This, especially: "The language is brutal, and as you’ll see, there’s an almost sadistic, military glee on all sides with the way in which the Google recruiter is 'terminated'"

The email following that description was exactly what I would have expected. "Yes, this person screwed up. We have a clear policy that they failed to follow. We're checking to see if they did this more than once. We've fired that person. Please apologize on our behalf, it won't happen again."

Making the story about "brutal" this and "sadistic" that is senseless, naive, and detracts from the real story, which is that they had these (illegal!) policies in the first place. Stop buzzfeedifying the news.

And, had we had a completely objective article we wouldn't have had little gems like this - "apologizing and grovelling to Steve Jobs is a recurring theme" - which I find very accurate.

Also - "Please make a public example of this termination within the group". I guess when you go work for Google you need to leave your moral compass at the entrance.

You are right that professional execution of unconscionable policies is itself unconscionable. But this isn't that. It's just illegal. There are degrees. Whether current Google recruiters should be blacklisted from further jobs for enforcing a policy that they should-have-known-better about is an interesting question that I don't see anyone asking... because the tone of this article engenders polarized arguments, not reasoned debate.

Lastly, I couldn't disagree more with your assertion that "sometimes readers... need to be spoon-fed." That's not your job, nor the press' job. I do not not not want anyone's interpretation of the facts mixed with reporting of the facts. Save the paternalism for your kids.

My point is that there's no need to compare them to war criminals, or for the dramatics in an ostensibly "news" site- "sadistic," "brutal," et al.

When we do so, we displace a conversation about the real story: a tech cartel that colludes to depress salaries, and the secondary but still very interesting question of how their mid- and lower-level employees who enforced the policies should be treated.

"Geshuri’s decision to “terminate within the hour” the recruiter was enthusiastically seconded by Google’s VP for Human Resources, Shona Brown ..."

There's nothing mid-level about the VP of HR. She should have known this was illegal, certainly was responsible to know that it was illegal, and was responsible for either advising the company that it's illegal or leave the company.

Edit - it's called editorial policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial_board

In this case you don't want the journalist to be overtly taking sides but nevertheless he is, so he might as well not pretend to be objective. If he had not thought this affair to be immoral he would not have written about it, just like media doesn't report on so many encounters with the law of big tech companies. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.

Obviously reporters have biases. I like mine to try to be as objective as possible. I don't understand how we're disagreeing on this.

Firing and sacking are very much colloquial; fairly rare for anyone to actually say "You're fired" notwithstanding how difficult it is to simply get rid of someone.

Programmers accidentally introduce bugs, a recruiter can be mistaken about someone's current employer. Even if the no-poaching agreements were legal, this is completely unwarranted for. What about starting with a warning first?

Maybe it's not sadistic, but their behaviour was certainly emotionless and inhumane.

“There are many, many reasons why we are not going to be like Microsoft. The first has to do with the culture of the founders, the culture of the company, the value systems. The second has to do with the majority of the users, and usage is one click away from moving to a competitor, which is not true of more embedded platforms in high tech. It is very difficult to move out your database system, it is very difficult to move out of Windows, for technological reasons whereas it is quite easy to move out of these online services.

“The third is that, having taken such a strong position as a company, if somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and somehow evil came all over us and we exited that room and we announced an evil strategy, we would be destroyed. We would be destroyed in reputation, we would be destroyed in consumer behaviour, consumers would mass against us, and so forth. There is a fundamental trust relationship between Google and its users.

“And the fourth is that none of us would ever want to go through the kind of legal proceedings that would then follow in enough countries to make it painful. So there are positive reasons and there are good negative reasons, plus I do not think any of us are going anywhere and we have not yet found the evil room on our campus.”

For those keeping score on the timeline, this quote is two years after the incident mentioned in the pando.com article.

Reference: http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2009/10/eric-schmidt-thinks...

That behaviour from Steve Jobs I can kind of expect - he's fairly consistently shown that he's basically just a bad seed.

However, the behaviour from Brin also sounds like pretty a*sehole behaviour.

Curious is anybody can confirm if they're actually like this?

Or was this all taken out of context?

Surely he's actually nicer than this in person?

