fix the problem?' Then again I suppose making shady
agreements over the phone is a lot simpler.

~~~
ryanmolden
Also, talking to myself now, upon further thought I think the proper parallel
here is between employees looking for another job and employers planning on
firing/laying off employees. The latter is generally not done in the open, or
with any sort of advance notice, thus it isn't clear the former should be
either.

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twelvechairs
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
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
> 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...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/damning-evidence-emerges-in-google-
apple-no-poach-antitrust-lawsuit/)

~~~
encoderer
That enrages me.

For good engineers in the valley, we're easily talking the 110-160k range. So
they're definitely not part of the poor, unrepresented masses.

Still, that these mega-billionaires sat in their executive suites and pulled
strings to harm and limit careers, it sickens me.

------
wycats
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.

~~~
molmalo
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.

------
Macsenour
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
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.

~~~
molmalo
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.

------
mgkimsal
"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?

------
debt
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
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.

------
jeffdavis
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"?

~~~
Macsenour
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.

------
gergles
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

      > 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
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.

~~~
3pt14159
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.

~~~
thomaslangston
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission#Criticisms)

~~~
hncommenter13
1\. This has nothing to do with the decision in Citizens United. This is about
anti-trust regulation, which regulates collusive behavior, not speech. Any
speech incidental to such a conspiracy (whether to rob a bank or fix wages in
a labor market) is not protected anyway, whether it's an individual or a
corporation speaking.

2\. Please don't misrepresent the decision in Citizens United to make it stand
for something which it does not. The holding in Citizens United was not that
corporations == natural persons or that corporations have the same rights as
natural persons. The holding was that that natural persons don't lose their
rights to free speech (paid for with their own funds) because they join
together into legal associations. Similar to how natural persons don't lose
their 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure or
their 5th amendment protections against the government seizing their property
when they form such associations.

