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US Justice Dept. Investigates IT Hiring Practices
Zecheus writes "The Wall Street Journal (no paywall on this story) reports that the Justice Department is 'stepping up' an investigation of hiring practices of US technology firms, such as Google, Intel, IBM, and Apple. From the article: 'The inquiry is focused on whether companies, particularly in the technology sector, have agreed not to recruit each other's employees in ways that violate antitrust law. Specifically, the probe is looking into whether the companies' hiring practices are costing skilled computer engineers and other workers opportunities to change jobs for higher pay or better benefits.'"
As a 49 yo grandmother, C programmer and techie, I'd say sexism is a major problem in IT hiring. Its offensive.
A "gentlemen's agreement" between companies not to pilfer employees isn't a bad thing ... unless you're not one of those companies. Didn't Apple poach their latest iPod manager from IBM? Doesn't sound like they always play by the rules of their "agreement".
How does one even verify whether or not a companies have agreed not to poach from one another in a way that cannot otherwise be explained as 'not the right fit'?
A crack team of shadowrunners can't fix.
Emotions! In your brain!
I thought this was going to be about them calling you redundant and then hiring someone in India or China to do your job.
-Xen
U.S. Steps Up Probe Of Hiring In Tech
By THOMAS CATAN And BRENT KENDALL
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department is stepping up its investigation into hiring practices at some of America's biggest companies, including Google Inc., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Apple Inc. and IAC/InterActiveCorp., people familiar with the matter said.
The inquiry is focused on whether companies, particularly in the technology sector, have agreed not to recruit each others' employees in ways that violate antitrust law. Specifically, the probe is looking into whether the companies' hiring practices are costing skilled computer engineers and other workers opportunities to change jobs for higher pay or better benefits.
WSJ Professional
* Tech Workers Face Tough Market
* Recruiter: Sector Analysis: IT and Telecoms
After a probe that began more than a year ago, Justice Department investigators have concluded that such agreements do raise significant competitive concerns, according to the people familiar with the matter.
But the leadership of the antitrust division hasn't yet decided whether—or how—to challenge the hiring practices, these people said. About a dozen companies are meeting with top antitrust officials at the Justice Department this week and next, some to defend their practices, others to provide information.
Antitrust experts say the Justice Department could argue that an agreement between competitors that holds down labor costs is as much a violation of antitrust laws as an agreement to fix prices.
Such agreements are "very close to the line," said Melissa Maxman, an antitrust lawyer at the law firm Cozen O'Connor. "They're not agreeing on price, but they're kind of agreeing on costs." Skilled computer scientists with some management responsibilities, for instance, often make base salaries of $180,000 to $210,000. Compensation for the most sought-after workers typically soars far above that and includes bundles of stock options and bonuses.
The Justice Department hasn't confirmed the existence of the investigation, and a spokeswoman declined to comment Friday. But several companies said they have received requests for information on the way they hire employees.
"IBM is one of many companies that have been contacted by government officials in a broad-ranging inquiry of technology and nontechnology companies regarding hiring practices," said company spokesman Edward Barbini. "We are collaborating with the government's inquiry."
Some companies are defending their recruiting practices. "Since investigations of this nature are confidential, we will not comment on what the Department of Justice may or may not be doing," said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "However," he said, "we believe our hiring practices are lawful and don't harm competition."
Google declined to comment. Apple and IAC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Behind the scenes, technology companies are making the case that agreements among companies are not anticompetitive and don't affect employees' salaries or the availability of jobs. They say such agreements are commonplace, used by companies to maintain good relationships with business partners.
Some tech companies also say the agreements under investigation only stop them from cold calling each other's employees, not from hiring them.
The technology industry makes the case that it would be harder to enter into collaborative ventures with other companies if they fear losing valuable employees.
But Justice Department lawyers could respond that such agreements distort the labor market, theoretically harming the economy by cutting incentives for other people to enter such fields.