Not true in comparison to other job types. I think engineers enjoy on-boarding the least. If you have 5 jobs in 10 years, that's 5 periods (about 6-9 months) of being "the new guy" and (a) performing at a suboptimal level, because you're learning idiosyncratic details of a closed-source tech stack, and (b) being unlikely to get useful projects because, no matter how good you are, every organization's going to put new people through a dues-paying period. That ends up taking 3-4 years out of your career, time essentially wasted on learning parochial details of internal codebases rather than getting better at the craft in general. Not fun.

Engineers move around so much because they have to, not because they want to. Wages are too low relative to housing costs, and advancement is often political, and interesting projects are too thin on the ground because engineer-driven companies are a rarity.

Except when he does something illegal that leaves his company vulernable to a massive class-action lawsuit from his own employees. That doesn't seem like the right thing for his company and his shareholders.

Plus, in order to get this conspiracy off the ground and keep it running, he had to produce documentation of the conspiracy that would be embarrassing and possibly incriminating when it was made public. I'm not sure that he did the right thing for his company there.

It's now clear to current and future employees that he has conspired against them with other companies. That doesn't seem so good for his company either.

We say this now, because the industry is growing so rapidly that it's hard to feel shafted given the sea of opportunity.

But being shafted is independent of whether or not you could've found another job elsewhere; the agreement they made prevented engineers from being able to bargain to their fullest extent.

Either way, the founders back in the day had different motivations and influences than the founders today. From my very limited and decidedly not rich point of view, the CEOs of seriously large corporations seem destined or doomed to turn into absolute shit spears when they receive their billions and see more down the road.

Never trust a billionaire. It's unfair, but probably mostly safe.

Try putting yourself in Eric Schmidt's shoes: from his perspective, the greed of an individual employee to generate recruiting commissions by violating a strict policy endangered a key strategic relationship. This could obviously not be tolerated and the lack of a strong response would make enforcing the whole landscape of mission critical policies harder. These guys HAVE TO think of the system before the individual or the system will not work.

And in general, in any industry and any role, if you start a fire that the senior management team 10 levels up has to put out... you will expect harsh treatment.

Okay. Let's do that shall we?

I am Eric Schmidt. I have made a conscious decision to collude illegally in order to suppress the wages of my own employees because I frankly don't think us folks at the top are getting enough of the pie. So we're going to take more - not through our talent, but through our power. Because fuck everyone below us. They're clearly greedy (your word) so they'll get what we give them.

I have one word: Prison.

Why not?

Some of the executives seem professional and that's ok, but others seem to take things rather personally, with all the marks of an ego trip.

Sure it should. You should not be enforcing the policy, you should be denouncing it.

Not that I think what they did is ethical or legal, but I'm not entirely sure that greed is the motive here.

As a CEO it is your responsiblity to do what is best for the company _within the law_.

And cutting wages and forcing people to stay, that might save money, but it's hardly "best" for the company. I've left two jobs because management thought that was a good idea. I was poor (a low, 4-digit bank balance poor) the first time, and I have no regrets. I'd do it again if put in the same position. Screw incompetent management.

To paraphrase jobs:

:)

Now, I am not surprised the book price fixing Apple did with the publishers.

But both Apple and Google get a pass - think if it is done by Oracle or MSFT, well we would be talking about Evil Empire and Death-star

Second, you don't need your hypothetical: Oracle and MSFT were both involved. And, if anything, they're getting "a pass" because their involvement has always been a secondary data point under the headlines about Apple and Google.

In any case, if the board or geeks in general had any special reserve of outrage for those two companies, that should have surfaced by now, right?

So where is it?

This is what he's referring to:

> all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me

I'm no "occupy wall street" fan, but I think taking millions of dollars from the pockets of a lot of workers is very much something to be outraged about.

Of all the discussion forums on the internet, I'd expect HN to be one where it's possible to discuss things rationally and discuss individual aspects of an issue separate from the whole in a reasonable manner, without being called out for failing to express the proper quantity of outrage at every step. Of course, this is completely naive of me as it ends up being proven wrong over and over.

My main point here is simply that not getting outraged at the attitudes displayed here is far from giving these companies a pass on what they've done.

Now, just to be extra clear, I agree with most people on HN that the substantive issue of non-poaching agreements is not acceptable. I expect all companies that were involved to be justifiably raked over the coals for it. But Steve Jobs responding with a smiley when he receives confirmation that the agreed-upon policy has been enforced? Total non-issue.

