What is theft?<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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:<p>"Palm CEO Told Jobs Anti-Poaching Pact 'Likely Illegal'"<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
"They also agreed not to enter into bidding wars and to limit the potential for employees to negotiate for higher salaries."<p>But... but... but...<p>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?
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.
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:<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* Don't ever hire directly from the other company.<p>* Don't hire someone from a competitor even if they already left.<p>* Don't hire someone that ever worked for a competitor.<p>So, how far do the actual agreements go? Did I miss a potential level of "anti-poaching"?
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.
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.<p>Apologies for my ignorance on the matter, but I'm just not seeing what the big deal is.