"In the long run, this is going to distort and depress the incentives for people to actually develop the talents and skills that are useful in this market," said Salil Mehra, a Temple University law professor who formerly worked in
This would be very hard to prove. Even if it is real, how is this really different than other arbitrary hiring practices like "google only hires kids that have degrees from MIT and Stanford" or whatever they do. You could say that just about anything that limits who you will hire in any way unfairly limits someone's potential to get higher pay and benefits. This may be helpful for start-up companies because they know if they want to get a googler or IBMer they only have to beat out one company.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I think no one should have the right to tell you were you work, but, you shouldn't be allowed leave and take you current employers clients with you over to another firm. if you allow that kind of bullshit, employee's would hold employers to ransom.
things like having agreement not to hire engineers and coders so you don't have to compete for the talent pool is bullshit, i hope they get dragged over the coals.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I work for a really big (20+ Billion dollars in revenues) company's IT department.
Of late, they have become enamored with one of the big Indian outsourcing companies. I'm sure their folks are wonderful - indeed, of the ones I've worked with, it's about the same breakdown of wonderful/OK/awful as everyone else.
Based on job listings recently found on one of the internet job sites, they appear to have asked the outsourcer to find someone to work in my area as a technical manager of sorts. The job listing is full of internal lingo and acronyms - nobody from outside the company would know what it's talking about; indeed, some of the acronyms are commonly thought of as something else. (For example, suppose IBM stood for, internally, the "Internet Bandwidth Management" system but it says in the job listing "must be familiar with IBM computer technologies.")
I'm usually one to attribute stuff to stupidity before malice or deviousness.
But is the crap job listing a devious attempt to prove that nobody with US work rights already is suitable, thereby making it OK to bring in someone on a visa - and totally ignoring the fact that the visa guy won't be suitable either?
Or is it just stupidity? After all, HR folks mess up technical job listings all the time.
I don't know, but I do know that the H1B bull shit needs to be cleaned up. Given the employment turmoil of the last year, why would you possibly, honestly, need to bring someone in from overseas?
Google is for geeks, does open source and can do no wrong. This investigation is unfair.
Apple is for users, does open source and is evil. This investigation is great!
Not saying that something like this can't be happening, but the real competition for the best engineers would be from startups.
Also, I noticed that MS wasn't in the list. MS and Google famously pooch from each other all the time, for example the famous Ballmer chair throwing incident.
I'm guessing this this really only applies to the high-level, superstar tech talent, right? Especially with firms like Microsoft and IBM, what could they possibly be losing when IBM hires someone who's been working on the grammar checker for the Norwegian version of Word? Or the lower-level code monkey keeping an obscure feature of WebSphere MQ up to date?
These kinds of agreements would work in environments where talent tends to stay put. Unfortunately, the invisible hand seems to think that job stability is a stupid, backward 20th Century concept. After all, who doesn't like looking for a new job every 2 to 6 years?? In an environment like this, even the big guys are going to have trouble holding onto employees.
I think a much better investigation would deal with the well-publicized claims of IBM laying off senior US techs, replacing them with Indians or Brazillians, and forcing the laid off person to train the n00b to get their severance package. I'd also like to see the H-1B program users under some scrutiny for things like not paying prevailing wages, or employers intentionally not pursuing the hiring of US workers so they can get their work cheaper.
All of these things would be less of an issue with some kind of professional standards body in the IT realm. Unfortunately, too many people I know think this is evil and doesn't allow the full brilliance of their talent to shine. I don't think that's valid...lawyers sure like the Bar Association and doctors like the AMA. These organizations give them the power to influence laws and maintain educational standards...exactly what we need.
There is a difference.
Legal: "We won't have our recruiters stake out the Starbucks in Redmond."
Grey area, probably what the Feds are looking into: "We'll draw up a short list of industry experts and constantly headhunt them, but once we find out they work for Microsoft we'll stop actively pursuing them. If they contact us, fine."
Illegal: "If we find out you are a Microsoft employee we will not hire you until you quit."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Your sig: "The upset over a missed deadline goes away much faster than the terrible taste of a bad product."
Mod +5 insightful.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It is not the right of the Federal Government to tell a corporation who they can and cannot hire, within a certain extent(illegal aliens and such would be an obvious exemption). If you have five people applying for a position and all five people can legally work in the United States, then that is where the power of any government in the United States stops. This sounds like a load of bullshit and a waste of taxpayer money.