That said, most management courses will also tell you to privilege process over people - if something goes wrong it's because the process failed, not the person, and as such most of the time a public correction of someone making a mistake is not appropriate, unless it is felt that the person acted knowingly and deliberately against the rules... So unless the recruiter in question had already been corrected on this error, not only should they not have been fired, but they should not even have been reprimanded in public.

Then the textbook is wrong and should be thrown out. These are people we're talking about, real, actual, flesh-and-blood people... with feelings, family, friends, lives, hopes, dreams, etc. Not fucking "resources" or some fungible asset that can be treated as nothing more than a cell in a spreadsheet, and certainly not something that is a valid target for public shaming.

If you are working, you don't want to jeopardize your job with a lawsuit against your employer. Lest you do, you get blackballed.

If you aren't working, you cannot afford a lawyer. End of discussion.

Perhaps the Justice department can do something... But then again, I'm sure it will be smoothed out with greased palms to both parties.

Seems like the opposite. Apple and Google are being called out for their behavior on a regular basis in the tech press, while the other companies named in the suit (Adobe, Intuit, etc.) are barely mentioned.

What the best approximation you can acheive to a free market is depends on exactly what the features of the concrete set of products you are concerned with is, what features of the free market you prioritize approximating, and what technology (both technical and social) is available in the environment you are working in.

Wouldn't that be the most efficient free market? One in which only the most brutal and powerful ideas and companies prevail (with money)?

"Free market" is not synonymous with "anything goes." It's a specific economic (rather than ideological) concept. Most economists believe that certain rules and restrictions are necessary to have any functioning market at all.

The usual economic definition of efficiency would be maximizing utility experienced by market participants, not maximizing production.

Currency-denominated "product" measurements are a common proxy measure for utility, but that's a compromise to the inability to measure utility directly.

That's not really how you keep a market free. A free market requires regulation. Without it, you get a market dominated by monopolies and cartels, rather than open competition.

I don't know how much I agree with that, but your opinion certainly isn't universal.

Of course, with sufficient lack of regulation, it also becomes possible to just shoot people who monopolize stuff.

Libertarians are not a single group of people - and most libertarians agree that government is necessary to ensure the Law is respected - only a fraction of libertarians actually think no government is necessary at all. What most libertarians agree on is that Big Government is a Bad thing, not that it should be completely removed.

In libertarianism, "free market" means, "I'll shoot you if you try to make me pay taxes!".

The difference is glaring.

A free market is one which is free from government price intervention - subsidies, price floors, price ceilings but also free of monopolies and cartels. In practice, a government may need to step in to break up a monopoly or stop an anti-competitive cartel to maintain a free market.

So when the government itself initiates force in the market, it is not a free market.

There is no such thing as a monopoly without the use of force. You can temporarily have companies that have a very large share of their respective markets, but monopoly is not properly defined as "a very large company."

A cartel is just an opportunity for other people to make money by undercutting the cartel. For instance, if the cartel is maintaining artificially low wages, the competitor can take advantage by paying "normal" wages and getting the best employees. Hence, a cartel is not stable. (Unless it has government force backing it---as all modern successful cartels do.)

But in a free market, contractual agreements would be upheld and enforced by an agreed upon arbiter.

Looking at it another way...these companies are trying to keep their costs down (labor being #1). This in turn allows them to charge lower prices for their products while maintaining a profit margin that keeps investors happy. They are serving their consumers. We should be thanking them for being prudent and not engaging in labor bidding wars that would push their costs skyward. This is capitalism 101.

Even still your analogy is still wrong...you are talking about banana consumers (which inherently will always go for the cheapest banana products that satisfy their needs) vs. a business who is trying to keep their costs down to remain competitive.

There is an saying that everything in business should be viewed from the eyes of the consumer. If the consumer is getting the same product for cheaper and the business model is still viable (aka the business can sustain that price) then it's a net win.

Again in your example, banana producers will lower their prices until they cannot be viable and thus they will stop supplying bananas. You cannot collude enough to keep failing business models in business.

I'm talking about companies that buy bananas, not consumers. The supply chain looks like Farmers -> Dole/Chiquita -> You. If Dole and Chiquita colluded to keep the cost of bananas from farmers low, that is collusion that creates economic inefficiency.

