The problem is not just that the employees have less options where to find a job. The real problem is that the employees don't know about the agreement!
If I work at Pixar and prospect Intel for a job, they will tell my boss and my carreer at Pixar will be messed for ever.
I had a boss that liked to fire employees who he knew were searching for jobs elsewhere. He would announce in job sites good offers asking for candidates with the skills used in his company, and didn't disclosed the company name. When he got answers from his own employees, he would fire them in the best opportunity. A great way to create a culture of fear.
I would have applied to one writing "I'm interested in working for you because my current boss is a douchebag who posts fake jobs to try and get us to apply to them."
I can only imagine how hard it is to have fair negotiations when a prospective employee applies at a competing company only to be told "no thanks" simply because of a hush hush agreement between the executives of said companies.
This flies counter with Google's "do no evil" statement and certainly doesn't paint a positive posthumous picture of Jobs.
It seems to me that Jobs orchestrated the whole ago affair, approaching key managers in various companies to set up this agreement. If Google gets the Evil tag for the decisions of some executives then surely Apple should be described a duck, perhaps more do since Jobs was Apple for all intents and purposes
Agreed. If I were larry or sergei I'd fire Schmidt. Now, that might mean I'd never run a company as large as google, but I'm okay with that. This incident removes Google from my list of tech giants I'd work for leaving it, well, empty.
Sad to see. I'm not surprised by the behaviour of Apple and others, but I thought better of Google than this.
you are assuming that Sergei and Larry were not aware of this pact. if the firm's VP is aware of this pact and fired an employee over this, i would say Sergei amd Larry are guilty as well. eithet of collusion or gross neglect.
This is a fantastic idea. I regularly get contacted by a recruiter from Google. Citing it as a reason you wouldn't feel comfortable working there is definitely a way to impact their thinking the next time they have to make a decision that negatively impacts the people working for them. Developers have a lot of power as sought after employees.
I'm tired of people bringing up 'don't do evil' EVERY time Google does something they dislike. New search results using personal targeting - EVIL! Anti-poaching agreement with Apple - EVIL! Closed down a bagel cafe next to my cubicle - EVIL!
Can we all agree that the word Evil has a more sinister use - ie knowing endangering lives, environmental damage, maybe closing press freedoms? And, therefore, we should be more selective in its application?
This is turning into another version of the Godwin's law - whereby it only takes so long before Google is accused of being evil (by breaking the not-be-evil pledge).
Why not? Everyone has already diluted the meaning of the word "greed" successfully. Might as well start on "evil" now. :-)
But in all fairness, non-poaching agreements are not right. What if every tech company did this? You better hope you never have to leave that company after they hire you... Cause otherwise you'll have to consider a career change.
I agree in general, but this one (stifling competition by illegal methods) happens to be within my particular corporate evilness threshold. Unlike every previous evil Google has been accused of.
The problem with a word like evil is that it is so subjective. For some, obeying repressive laws in China would be the ultimate evil Google has committed. Using Google's own definition of evil, using the entire right side of the search results for self-advertising could be seen as evil.
However, ultimately I agree. Since evil is so subjective, very little information is provided by calling out Google in particular for being evil and thus hypocritical.
Condemning all the involved companies equally would make more sense.
(But I can't help feeling more disappointed Google was part of this).
Can we agree that limiting the career opportunities of your employees and firing recruiters who will not take part in this illegal practice is nothing like taking away bagels or personalizing search results? It's very close to the regular meaning of "evil", harming people for your own gain, illegally and without justification.
That's not how Google has defined "evil" in the past. Per Wikipedia:
> Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out," adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent."
"Exploiting the users" doesn't fit your definition of "evil", but it appears to have fit Google's.
Occurs when individuals or groups embrace codes of conduct or standards of behavior for their own personal well being and social approval, yet violate those very same codes or standards to undermine the personal well being and social approval of others.
There's degrees of evil, but no shades. Evil was being done to people in this case.