If a company is recruiting people from other companies, then I see no problem with this. This is how the process works. If a company has evidence that another company is trying to steal "trade secrets", then they need to report that. Otherwise, then government needs to keep its fucking nose out of this.
That would seem to be the biggest problem for would be switchers. Essentially, their legalese translates into:
"You must be subjected to a complete mind-wipe before going to work at one of our potential competitors, because if you use any of the specific expertise you developed while working here, you're screwed."
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
A partial solution to the problem of foreign laborers is to tax it. A 20% payroll tax on people with employment-based visas in addition to current requirements such as prevailing wages would reduce the incentive to use guest labor. If you applied this to illegal aliens as well, then you have yet another stick to go after people who hire illegal alien labor. The downside risk is that even more jobs will go overseas, where companies are subject to weaker safety, pollution, and other good-for-mankind laws and consequently much lower costs of doing business.
Personally, I don't mind competing with foreign workers who work under American work rules - if they are willing to come to this country and flood the market and drive me out of a job or drive my paycheck down, it's just one more incentive for me to keep my skills sharp. However, I realize most Americans are more "America for Americans" than that.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I know plenty of people who've moved between Google and Apple. There's certainly no reluctance on the part of either company to hire staff away from the other.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's a good start. They should also urgently look into widespread H1B fraud and blatant age discrimination in computer industry to name a few.
I worry more about the droids the DOJ hired during the Bush administration for political purposes. I don't know how to totally fix this hiring cartel when the big companies threaten each other with lawsuits for hiring away their workers.
More likely it's a consequence of the non-competes most large companies require employees to sign as a condition of employment, and the risk of getting entangled in litigation if a company hires someone who was subject to such a non-compete. Even if the company can't be liable, it costs money to deal with the matter and extract the company from the litigation. And the employees themselves are probably also touchy about the matter, they can't get themselves out of the mess if a previous employer decides to sue them for violating a non-compete. All they can do is fight it out and hope they win, and even if they win they probably can't recover the cost of winning.
If the DoJ thinks the situation is a problem, they need to address non-competes.
check on H1B visa and the misuse of it by the tech companies. One thing that should be done by the feds is that ALL federal contracts should be checking into the companies use of nations that manipulate their money or have trade barriers up. If they manipulate their money (china and india come to mind), then federal contracts should be forbidden to those goods and services coming from the companies that use these in any way for the contract.
which is a ploy to avoid hiring American workers in favor of H1B & green card temp workers? It's only "old news" if you have already been replaced by an H-1B.
I read one ad for Qt4 programmers which required 5 years experience, but tool had only been released in the prior year!
The most infamous quote by immigration lawyer Larry Lebowitz during the Cohen & Grigsby seminar on employment visas, May 15th, 2007 in Pittsburgh. Lebowitz coached immigration attorneys and employers how to avoid hiring US workers in order to hire foreign workers on green cards:
"Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested US worker."
http://www.programmersguild.org/rir/
Or, HERE
How U.S. Employers Can Avoid The H1B Cap
Under the present scenario, U.S. employers can only file H1B petitions for new bachelor-level or master-level H1B workers on one day each year, or on April 1 of each year.
However, there are some other options available to U.S. employers.
Alternatives To The H1B Visa
o Hire U.S. workers.
o Hire foreign nationals who already have an H1B visa under the H1B "portability" rules.
o Hire recently graduated students on the USCIS' extended "optional practical training" (OPT) program for certain foreign graduates of U.S. universities.
o Hire H1B1 workers from Chile or Singapore.
o Hire E-3 workers from Australia.
o Hire TN workers from Canada or Mexico.
o Hire E-2 foreign nationals who own and operate their own companies within the United States.
o For multinational companies, transfer employees from overseas to the United States under the L-1 visa category.
o Utilize the U.S. State Department's J-1 visa program to hire foreign "trainees" and "interns".
o Utilize the H2B "temporary worker" nonimmigrant visa category.
A TN visa process is an "objective" process in which the USCIS officer determines whether an applicant's credentials meet those listed in NAFTA.
