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Judge Denies Dismissal of No-Poach Conspiracy Case
theodp writes "Testifying before Congress in 2007, Google's HR chief stated: 'We make great efforts to uncover the most talented employees we can find.' But according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Google actually went to some lengths to avoid uncovering some of tech's most talented employees, striking up agreements with Apple, Intel, and other corporations to avoid recruiting each other's employees. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled that Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Disney, Pixar, Intuit and Lucasfilm must face a lawsuit claiming they violated antitrust laws by entering into no-poaching agreements with each other. 'I don't want to see any obstruction on discovery,' Koh told lawyers during a hearing. According to the head attorney representing the plaintiffs, the total damages could exceed $150 million if just 10,000 entry-level engineers were affected."
I'm for competition and against collusion, but that's supposed to be about the way companies sell products. How is poaching employees supposed to be good for the consumer?
It's great that they're getting hit for this, but who exactly is going to get that money?
Somehow, I doubt those effected will see a dime, and lawyers and government stooges are going to get it.
Justice for all my damn foot, why don't more people attack that part of the pledge?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Common sense tells me that shouldn't be illegal. It might turn out that it is, but it shouldn't be.
I'm for competition and against collusion, but that's supposed to be about the way companies sell products. How is poaching employees supposed to be good for the consumer?
To be a consumer, one needs to be a producer first (credit notwithstanding). Now, if there is a very limited number of buyers for what one produces (oligopsony) then the price you could sell your goods or services would tend to be lower.
Lower input prices (employees) generally lead to lower consumer prices.
In any case, antitrust is a waste of resources since cartels are inherently unstable barring state intervention.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
How is this any different from a union? And if it's okay for unions to do it, why isn't it okay for companies?
I'm a psychologist (amongst other things).
When they do poach they get slapped with lawsuits from the company they recruited from saying the person they got can't work anywhere near a computer for a number of years. So poaching really makes no sense because of the counter lawsuits.
Are they going to deny that people have "critical information" and shut down the lawsuits that follow from poaching ?
Part of a true free market is that workers can sell their talents to the highest bidder. If these companies get together and fix the price of labor then it's collusion.
Assuming they impacted 10k people from getting a better job. Also assume the better job would gotten the hire at least $10k more a year, be that in wages or benefits. After 2 years, all 10k people would have cost $200M the companies just in the increased wages/benefits.
and we still need renaissance era anti-guild laws. Way to raise the bar IT industry.
Yup. People sucked down this motto and believed it. The fast is that the nature of business is often contrary to the general public interest. This is why we citizens band together in the form of governments to counterbalance some of the negative side of business. No, this isn't a diatribe against capitalism. It is simple a recognition that capitalism has its weaknesses that must be addressed and reckoned with.
Put two saints in charge of a business and you will find that they begin behaving in ways that the wouldn't if they weren't in a powerful position. it doesn't make them evil. It is simply a response to the environment and the forces around them. Our gov't should place restraints in place to minimize anti-society behavior.
When Google puts in the "no poaching" agreement, it is acting in its own best interest, but not in the best interest of society as a whole. Citizens should be free to work in the best environment for them. This isn't a profit driven value. It is a freedom based value. Google is acting against that and should be slapped in the language that corporations understand -- the bottom line. The slap must be hard enough to change behavior, or else it will be deemed a cost of doing business.
And if you still think that we just need the right people in charge of companies, people with the right ethics and then everything will be perfect, you are absolutely deluded. Granted, we DO need strong ethics in those who hold power. But be damned sure that even those people will act against the interest of the rest of us.
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It is known by those who take the time to check into such things that none
of the companies mentioned in the summary are nice places to work.
But the judge is doing good work here. Screw all these companies if they
want to keep employees from having options, that is very very ugly behavior.
and the effects it can have,
Judge Denies Dismissal of No-Poach Conspiracy Case
Three negatives! Did anybody else have trouble parsing that sentence? :-)
Some knowledgeable sources close to the discovery process say that there is a secret clause buried in these contracts. Apparently all these companies agreed not to rouse 2000 employees in the middle of the night and herd them back to work for a cup of tea and some biscuits. But Apple found a loop hole, that this clause applies only to USA and not China. That kind of gotcha tactic upset the other players who were overheard saying, "tut, tut, it is not cricket, it is not done" in the Olde Duquesne Country Club. And one of them go so upset he drank a little too much and spilled it all to some friendly guy tending to him as he was throwing up in the men's room. That is how the whole thing came out in the open.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So what's stopping someone from applying for another job? This is all about poaching: that is, the thing Microsoft did back in the day to kill Borland by making ridiculous offers to a direct competitor's employees to effectively hobble the company. How is that not evil?