(Disclaimer: Google employee, speaking for myself, not the company.)
The point of "Don't be evil" is to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and not less us take the easy way out. That, IMHO, is what made Google great in the first place.
I'm not going to comment on the specific case here - I don't know the facts - but the reason for "Don't be evil" is as much motivational as moral.
"Can we all agree that the word Evil has a more sinister use - ie knowing endangering lives, environmental damage, maybe closing press freedoms? And, therefore, we should be more selective in its application?"
Using that version of "evil", makes it a completely empty marketing statement. Surely no company does "real" evil on purpose.
Actually, you'd be hard pressed to find a legit company that does "real" evil even by accident.
Since 1997, he was paid $1/year in salary. But he certainly wasn't living in the poor house.
In 2001, the company gifted him a $90 million Gulfstream jet, and paid for all related expenses.
According to Apple’s proxy statement from February 2011, Jobs owned about 5.5-million shares of Apple stock. In addition, he owned about $5 Billion of Disney stock, which gave him an annual dividend of about $50 Million.
"If a Pixar employee applies to Intel without being recruited by Intel, contact Pat Gelsinger and explain to him a Pixar employee (provide the candidates name) has applied to Intel without being recruited and he will contact the CEO of Pixar for approval to hire"
I'm surprised that people in these threads say "I'm not at all surprised by this behavior" - It's a sad state of affairs when we, as employees, wholly expect this behavior between the few leading companies in this area.
We have to work among the group of people for which this behavior is standard procedure. We are reminded daily of how insane, sociopathic, and child-like middle managers can be and that it only gets worse (far worse) the further up the chain. If I were working at a place where someone didn't expect this behavior I would think that person was very inexperienced. If I found a company where management didn't behave like this, maybe because it is relatively young, I would expect them to start misbehaving within a few years as the sociopaths start working their way into the corporate structure.
Just because something is expected doesn't mean that it is acceptable. On the contrary, if someone fucks up, like they always do, and you EXPECT it, you can act on it. In this case, thousands of people are about to have a payday because some evil execs who probably don't even know how email works fucked up. Someone, somewhere expected it, got the evidence nailed down, and went after them. After this settles, there's going to be lots of people (and many lawyers) expecting this behavior and actively looking for it.
Surely there are other alternatives than that... someone working for one of these tech giants has a lot of options other than working for another tech giant. Like starting her own company.
I believe comments like this is why I'm constantly finding disagreement with what you say. You have a very hard slant. Personally, I've found, and seen others having, a wide array of alternatives available to them.
If "we" don't show that this behavior is wrong, through our actions, it will continue...
Rank and file workers work among middle managers who would see no problem with illegal collusion with other companies, but they themselves lack the power to actually organize something like this. The general population is pretty much on par with middle managers culture wise, and would drive the average worker into the ground so their couple shares of GOOG stock can go up 1%. So it doesn't rise to something that would make a person quit, and since the general population are ok with and identify with middle management practices, its unlikely the situation would be better elsewhere.
As far my views on alternatives there is:
unemployment: bankruptcy, couch surfing or living in a shelter
self funded startup: doesn't pay and likely to fail. without external factors like connections or rich uncle, probably won't get off the ground before bankruptcy.
small team of equal partners: doesn't pay, requires capital to pay in, "equal" partners will probably try to push each other out.
incubator: pays very bad, greeks bearing gifts, silly patronizing, reality tv-like environment.
angel investor: can't find these unless you're famous, have well-connected family, or already successful.
small company/startup: founders will shit all over your day. will take everything personally (including payday) and want you to conform to their values. Don't like golf? Not a drinker?, gtfo. pay is shit.
big evil company: Half a dozen middle managers are trying to figure out how screwing you improves their situation. ceo is probably doing bad things. pay is good.
So, yeah, if you take the financial aspect out of work, there are a wide array of alternatives.
The one argument I get sick of hearing bandied around in cases like these is: "but those companies invested a lot of money in training their employees. How would you like it if you owned a business and trained someone only to have them poached?"