There is no requirement that a sponsoring employer pay at least the prevailing wage (or actual wage, if higher) for the position being sponsored for the geographic location where the foreign national will work.
A year ago it was reported that H-1B workers OUTNUMBERED unemployed techies!
H1B and other quotas are set in the Free Trade Agreements with the various countries. Despite the fact that these job ad s
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
This is bullshit invented by journalists. I bet you can probably trace a single journalist who originated this. I mean:
I don't know if there's been an agreement in the past, but there definitely isn't one right now.
You're free to apply for any job at any company you like; what this is about are the players in the game agreeing not to actively seek out their competition's talent. If you want to jump from Apple to Google, or Google to Microsoft, you're free (and probably welcome) to do so. But don't expect Google to actively court you while you work at Apple...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If this investigation leads to making it easter for employees to switch companies for higher benefits/pay etc it may eventually backfire on employees. Here in Australia and I suspect in US as well there is already a tedency for many IT positions reaching pay levels that are really not paying business the returns, and some companies solution to ever increasing salary demands has been redundancies and in some cases offshore the majority of work to India or China.
Before it starts. Slashdot article:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/10/1454250
And i have posted a number of times about it on this and other forums. I'm getting tired of posting it.
RAND institute, Stanford, Duke, and one other reputable institution I can't remeber have all posted studies on this. There is *no* shortage in SMET fields.
There is no excuse for the companies, actions.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Another thing to investigate is non-competes, and non-solicits. They're illegal in CA, but perfectly legal in most other states. Basically it is illegal for you to use your knowledge in the area where you have the most expertise at the moment. WTF?
My story and a very close friend of mine story is opposite. We were working for a research arm of Proctor and Gamble as contractors on their Linux High Performance Computing Cluster. Someone in upper management at P&G decided a managed contract would be a better way to do business, what they did not realize (and they did not care) was that we would have to leave because of non compete law. In fact, our users (primarily PhDs) wanted us to stay and maintain the current systems because we delivered great service. We had to leave and that is that. Sure, my friend and I are fine (I mean with that on our resume, it is kind of hard not to be) but we really enjoyed our work and did not want to leave. We tried to stay, we tried to find a way to even work for the new managed services company but it just could not happen.
Thanks for the link n/t
meep
This does not bode well for Activision, who are counter-suing the former executives of Infinity Ward for being "insubordinate [...] self-serving schemers."
Their supposed crime? Interviewing with EA for a job.
The "supposed" part should be doubly emphasized. First of all, because so far at least Activision hasn't actually provided any proof that the studio heads were actually doing that. Second of all, because if the Justice Department thinks refusing to hire people because the worked for a competitor is illegal, how are they going to respond to a policy of firing any employees that are suspected of talking to a competitor about a job? Presuming no actual trade secrets were being shared Activision my be setting _themselves_ up for further lawsuits or investigations. Everyone knows that if your current company finds out that you're shopping around for a new job that there might be consequences, but most companies aren't stupid enough to announce in a legal document that it was a direct response intended as a punishment for "misbehaving" employees.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You mean that not everyone was 100% nice to you all the time. Which, or course, is how male techs treat each other.
Yes, there's sexism, but more often than not it's simply that not everyone is nice.
Fuck Yes.
The same goes for AT&T, Verizon, Quest, and any other telecommunication company who do the same things to network engineers.
While they're at it, do something about their ways of keeping contractors on the payroll for years with a promise of a job that never materializes.
I don't really understand, why would a credit check matter at all? Nearly every prospective employee expects to get paid and is not going to put their own money into the company.
It's not information my employer ever will actually need for anything other than pointless paper shuffling. It's just an irrelevant way for some clueless grandma or recent graduate in HR to say "tut tut, here's a bad boy" and throw out your application before anyone with a clue sees it.
Maybe if the Justice Department really cared about the American IT workers, they would do more to stop the rampant corruption and indentured servitude in the outsourced employee business. Instead, they want to go after non-competes, as if they companies won't figure out some other way to prevent mobility of workers. If they think that by investigating a few cases where people are claiming they are not getting job offers from competitors, they are going to come up empty.