If Google was sorting through their data to determine who the top Apple/Pixar/etc developers were and making them offers they couldn't refuse in an effort to stymie competition, that would be worth bitching about. There is nothing stopping anyone from applying for a job on their own time, and none of this is about not hiring the competition... it's just about not actively seeking out competitor's employees at their workplaces.
If it comes to light that these companies were actively refusing employment and reporting applications to their competitors (for "disciplinary purposes"), then it will be evil. Not pestering employees during work hours with potentially embarrassing job offers seems more like courtesy.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
When I was working a government job and was trying to go back to the private sector, I had several recruiters tell me that they couldn't hire me since the had government contracts.
In the private sector, I had seen the same as well. A company I was working for as a contractor wanted to hire me as their own employee, but their contract had a poaching clause that levied a substantial (5 figure) fee if they did so. They did do it for one of my coworkers, but he ended up leaving in less than a year so they were wary of doing it for anyone else.
Not just unenforceable, but actually prohibited in California (where all this anti-poach activity is going on)..
However, there are devious ways to achieve the same result: Allege that the leaving employee possesses trade secret knowledge that will inevitably be disclosed. Whether or not that's true (and the courts tend to say it's not), the threat of litigation accompanying your hiring that person tends to have a chilling effect on the whole thing.
They now have just one target to buy off. Get their own legislation put in place. etc.
Deleted
There is talent at Adobe? It is hard to tell with all of their buggy, bloatware applications.
What, you think being a programmer somehow cures someone of greed?
Just as businesses face real incentives to get as much work out of employees for as little money as possible, employees face real incentives to get as much money out of employers while contributing as few hours as possible.
While there are some people who are satisfied with "enough," it is human nature to want more.
150 million! That's huge! That's like if a person pirated like 5 songs.
The motto is not "Do no evil," it is "Don't BE evil." That is important because a person can do a little evil now and then but still not really BE evil so long as he feels appropriately guilty afterwords (and tries to make up for it or not to continue doing it).
Not that this matters, of course. "Evil" is an ambiguous word, especially in an economic environment where everyone *must* compete over scarce resources.
Judges say it is legal for corporations to murder key personnel of their competitors as long as it is in the name of increased profits.
"According to the head attorney representing the plaintiffs, the total damages could exceed $150 million if just 10,000 entry-level engineers were affected."
How do you poach entry-level engineers?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Don't Be Evil means Don't treat customers like Microsoft
It was never some universal moral imperative. OTOH, if you act holier then thou, you shouldn't be surprised when people call you on it.
... does not contain too few non-single negatives, no?
that most here have no idea how these "No Poaching" agreements actually function. The way these agreements work is two (or more) companies agree to not actively recruit the others employees. The employees are still free to move between the companies anytime there is a job opening. As someone who has worked an a "no poaching" company, this is much to do about nothing. As a side note it was interesting back in the late 90's to see Dell put up giant billboards across from Compaq Headquarters to steal their employees. These agreements are to stop that type of behavior.
So, its wrong to make an agreement to NOT poach, but its wrong TO poach too?
Codemasters sued another company of poaching some employees in 2010 - http://www.edge-online.com/news/codemasters-goes-court-over-poached-staff though I can't find any mention of what's happened since then.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or
in some contrivance to raise prices." -- Adam Smith, the Wealth of Nations
Whatever the Engineers (Creators) are paid, it will always be less than the salesmen (type-a conmen) - sometimes to the point of of an ipecac-type response.
Infosts TCS Wipro still have similar contracts. You can Google for them and attach these Labor Trading Companies in the Class Action Lawsuit as well.
Good question. I don't have an answer for you except for "eternal vigilance" which is admittedly difficult when one works 50 hours a week and your opponents can pay people to focus on it 50 hours a week.
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