In the words of Dwight Shrute: "False!". Most of the employees in question in this case and probably every other case where poaching is worthwhile are autodidacts. These employees are valuable precisely because they work hard to increase their own value. They know that, and they deserve to be paid accordingly by shopping themselves around.
It is in the market for autodidacts where actions like these are most damaging to the individuals affected.
In addition, if companies really do believe that, they can explicitly negotiate terms around it, up front. That's what happens with, for example, the military paying for med-school: you agree that you'll do N years with them subsequently as a military doctor, or will pay back the med-school tuition if you don't. Apple could negotiate something like that; options vesting schedules are one attempt. Alternately, they could negotiate minimum-term contracts, where the employee and Apple agree that neither side will terminate the employment relationship in fewer than N years without serious cause.
Exactly, they likely trained themselves as part of building this value, as well as probably training, mentoring and increasing the value of those around them.
The purpose behind these companies actions was nothing less than to artificially deflate the market value of these individuals, which is completely despicable.
I couldn't agree more.. software developers in general (and presumably those in other related fields) tend to mostly be autodidacts. Sure, you learn from other employees and from what the company has in place already but usually they are adding value the entire time, its not as if they sit you down for hours every week and put you in a classroom where there is no pressure other than "learn something new". Thats what school is for and anyone who is working in an engineering field is most likely spending time on their own working on projects, etc that improve their skills.
When most people make investments they take steps to protect those investments, if they don't want to lose the investment they should match the salary of the competitor.
This seems like a pretty poor strategy for the involved companies.
1) It makes other companies (not involved in the agreement) more attractive, as their salaries will be closer to the salaries offered by the companies involved in the cartel.
2) This means that the pool of potential employees is reduced due the agreement, which means that the companies involved in the cartel will have to bear higher recruiting costs.
3) These recruiting costs make a mistake in hiring more costly. It gets harder to "test" employees and let them go when they are a bad fit, because expenditures from your HR budget are shifted to the front (on the promise of savings down the line).
4) Further, when the cartel breaks (as it will, each company has an incentive to cheat on the other members) the payoff of this inflated recruiting "investment" disappears.
Yes the free market can work - if the employee knows to discount an offer from one of the cartel companies because they will not be able to move to another cartel member.
A hiring cartel basically acts like super-duper large company doesn't it? So by that logic we would discount offers from large companies compared to ones from smaller companies. Oh wait, we do, as large company pay > startup pay. ;) But is it for this reason?!
It is getting clearer and cleared that Google is just as any big corporation which will do any illegal and un-ethical thing as long as they are not caught.
Now, many of companies started with excellent ethical standards, but that is getting slowly lost as companies grow.
I wonder if there is some similar work as "Innovators Dilemma" but about company's ethical standards: explaining why and when a company's become very prone to "fuck ethics" approach.
Everyone is commenting on the "no evil" thing, so I want to give my take on that.
Yes, companies are large entities that maximize shareholder profit and therefore talking about "good companies" or "bad companies" is meaningless. But I always understood the "no evil" slogan to be accepting of that. To me, "do no evil" was the mentality that no matter how corporate the company may become, the humans who are part of it wont let anything blatantly horrible happen. The company might become a giant corporate machine, but the human cogs will always retain enough power to stop horrible mistakes.
Increasingly, I'm starting to believe that every company mutates into the same corporate mass given enough time. Pick a large corporation with dirty business practices. If you look far back enough in history, it was probably a wonderful place to work with great work ethics.
It just occurred to me that when I told Intel I wouldn't be returning after my internship, HR was very pushy about where I was going. I'm glad I was going to a company outside the agreement or I would probably have had no job.
