The alleged behavior of these companies is appalling to me. Halting an employee's application to another company is an abuse of power and amounts to theft. In my opinion the perpetrators here should do time in prison, just the same as executives who collude to fix commodity prices.
As a practical matter it means that I, as a Software Engineer, will now have to think long and hard before I submit a resume to one of these HR departments with a history of informing current employers.<p>We can bet that a good many job applicants asked "I don't want to make waves at my current job, but I saw your opening and it looked like such a great fit... So would you please keep my application confidential?"<p>What were they told in response by the hiring HR departments?
Facebook and Google are already in a hiring war and (if reports are to be believed) it's had a dizzying effect on employee compensation [1]. I can't even imagine the war for talent that will occur in Silicon Valley if these agreements drop. <i>Eyes Apple's cash horde</i><p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff-engineer-3-5-million-to-turn-down-facebook-offer/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff-enginee...</a>
I'm so incredibly proud of Apple right now. Their mastery of the employee supply chain is nothing short of genius.<p>Likewise, is "don't be evil" officially dead yet?
I guess this practice is clearly illegal if employees are not aware of this when they are hired. This is like a secret clause to their hiring contract, and that restricts their freedom to move to other positions. Even if California does not consider the practice illegal, there is a clear "abuse of power" case here.
I've turned down positions at two of the aforementioned organisations in favour of much smaller companies (<50 employees). It's worth it. It's better to be a well known and respected employee in a small company than a fungible cog in a corporate machine.
The article doesn't mention an important fact: All of the defendants named in the suit are based in California, a state that does not enforce non-compete agreements (with some minor exceptions).<p>Assuming that these companies agreed not to hire each other's employees, we have a make-shift non-compete agreement, in effect (though not as efficient or encompassing).<p>The biggest issue I have with this case is that these types of antitrust laws exist in the first place. In the absence of fraud, this is a victimless crime. To pay damages implies that the offender took something away from the victim, that they need to be "made whole" again.<p>These employees freely agreed to their compensation packages and received those. They weren't hired elsewhere because those employers freely chose not to after balancing the benefits of recruiting them against the risk of losing current employees.<p>If these companies are really screwing over their employees it seems like a great opportunity for other companies to tell them no thanks to their no-hire agreement and start poaching.
Could they just have people sign non-competes perhaps? If you want to work there, it's just part of the package. Seems like a fair trade off to me, and everything is above ground.