> There is an saying that everything in business should be viewed from the eyes of the consumer. If the consumer is getting the same product for cheaper and the business model is still viable (aka the business can sustain that price) then it's a net win.

This "saying" is blathering that has no basis in economics.

The outrage over the attitude of the execs in question is not so much because we don't understand business. Yes, we get it. This endangered a strategic relationship and deserves a strong response. The outrage is due to the nonchalance and utter arrogance shown by these execs, which were in previous times considered as inspirational leaders and models to aspire to.

I personally think it is important to show our outrage and reaction over the attitude of the execs because many folks would like to work for Google, Apple, etc... This gets them thinking about whether they'd really like to work for such companies and under such leaders.

Just wow.

I can see why you feel the outrage over this is overblown. I personally think there isn't enough outrage.

Agreed. Apple and Google were actively colluding against their workers.

Would it be better if the recruiter had just been given a PIP instead of being terminated? And Eric Schmidt had e-mailed to Steve Jobs, "Sorry, won't happen again, the employee is on probation and I personally lectured them." No, because the policy would still be in effect.

The swift response from the top of both companies does tell us something, though. It tells us, for one thing, how much this had to do with a person-to-person deal between Schmidt and Jobs. It also shows how Google was anxious to demonstrate its faith to the agreement. The trust must have been pretty fragile if Google was so anxious to demonstrate it was not misplaced.

The problem with the OP is that it focuses anger on the efficient enforcement aspect. That's a side issue.

It's reasonable to think that both things are not at all unrelated. In a mindset that considers "terminating an employee's career within the hour with no recourse" an efficient enforcement of policy, "colluding to ensure low wages" can be seen as achieving the same kind of efficiency for the company.

"The system" being an illegal no-compete agreement, an unethical, immoral boot on the face of Schmidt's own people. It's a system in the sense that it was a systematic process of betrayal. That's what he was protecting. That's what couldn't work if he put individuals ahead of "the system."

This isn't just a betrayal of the employees of Google and Apple et al. This is a betrayal of the very free-market, capitalistic, "greed is good" Randroid principles these Master of the Universe types have touted and have in turn been celebrated for.

Speaking for myself, I'm not surprised. I don't think that ultra-free-market stuff works. This is what happens again and again; once someone gets ahead in a free market, they turn around and try to cement their position by making the market less free.

But I can see why so many others are so angry. These guys, Jobs and Schmidt and Brin, were heroes to a lot of people, especially here on HN. But it turns out they didn't actually believe in the principles we thought they embodied. It's one of those moments behind the adage "Never meet your heroes."

Also, I think the article takes a lot of liberties with descriptions. I didn't see military glee. And Steve's response struck me as that of a guy who sends thousands of emails a day and got something he wanted resolved, not schadenfreude.

If said employee were aware of the policy, then he would surely no that this candidate was non-hireable, right? Firing for that sounds like a mistake. If we take the article at face value, his firing certainly does not look justifiable.

On the other hand, the emails do not make it clear as to whether this was the recruiter's only policy violation.

I wouldn't quite say that...

I believe you're absolutely correct about the strategic concern, the act and the result is easy to understand.

What's really distasteful is the tone from all parties. The whole exchange is dripping with polite passive-aggressive nastiness, boot clicking and ass-covering.

It's possible to be pragmatic and decent about it.

Policies don't mean much if they are not enforced.

I'm not defending the policy in this case, but given that it existed, and was apparently very clearly communicated to employees that it was a "zero-tolerance" deal, Google could hardly have reacted in any other way.

And it hasn't left my mind that even with all these wage-fixing complaints, those of us in the soft-engineering field are still enjoying the current good times and we still have SF-gentrification issues, and all the outside-of-tech people, who have real problems.

This whole thing is beginning to lose perspective. Because seriously, we're doing...pretty...freakin'...well these days on our average 6 figure salaries. The real victims are people like the HR-lady who lost her job.

I get that part of what they were doing has been deemed illegal, namely the 'do not hire' restrictions, but a 'do not call' list doesn't seem like it could possibly be illegal.

There are many other things that disturb me about this.

- the HR professionals who participated in this illegal non-solicitation scheme. I mean really, nobody raised their hand and said, "FYI, this is illegal". I'm sure they say it all the time about other HR issues where companies try to eliminate expenses and maximize profit.