They systematically ruined people's lives and systematically reduced market pay. They rely on paying market wages and site that in their negotiations. I was able to make 40% more at the other company. The only other side should be removing all HR employees and rehiring. Someone should have been a whistle blower and any and all HR people at those companies who did not say something should be ashamed of themselves.
imagine how fast Congress would get involved if something like this were revealed to exist between basketball or football teams for free agents. If these companies don't want employees to leave they are free to sign long term contracts to lock them up. This is plainly illegal
The difference, of course, is that basketball and football players have unions, and therefore can use collective bargaining to force the establishment of contracts. Luckily (for software executives), I don't think we have to worry about software engineers forming a union...
Would fast firing even be possible with long-term contracts? Firing fast isn't something that is done for the sake of saving money. It is done for the sake of avoiding the damaging effects of keeping someone on the team that hurts the productivity of the other team members.
One year is a long time to have someone on a team that turns out to be a wrong hire. You normally figure out that someone isn't working out within the first 1-3 months. I've made a wrong hire before and it impacted the work of 5 other people. I and any other manager has an obligation to get rid of that one person if they are having a net negative effect on the work of others. To do otherwise would be a failure in my responsibilities to others on the team.
It's not like a manager can just "bench" an employee that isn't working out for them.
What would make sense, especially in a market where there is a crunch for talent is a guarantee from the company that if it doesn't work out, that the applicant, would get 1-2 months salary after being cut to look for another place to work.
(Also, to the person who down voted me: This is HN, not Reddit. You don't down vote because you disagree with what was said. You down vote them because their detracting from the conversation, such as trolling.)
I'm a hockey fan. Specifically the Montreal Canadiens. There's a guy on that team right now that makes 8MM/year and the whole team has a 55MM cap they can spend on their "employees".
He's 8 days away from not having scored a single goal in an entire calendar year.
And his contract is for 2 more years.
And you know what? The team is still going to pay him. Because that was the contract that was signed. If you think having a software guy around for a year when he wasn't a great hire is a long time what about having someone around for 5+ years that not only isn't any good but (due to the cap) actively hinders the team's ability to get anyone better to replace him.
And yet the sports world seems to get along just fine this way.
I'm the CEO of the fastest growing tech company in my geographical region ( off the beaten path ) and I get calls by other CEOs asking for stuff like this very very often. In our case it's because those other CEOs don't want to compete on perk and benefits with us which makes it even more sad.
Once again I am happy that non-competes are generally not enforced in California. Otherwise, the companies involved wouldn't even need to reach illegal agreements to interfere with the employment free market.
In east Asia, poaching is viewed as bad taste and disloyal. A person has to leave a job first before looking for next job. A company tries to recruit employees from other companies gets blacklisted for a period.
Kind of ironic that The AOL Way was supposed to be the reason The Verge guys left to start a new blog. It looks like the only thing they were tired of was Engadget's layout. The AOL Way doesn't deserve traffic.
somewhat related. Last week a friend of mine that is growing his recruiting business tried to put me in contact with someone at this firm in NYC, for a position that sounds ideal for me and my background. Once he got to the HR department, and as soon as they saw where i currently work, they told him that they have some agreement about not hiring people from my current company and that was it. They didn't even seem to want to explain the details of said agreement. Now, i definitely didn't sign a contract forbidding me from going to that place. Is this even legal?
If you can, get him to say that in writing (email will do), find a good lawyer and sue him, the more scum that do this that are exposed (at any level) the better off employees are in this industry as a whole.
The defendants are claiming bi-lateral agreements are legal, and only bi-lateral agreements existed rather than a 3+ party conspiracy. Whether either claim is true, I have no idea.
which law are they breaking? i thought discrimination only covers specific things such as race/age/pregnancy status.. and everything else is off limits. i.e the company may reject someone based on his music taste or propensity to wear green pants..
also, could there be a situation where there is some conflict of interest based on nature of business of both firms?
I'm surprised just how ruthlessly this was enforced. When Jobs complained to Schmidt, the person who contacted an Apple employee was "terminated within the hour." A Senior Google VP replied: "Appropriate response, thank you. Please make a public example of this termination with the group."
Mind you, they have a great incentive. Only a handful of companies recognise 10x (or 100x) developers and they would like to continue paying just 2x for them.