First of all, there are plenty of moves of people between companies at the highest levels. How many people have gone from Microsoft to Google over the last few years. I'm sure there are some people who interviewed, and didn't get jobs -- was that because they were prevented, or because they weren't good enough?
Further -- I'm sure that there are people that apply for positions at a competitor, and someone -- either at the board level or some other level -- gets asked "Did you know so-and-so? Were they any good?" First, if the respondent doesn't want to lose the person -- they answer that maybe the person wasn't really that good. Or if they do want to lose them, they give glowing recommendations.
We can always count on federal investigators to make the worst choices when it comes to investigating something.
Where I work a large contract was let to several LARGE companies - they shared it (Lockmart, BAE - you get the idea). They each had an agreement that if someone left the others wouldn't hire them. No big deal until this contract gobbled up 90+% of the tech slots - many hundreds of them. It extended to all of the subs too. People were actually ASKING to be fired in order to switch companies! The federal folks who these people worked for knew about it and encouraged it actually. Finally that person was replaced and the new person coming in told the companies that it wasn't kosher and that they didn't support it. But... the companies continued the practice among themselves! Once you get on this contract it's the kiss of death - you cannot find work elsewhere if your company screws you or they cannot place you elsewhere and you want to move. thankfully I've nto gotten stuck on this thing and work elsewhere but many others haven't been so lucky. It was years before anyone in the Govt. stepped up and did anything but even after saying they didn't support it (and they did for a VERY long time) the companies continued it. Hopefully the next re-compete dumps these turkeys....
This is just a way for those companies to keep the bright minds (and the information retained there) for 'reasonable' costs. Just imagine what you could get paid should you job hop to every better deal, each year. You're worth it, but they just won't hire you for that pay. imho this is a disgusting technique to keep wages down, also seen in The Netherlands. There is almost no recruiting among tech companies here, its even hard to get a job at a 'partner of your current employer'.
...IBM is about to go to national court about this.
This is isn't just two companies saying "if you won't hire ours, we won't hire yours".
The directors are forced to sign contracts that requires them to not hire people from IBM.
So when they quit their positions at IBM, and work for a different company, they're not allowed to hire IBM employees. Even indirectly.
You would think that since these contracts are illegal, they could just ignore them at a new employee without repercussions, but then they'd have to battle with IBM to get their bonus/wage/whatever. It's not payed out immediately, for obvious, tricky reasons.
On H1B you'll get a highly skilled wage slave.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
If you are going to hire unsuitable people, you might as well hire them cheaper.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Outsourcing has been going strong for 10 years now. There's a whole generation who've been permanent software developers since they started their careers. They're better educated on average, and are now there's a good pool of experienced developers out there.
The biggest difference from 10 years ago is that now North American and European management know how to work with Indian management.
"95% of the world doesn't live in the US of A." - by tomhudson (43916) on Sunday April 11, @11:09AM (#31808008) Homepage
Well, the "right to work" exists in the USA, & that's why I noted it is all - I know a guy who used it to "escape" CableVision of NYC is why.
----
"Plus, even in the examples you gave, if you've been following this sort of thing on /., you've heard of people who have been sued - even if you're in the right, it still means $$$, which, if you're unemployed, sux double." - by tomhudson (43916) on Sunday April 11, @11:09AM (#31808008) Homepage/quote?
Well, if you claim you're indigent (no money)? It wouldn't cost squat & you'd get a court appointed attorney, but assuming you have the monies? You'd win, as long as the case was under the jurisdiction of a "right to work" state. Then, you'd be able to coutersue for damages incurred... pretty simple!
APK
Fair enough on that much then (as you see, I don't get into much hassles w/ the law): Still, you can always appeal anything afaik, & I do know a person who got out of this type of situation (a no compete agreement w/ NDA etc.) w/ CableVision & on that very basis - his winning case vs. such things was based on a right to work state, and that if he could not do that kind of job (DOCSIS networking) that 9n essence, the NDA & no compete would be preventing him from working again. He won, & now sets up VOIP systems for CableVision's peer companies nationwide (which aren't necessarily competitors, because cable TV/internet companies are also "geographically locked" into their own territories too & don't "overlap" (or, @ least not much)), & that's all I know.