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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.
Or unless you're employed by one of those companies. Artificially limiting an Engineer's ability to get another job which could offer better compensation or more interesting technical challenges is wrong.
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....
They key difference is that while for one particular company to hire only people from certain schools may be stupid and discriminatory, it's not a conspiracy between multiple companies -- the latter being pretty much the definition of a trust, and what anti-trust laws are designed to prevent. The former harms only one company, and the employees of that company; the latter harms everyone in the industry.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
If you can be replaced by an Indian code monkey, you don't deserve to have an IT job.
Anyone can be replaced by an Indian code monkey, it just takes management more interested in the upcoming quarterly than in quality.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I think they should investigate the sending of IT jobs off-shore...It should be considered unethical if a company lays off an IT person, then ship their job to China, for example. Nothing against China, or any other country, but when you ship all of that expertise elsewhere, you handicap innovation in your country. That's stupid.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Jon Rubenstein, was hired away from Apple
Incorrect. Rubenstein retired from Apple. Palm convinced him to come out of retirement.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've always wondered why Microsoft hasn't hired a lot of Google's engineers away from Google.
Because 1) they'd have to move from the center of the industry to a city that might as well be a company town, at least as far as development work is concerned. 2) They'd have to leave an organization with a healthy, young, and vibrant corporate culture and go to one that's rotting from the head, and 3) they'd have to forgo GOOG options for MSFT options, and 4) Google is a much better resume entry than Microsoft.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It would also be helpful if they put some time into investigating permalancing, unpaid internships, and the unethical practice of performing credit checks on applicants.
Luckily, 16 states are looking into banning credit checks, and unpaid internships are being looked at as well.
meep
Yes, when I saw this, I thought there are many more and worse problems than that in IT hiring.
There's the H1B stuff. Then there is stuff that I suspect is not confined to IT, though maybe it is more common there. For instance, putting out "resume bait" on job websites, practiced by the shadier sorts of head hunting firms. Jobs that don't actually exist. Another of this variety is the one they have no intention of filling, as they've made it impossible for anyone to qualify, or are demanding so much or offering so little pay that only a desperate sucker would bite. This is so they can cry that they can't find talented people, and hypocritically demand more H1Bs or other government intervention. Or there's the cooked job posting. There really is a job, but they've already chosen their hire, perhaps a friend or a relative, and are merely going through the motions to give it the appearance of complying with EEOC requirements. These have the mile long list of requirements, some very obscure and questionable, that just happen to exactly fit the resume of the person they're hiring. Then there's the real job that is already filled. Another common practice is pushing people to perform the work of more than one job, or of categorizing a job as a lower pay, less skilled position than the work they actually want done. And of course discrimination based on age, race, sex, marital status.
The noise level has been bad for years now. It would help everyone if all these sorts of deceit were tamped down, if HR was served notice that, no, such corrupt dealings are not acceptable, no matter how common and "standard" they may be. Well, this investigation is a start.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"