Google, Apple Settle Justice Dept. Hiring Probe

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The LA Times reports that under a proposed settlement with the Justice Department, six major Silicon Valley firms — Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Intuit and Pixar — would be barred from pledging not to 'cold call' one another's employees. Federal officials have been scrutinizing such agreements for more than a year, concerned that they restrained competition for skilled workers and kept an artificial cap on wages by avoiding expensive bidding wars. If the court fight had proceeded, it could have helped decide the legality of such accords, not just in the high-tech sector but across all industries. But the fight had risks for each side. To win, the Justice Department would have had to convince a court that workers had suffered significant harm. A loss for the companies would have opened the door to a rush of lawsuits."

Comments

Re:Do no Evil?

[icebraining]

Phoning someone up to see if they want a job, out of the blue -- cold calling your competitors... well that's the kind of thing Mr. Burns would do. It's fucking evil. Now I expect companies like Apple to do it. I expect the other corporations to be that shady. That's their way.

You're a fucking moron. Google and Apple were not cold calling; in fact, they made and agreement not to cold call each other, and the Justice Department is contesting that agreement.

In a blog post, Google associate general counsel Amy Lambert said: "While there's no evidence that our policy hindered hiring or affected wages, we abandoned our 'no cold calling' policy in late 2009 once the Justice Department raised concerns, and are happy to continue with this approach as part of this settlement."