Gee, I didn't know that employees were akin to the King's game, making it a Bad Thing to poach them.
In my world, poaching employees == offering them better options in exchange for the value generating capabilities that they bring to the table. Quid pro quo, and if someone else offers a better quo...
Really. I always considered "to poach" to be a slightly whimsical way to refer to recruiting employees. It never occurred to me that a colluding cartel might be using it as intentional language engineering.
That is what is funny about all those people that treat ¨conspiracy theories¨ as nuts. Is like corruption must have a limit just because they have not seen it first hand.
Same in small companies. In our company of 14 people, my last HR meeting had the officer dismissing my mention of doing 30-60 minutes unpaid daily overtime as 'it's a small company, that happens'.
They were trying to nail me into a contract doing even more unpaid work: 'Sometimes that happens in a small company' -> 'Yes, I do the in-house IT, and it's part of the job, but I'm letting you know that it's every day' -> 'Yes, sometimes that happens' -> 'Every day is 'sometimes'?' -> 'Yes, sometimes that happens...'.
The other great comment was 'You have to expect a little overtime when you're on a good salary'. My salary is right on the national average wage - neither good nor bad by definition.
...you have HR meetings in a company of 14? It sounds like the culture is what's causing that, not the company size. I've worked in companies of 50 that don't have "HR" people (of course, they have people who cut checks, etc. but they didn't create and enforce crazy policies like that!).
I'm in London in the UK, do a 37 hour week, earn $80k equiv, work from home 4 days a week and live about 5 miles from the company (just over an hour scenic river walk or cycle).
Stop selling yourselves into slavery, grow some balls and either get paid for what you do or stop working so much.
This should just depend on whether you're an exempt or non exempt employee. Most IT professionals are classified as exempt meaning they do not qualify for overtime.
If you're paid hourly, or work as a contractor, you should be paid for all your hours.
I don't really care about the overtime, as I do it because I see it as necessary to the job, but I do care about having extra unpaid hours unilaterally tacked on to my working week without any discussion of remuneration. Or even a raise to match inflation.
Serious question: if an accelerator asks participating startups to not hire employees from one another, does it violate laws governing fair competition?
Even if it isn't illegal, it's probably contrary to the interests of the accelerator: if one of your startups needs somebody more than another--enough for an increase of pay or some other benefits--then, for the whole program, having that person move is probably better than artificially forcing him to stay.
I think that would fall under conspiracy to commit crimes, but talk to a lawyer. In the end, I think it would show that the accelerator was pretty stupid. There will be a natural inclination not to do so inside the program anyway, so why cross the line like that?
I would be curios to see a LinkedIn graph showing (and proactively finding) evidence of this whole saga.
That is, I would expect to see less movement of employees with certain talents, between conspiring companies.
Is there a way to get this information off of LinkedIn?
I am guessing it would be possible to pull it out of Google+ profile pages, but I am not sure it has historical data, or been around long enough for that matter.
Facebook would surely have it but I doubt this information is accessible.
This is important because it means that new hires are probably getting less equity than they should be getting. Equity and belief in what the company is building should be enough to not require anti-poaching agreements.
To hell with this "nobody will know so let's do this" mentality - it's twenty fucking twelve in case you haven't noticed, the year when the "all seeing eye" becomes public property.
Who do VCs spend their skiing trips with: ramen-fed, sleep-deprived startup founders, or other VCs? Of course, they hang out with each other.
Same with executives at large companies. They might be nominally "competitors", but they've already learned that they have more in common with one another than with employees in the companies they run.
I guess I'm cynical, but I'm not surprised. I wouldn't have expected some specific individuals (I thought more of Eric Schmidt; I always liked him) to be involved but the behavior is not shocking. Yes, it's shitty and illegal. No, it's not at all surprising.
Let's say that you're talking to an investor and you tell him that you're being courted by another VC and that he needs to act fast. What's the first thing he'll do, if he takes you seriously? Pick up the phone and call the guy (they were classmates in business school, and it's "bros before schmos", man.) If there was proper competition, that sort of thing would never happen.