- what's the story on how Steve came to know about the solicitation? Did the Apple employee raise the flag to their boss (who should have also known that this was illegal) or where their emails being read? smells like fish.

- what's the word on the wrongful termination lawsuits that must be in the works?

The worst part of it was "make a public example of this termination". This doesn't make it any more or less illegal but it shows how drunk on power on he is.

WTF? When did this become feudal Japan?

1. In the military, where debates and disagreements could create fatal communication problems and delays

2. When the people in power need to suppress a truth that would otherwise be outed in the normal course of discussion

I should have said he/she because I don't know the gender of Shona Brown. Jobs was drunk on power too, but I don't think this incident is the best example of it.

I would like to have an interesting and informed discussion, but that requires that the other participants do some basic reading before making snide remarks.

And you made assumptions about my gender - Check Your privilege mate.

If you can't separate your individual self from a comment you've written, that's your own problem.

Read the article properly.

Hardly.

When one executive contacts another directly the intent is implicit. If destroying this person was not the clear desire this communication would have taken place at another level.

Sipmle logic states that Steve Jobs actually cared about maintaining the scheme he had with Google and couldn't care less about one particular Google employee.

Why would he? If he really were some kind of perverted power-luster he had plenty of his own employees to torture, but he just wasn't like that. He was always pursuing HIS GOALS ruthlessly, he wasn't out to get his rocks off by hurting people or exercising power.

(None of this is from direct experience, but it's evident from public information.)

It's important to remember that Schmidt was on Apple's Board of Directors at the time this occurred (he joined in the fall of 2006.) The Board was hand-picked in its entirety by Jobs.

These are power guys, and if Schmidt doesn't do something strongly, he will be perceived as weak. The implicitness in this email was a basic alpha-male locker-room challenge for Schmidt to show if he had any balls.

To me, this looks like a survivalist-move on the part of Schmidt to show Jobs he is "in charge" at Google. It's obvious Jobs knew how to push his buttons; otherwise, why would he (Schmidt) jump when the CEO of another company (Jobs) said "jump"?

Such locker room / schoolyard pissing contests show lack of leadership, creativity, compassion and humility. Very Wall Street.

Without a source of what was in the policy manual it's really hard to armchair quarterback, but such 1 strike and you're toast really sends the wrong message to everyone.

The message back to Jobs should have been, It's taken care of. Won't happen again.

Internally, IF the policy said violate A,B or C and termination applies, I can't quibble.

Otherwise, people make mistakes and should be handled as such. That what makes companies "Great Places to Work" and not the next job to pull a paycheck before the next one.

When an animal trainer gives a dog a cookie for jumping through a hoop, it's beyond question that the trainer intended the dog to jump through the hoop. Even the dog understands that. That is exactly the situation here.

I recommend reading this: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-i...

He didn't have to. And learning of the consequence, he didn't seem to care.

a power play by the heads of HR who seem to be the real bad guys here

Really? Blame the minions? They offered someone's head to save their own.

In the big scheme of the moral calamity that this whole thing is, this particular exchange feels oddly trivial to get its own article. But I think it's just the sort of thing that people can and will latch on to easily.

And people can latch onto being fired because almost everyone has experienced it at least once. That moment, of "what do I do now?", is probably one of the worst feelings in the world. And the glee these assholes have in actually doing it (remember no one is supposed to enjoy firing anyone, MBA101) is even more enraging since it confirms everything the 99%ers have been protesting about. These guys are fucking with other peoples' livelyhoods and making a joke of it.

The employee in question was presumably trained on the policy upon starting work and presumably informed of the costs of violating the policy.

The employee violated that policy, damaging company relations in the process, and was fired. That's a separate issue from the whole salary debacle. That Steve Jobs replied with a smiley face is immaterial to the broader problem at hand. Steve Jobs would in all likelihood reply to the end of the world with :-O. Who cares?

That Google terminated an employee in violation of what they indicate was a clear policy, is again, irrelevant to the discussion. It serves as nothing more than an attempt to get emotional response using something only tangentially related to the core issue.

If the said employee felt the policy was unethical and possibly illegal, violating it is not the answer. There is no indication that the employee was making a moral stand. More than likely, he couldn't follow directions. And he got fired.

This logic would not fly in any other industry. I don't see why SV thinks it is exempt. You never see a "policy" like this being defended in banking or whiteshoe law firms.

Also stop calling it a policy. Policies are written down, recorded, and published. One manager having an informal meeting about an unofficial policy doesn't make it policy. The reason this lawsuit is making waves now is because the policy was never put to ink. It was never put to ink because these companies wanted as little evidence as possible. Does that sound like a good policy?

I think it's really the 99.9%.

Being in the 1% top income in the country kind of rings hollow if you still can't afford a house.

I'm Canadian, so the irrational fear of communism/socialism is much lower here.

Not that I'm advocating for communism of course. Any system that honestly believes that a dictatorship[1] needs to be established first and that it will simply "whither away"[2] has been proven by history to be wrong.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state

Yes, it sucks to get fired, but firing is a necessary part if running almost any company.

It's all power talk.

By emailing the CEO of Google. Jobs knew exactly what he was doing, and what the outcome would be. And boy, what an absolutely embarrassing response by Google.

- Eric Schmidt, 2009 as CEO of Google, on concerns about privacy and Google's insatiable appetite for info

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid...

Yes, people bring up this quote all the time so it seems cliche to do so ... but I don't care. I say choke him on his own words for being so casual about it in the first place -- when it affected others, that is; he had a very public hissy-fit when someone publicized details about him, even blocked Cnet.com from Google for a time if I recall right.

Google and Apple are extremely lucrative companies, seeing them conspiring to decrease salaries is really sad. A sure path to a worse world.

On the other side, to see the American judiciary system attacking this evil behavior shows us why the United became the greatest nation in the world.

To me it means, "I am pleased with the response"

One thing I've learned from email communication is that you can't grok the emotional response from text alone (even with emoticons)

This could be either a thankful smile, a loathful grin or anything in between.

I would imagine that the person who was fired might disagree with you on the brutal part since Google's reaction was overblown. They could have simply told the person not to do it again. But they went with the instant firing without any second thought in an effort to keep Jobs happy.

The smiley face at the end is indicative of how happy Jobs was over how much power he had over them in that someone was fired over something he simply asked them to stop doing.

I mean, I agree that the treatment is rough, but the employee really was at fault for going rogue.

'Was at fault' for going rogue... I wonder what she will think once the current investigation ends.

Sometimes the right thing to do is to go 'rogue' against tech giants who ask of you things they should not.

>violating the secret and illegal non-solicitation compact

It doesn't say anywhere whether she actually knew about this. That would change my reaction from completely horrified to just utterly disgusted.

And 'rogue' is a... unique way to put it. It's not like she disclosed it to the press so it's a pretty tame rogue.

The recruiter knew from the how the Google HR to Eric Schmidt email reads. The 'secret' part of this agreement is being over emphasized, if you're going to have a non-poaching agreement your staffing employees need to know or it's utterly pointless.

None of the details surrounding the contact are included. For all we know that person didn't know they were contacting an Apple employee until after the fact.

For as much flack as Microsoft took over the years for being evil, I can't say that Google or Apple have done much better, even for their own people.

(I'm not commenting on morality here, just legality.)

My last employer had a non-solicitation agreement in place with partner companies they were working with. Is that illegal, I wonder?

I can see how this could be the case, especially when it looks like the biggest tech employers in silicon valley were all in on it. A few companies or companies in different areas agreeing not to poach won't affect the average wage, but when the majority of positions aren't being contested the incentive to offer larger wages drops.

Felt questionable to me.

A non-compete agreement between your employer and another company without your consent or input will likely not hold up in court and could be illegal depending on local laws.

One thing is clear. The world is fascinated by Steve Jobs.

[1] http://imgur.com/gallery/neGNG (couldn't verify accuracy of facts)

[2] http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/80368150370/what-i-learne...

[3] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-jobs...

That "rule" is an illegal collusion that's probably worth billions in salary, ISOs, bonuses, etc. That is, the totality of the crime here is that the participants in the collusion literally stole billions of dollars from salaried employees.

How obsequious the HR people are in this is a minor factor. This is a Bernie Madoff-sized crime. What Madoff did was a more visible crime, so he was punished like a common criminal. But if you shave a few tens of thousands of dollars per year off a few tens of thousands of engineers' salaries and your motto is "Don't be evil" (or if you do something really big, like diddle the LIBOR rate) people think different, for some reason.