Social class is an ugly reality and people in higher social classes always look out for each other first. The real competition is insiders vs. outsiders. Human societies are naturally conspiratorial. I don't know what the solution to this problem is (other than, individually, to just keep working hard and trying to be awesome enough that the general wankbasketry of humanity doesn't matter) but it's obvious that our current regulatory machinery is too thin.
I don't think it's just the higher classes that look out for each other, you will find inverse snobbery everywhere. It's just more visible in the higher classes because they have disproportional income and influence.
I think most people here would rather hang out with another techie from a rival company than they would with the head of marketing from their own company.
The idea that small cabals of individuals can act in collusion like this goes against the commonly held view of the economy as an anonymous force of nature that always moves toward efficient equilibrium. But sometimes that's just what happens.
Why I find "conspiracy theories" ridiculous: with "friends" (above-board entities like corporations, proud of having titled nobility... er, I mean, executives; I forgot that "America doesn't have a hereditary aristocracy") like our leading large institutions, who needs enemies? Why invent shadowy evil organizations when there are so many objectively-visible and extremely greedy (if not quite evil, and most often too stupid and poorly-run to pull off the levels of evil we imagine) ones?
The evil-evils don't meet in shadowy mansions with bad lighting and creepy piano music. They meet in private parties in Aspen and executive boardrooms and on the boards of "charities" that really exist as a scoreboard for the social status of rich people. They also don't have huge orgies. They visit prostitutes half their age whom they pay $1500/night to endure their post-coital crying about their mistakes (such as marrying dumb trophy/corporate wives and having to write high-six-figure donation checks to shove their low-IQ kids into Ivies).
There isn't "one conspiracy to rule them all", but there are lower-case-c conspiracies all over the place.
So it sounds like you don't have a problem with "conspiracy theories" after all. Neither do I. Conspiracies happen all the time, as you say.
When you talk about shadowy mansions and orgies, it sounds to me like you're invoking a straw man conspiracy. But real conspiracies are plenty shadowy (isn't that the whole idea?) The upper level meetings of the very powerful seem to be quite secretive, with great security, be they in boardrooms or at parties in Aspen.
What frustrates me is that "conspiracy theory" has just become code for "thing that can't possibly be even considered". This is the message that comes down to us whenever people want to discuss, e.g. income equality, or the reasons for going to war. People internalize this, making it difficult for them to evaluate the real everyday conspiracies that take place around them, and, of course, benefiting conspirators.
Upvote back to +1, just because I think it's interesting how words fairly arbitrarily acquire strong signed (positive or negative) meanings, e.g. awful vs. awesome, collaboration vs. collusion. It's not at all stable across languages. If you call someone a "collabo" (collaborator) in France, that's a huge insult (referring to Nazi collaborators in the Vichy era).
I think my comment is valid and on-topic. People make fun of conspiracy theories, but the fact is that conspiracies go on all the time. There is even a crime called "conspiracy", after all. It would be better to say "implausible crank theories" or something when that is what one refers to.
Thank you for bringing this fact up. "conspiracy to commit x" is an extremely common charge in our legal system.
The Orwellification of the word is such that, only when we try to apply this term to the powerful do we suddenly become crazy kooks, despite the fact that the powerful are often the ones with the motive, and certainly the means, to engage in conspiracy.
I find it amusing when well-meaning people try to dictate what a given word or phrase should mean. Language evolves in a chaotic way, often against logical arguments. You might be right, but "conspiracy theory" already has an established meaning, and you are not going to change that.
Indeed, you are free to. On occasion I've tried to do the same thing. But in practice, I don't think it usually helps. It muddies up the waters of conversation, which depend on everyone having roughly the same definitions of words. At least, you have to be careful, and know that most people won't (immediately) change, and that you're making things more complicated.
It's important to have clear and powerful linguistics. Sticky linguistics make sticky minds. Compare inuits, with their multitude of words for snow - they probably have richer and clearer discussions on snow.
The same thing is true in programming languages - eg people who go back to basics and throw out the cached thoughts that make up a web of assumptions that everyone clings to, and in the process create something weird yet powerful (like Haskell or whatever).
I know, but bringing up alternatives to entrenched meanings doesn't always make things clearer. Probably a lot of the time it's better to introduce a new term, or one that is used infrequently and doesn't have as much baggage, rather then redefining one. Redefining terms when talking to a computer is one thing, but people aren't always capable of throwing out their assumptions, and it almost always takes a long time. In the meantime, where is the discussion? The mess has to be worth it.
Allow me to interject for a due correction: the inuit "having x>>1 words for snow" is a widespread misconception; Eskimo-Aleut languages feature compounding (as German does), thus allowing an arbitrarily high number of variations of the "snow" lexeme, which can be misunderstood by very uninformed and very monolinguistic individuals (such as lousy journalists writing fillers) as being different words.
But by the same facile reasoning where modern linguistic norms are ignored in favor of older, simpler roots, "crank" just means "turn," and turning is often a good thing.
Not that I'm trying to argue against this being an evil practice, but out of curiosity, how many YC startups would consider it OK to poach staff from another YC startup? Would it cause bad feeling?
Bad feeling? Bad feelings affect all sorts of decisions, so what? That would be different than, say, YC telling companies not to do so, and the companies agreeing en mass. That would be a conspiracy of criminal conduct. But most YC companies are so small that the idea of taking a person from another tiny company, YC or not, probably would cause a "bad feeling". Give the tiny companies a break. God, I interviewed at one and they asked if I was married and had kids, because if I did, then it wouldn't work out. The answer was no, and no, and the important one was also a no. They will get better some day, but when they are so small, it doesn't matter.
So let's say I am running a startup with two employees. A friend of mine is also running a startup and needs to hire people. Is it wrong for me to ask him not to hire my employees?
It would be wrong for him to turn down job applications from one of your two employees [on the grounds that they work for you, not based on their not matching his needs] and then inform you that they applied, allowing you to victimise them while torpedoing their own chances at the other company.
Why are people defending these practices? This is not a personal attack, but are you so deluded to think that your 2-person startup is in the same league as Apple, Google and Intel?
what happened here is much bigger than a deal that goes between two friends who run a startup. it by all means seems like collusion by the overlords to ensure the minions are kept where they are to 'serve' them ( a minor exaggeration). Parts of this story is revolting, like firing and making an example of the recruiter who poached a google employee.This sickens me and is surprising , probably cause, I am not cynical enough..
At that level its a bit more of a personal issue but I think it would be wrong to have an agreement in place, sure you can ask and its likely that you would not poach each other's workers because it would damage your own relationship, however to keep this going as your company scales would definitely be wrong. You don't have to poach anyone's employees, but to have formal agreements in place not to do so is clearly collusion. This would also include summarily rejecting applications because they currently work for the other guy's startup.
As an entreppreneur, I would not want my employees poached. I do not miind them seeking out other opportunities, but I would want them to make the move, not an external entity. Poaching can create artificial demand.
A satisfied employee an become unsatisfied overnight if he is offered a higher salary elsewhere which you don't/can't match.
If I had the way to stop poaching, I will. If my employee wants to seek new opportunities, I will not stop him.
The sacking of the person that was doing the recruiting is totally unacceptable to me. He was just doiing his job
In what way does poaching create artificial demand? If your employee is valuable enough that another company wants to recruit them, that's not artificial demand, it's real demand. If you won't or can't match a salary somebody else is willing to pay, you deserve to lose that employee.
If your employee can't do the tasks you require of him, you fire him. If you can't pay your employees what they are worth, they go elsewhere. That's the way the world works.
Lets take a scenario. You Hire a guy and pay him $120 K a year. Within 6 months you spend say $60k training him. He now theoretically becomes worth $120K per year.