Really? Equivalent to a $50 billion ponzi scheme in which thousands of people lost their pensions and become destitute? That's the same as denying a few thousand dollars to already very highly compensated engineers? I'm not excusing what they're doing but the Madoff comparison seems off.

In order for the dollar value to be similar to what Madoff stole from people, that scenario, or a higher wage loss, would have had to happen to five hundred thousand engineers. All working at a handful of companies.

Does that still sound plausible to you?

"That evening, Steve Jobs forwarded her email to Eric Schmidt with this note:"

The whole thing would not have happened without him, and his illegal scheme to prevent companies from competing.

"I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this."

All Google had to do was remind employees they aren't allowed to recruit Apple employees. Google took the drastic action of firing the employee.

Why would a company with so much cash layoff part of a single division? It's incredibly suspicious.

Google and Apple had a friendly business relationship at the time. Apple was using Google search as the default on Safari. They were collaborating to make Maps and YouTube apps on the iPhone. When a recruiter tried to poach the Safari team while the companies were collaborating, I think it was right for Jobs to be angry and tell Schmidt that it jeopardized the collaboration between them, and it was right for Schmidt to stop being rude to a partner.

If these were foreign countries, we'd have invaded them and set up puppet democracies.

Morons. Like they couldn't figure out the public would find out eventually...

I worked for a Fortune 500 market research / consumer data company and I know for a fact that the Senior VP of our office would call Fortune 500 clients and kindly request they not "poach" our employees.

Most of it is done casually and "innocently". I doubt most execs even thought they were breaking the law before this came to light.

Does that make it ok?

The main reason that the agreement is deemed illegal here is that they were made with a specific intent to manipulate the market at large and because they are deemed to have kind of market power, being a cartel of large employers. Also, the nature of the agreement is far too broad and the companies involved is far too numerous for them to argue in good faith that their intent was much more narrow.

I completely agree that they overstepped and should be held liable, but some of the outrage seems misguided. The HR executive involved, for instance, may or may not be in position to know that the policy is part of an illegal scheme and the fired employee certainly was not. Also, unless you're one of the star programmers who were highly in demand, it's quite unlikely that your salary was all that depressed over this. If anything, the impact may have been slightly positive for average employees - at a lot of places, superstars aren't necessarily substitutes for average employees, but rather complements and lowering prices of superstars can boost rather than depress wages of average employees:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

On the whole, this is kind of the replay of the Microsoft anti-trust trials. Bundling web browsers with operating systems is not illegal - the illegal part was the context in which such action occurred. It was seen as an abuse of market power. Sports leagues openly collude on this kind of stuff without most people caring at all or pointing fingers at those involved. Government can have strong interest in such matters in the interest of encouraging a healthier market - though political and career motivations of lawyers/prosecutors involved also play a large part - but to seeing this as a clear morality play is not wise.

Edit: actually this covers the legal issues better:

http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/258600/Antitrust+Compet...

Assuming the article is correct, having a general agreement without any specific, legitimate purpose is illegal, but on a limited basic it can be legal. Still it seems far-fetched to assume that the HR executive in question had to know that such an illegal agreement existed, because for all he knows, a much more limited, legal contract could have existed due to their partnership and Google may have had a broader policy to ensure easy compliance. We now know that that's not the case, but I don't know why we can assume that the HR executive necessarily was aware of all this.

This is like colluding to set the price of LCD displays or chips. That's illegal. Even an HR director should know that.

Even if you somehow forced everyone to be part of the agreement, it's irrelevant - whether Apple's and Google's employment contracts had language that forced the employees to agree to what's going on here is not exactly relevant consideration.

Edit: part of the irony of this whole "non-solicitation agreements are illegal" chorus is that I think most people complaining probably have signed such agreements in the past as they are quite routine. Granted, most of the time, it's just handed to us and we have to sign or gtfo.

As in, you're told what to think in advance of all info.

I previously thought in this specific case that it would be tens, but if entire departments were being lectured about the penalties for deviation - were hundreds of people aware?

But Steve's response is great :)

"make a public example of this termination"

And they're calling Jobs's smiley brutal?

When will geeks learn there are no good or bad corporations?

</sarcasm>

I look forward to the coming Apple/Google/XXXX apologists vs. Lucid observer comment war.

Samsung precisely copying the visual styling of the iPhone is a different matter. But policing supposed copying of basic UI design choices rubs me the wrong way.