Would you be happy if someone just came and offered that much? Considering the time taken to recruit and money to train him.
In essence, Facebook (or big spenders) can make a small talented startup their official recruiting arm.
As the guy being recruited, it is great. As an employer, it sucks.
I reiterate, if the employee wants to leave and initiates the process, I would not have a problem it that. However, I would not want my employees or business unsettled.
Money is only a small factor. If that's all you focus on as an employer I can understand why your employees leave for another company when they offer to match their salary.
You may not like it but guess what, tough shit. Suck it up and offer your employees more incentive to stay other than salary.
you hire a guy and spend 60k training him, he probably feels some loyalty to you. maybe he doesn't, maybe he goes somewhere else, this is one of the risks you as an entrepreneur must take. creating a culture of loyalty is a way to lessen this risk. attempting to sabotage your employees options is not an acceptable solution, either legally or morally.
You deserve to be sued if you try to make agreements like this. Its part of the game, if you can't take it then get out, you don't own people and a big part of why people can make so much money and do well here is because of a system like this, if another company has a need and they can pay more then they get the person, plain and simple. There is no right to entrepreneurship.
Sure, I wouldn't want my employees poached either; from the employer's perspective, it's a pretty nasty thing to deal with. But taking any steps to prevent offers being made is just not ethical.
I think anyone whose opinion of Steve Jobs is changed by this knowledge needs to take a good look in the mirror and ask if they are not the hypocrite. Jobs always was a consumate businessman. Before Apple, even, he was scheming his way through a job, getting Wozniak to do his work and going back on his word to split profits.
But isn't that what America is all about? Aren't your shoes, clothes, electronics, etc. made by low wage workers at companies run by men and women who are willing to do anything for an extra dollar? Isn't that capitalism? Isn't that their "fiduciary duty to the shareholders"?
In the world of engineering, engineers are a resource just as oil is a resource for an oil company. Do you also get angry when oil companies hire lobbyists to wine-and-dine politicians until they give favorable exploration rights on federal lands to those companies? How is this any different, morally?
Ultimately, the really hard question is: would we have the iPod, iPhone, MacBook Air, iPad if Jobs had not done what he did?
You're invoking a tired ends justifies the means argument for ... consumer devices? Not societal survival, not space travel, not some other grand enterprise, but ... iPods?
I'm not trying to justify anything. I'm merely pointing out that there is a mythos surrounding Jobs that he was some sort of design god or product messiah. The only thing he ever was was a businessman. If your opinion of him changes knowing that he colluded to keep his cost of engineering low (much the same as he manipulated the market for flash memory to keep those prices low), then you probably didn't pay enough attention in the first place.
Of course, that's the danger in a cult of personality, isn't it?
Wait, what? Are you seriously saying that it is ok b/c of what got created?
I can't really fathom that is what you are saying. Personally, I've never bought into Jobs' cargo cult following. I've always thought the dude was a bit shifty and, frankly, an asshole. I hope history remembers him that way instead of saying "everything was ok because of the ipod". So, I guess I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are NOT saying Jobs is a good guy and everything is ok...but if you are, shame on you.
"Do you also get angry when oil companies hire lobbyists to wine-and-dine politicians until they give favorable exploration rights on federal lands to those companies? "
Yes, this does anger me, what is your point? I think a lot of people are angered by this, however this issue being discussed here is a bit "closer to home" in that we are probably more empowered to do something this issue than that of corruption in political lobbying.
The right to petition is enshrined in the First Amendment; if you don't like its excesses you'll need to start by changing the Constitution with a new amendment.
If I work at Pixar and prospect Intel for a job, they will tell my boss and my carreer at Pixar will be messed for ever.
I had a boss that liked to fire employees who he knew were searching for jobs elsewhere. He would announce in job sites good offers asking for candidates with the skills used in his company, and didn't disclosed the company name. When he got answers from his own employees, he would fire them in the best opportunity. A great way to create a culture of fear.