Apple and Google Face Salary-Fixing Lawsuit

beaverdownunder writes "Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel have been accused of maintaining an agreement not to poach each other's staff, thus restricting increases in salary and restricting career development. California District Judge Lucy Koh has found that the plaintiffs have adequately demonstrated antitrust injury. Sparked by a request from the late Steve Jobs, from 2005 to 2007 the defendants had a 'no cold-call' policy of staff recruitment amongst themselves. Jobs is also alleged to have threatened Palm with litigation for not entering into a 'no cold-call' agreement with Apple." Besides the companies named above, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm are also involved.

Comments

Any other such "secret" agreements out there?

[dryriver]

For example, Nvidia and ATI could have agreed - in secret - that neither company shall surpass the other's current flagship 3D card by a speed improvement greater than 5%. They could also have agreed that the most speed gain to be put on the 3D card market, in any one year, shall be no greater than 15% higher than the previous year. What about realtime hardware raytracing for games? Both companies may already have prototype 3D hardware capable of this. But they may have agreed amongst themselves - again in secret - that nobody will put a realtime raytracing based 3D card on the market before 2018. ------- Given what little we, the public, know about "secret agreements" between these supposedly "competing" companies, there may very well be a graphics card or CPU prototype in some lab somewhere that runs 2 - 5 times faster than the fastest hardware currently on the market. But, by honoring a "secret agreement" between competitors, nobody would release that hyperfast graphics card or CPU into the market before the year 2020. That would buy these companies "8 years" worth of steady profiteering from releasing incrementally improved hardware (i.e. each time you buy a new CPU or gfx card, you only get a 15 - 25% speed improvement, rather than a 200 - 500% improvement). Does this sound like a Conspiracy Theory? Of course it does. But could it actually be true? Yes, I believe that there is a chance that precisely this kind of "lets all take it slow with hardware speed improvements" agreement between competitors could be real.

Re:Any other such "secret" agreements out there?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 90's I was working at Sun Microsystems, and I had gotten a call for a job at Cisco because a colleague had recommended me (unbeknownst to me). When I told the recruiter who had phoned me that I was currently at Sun, she said "oh, we can't hire you until you get permission from Scott to talk to us. Scott and John have an agreement to not go after each others employees."

So these things have been around a while.

Re:Cold calls?

[Surt]

Cold calls offering employment opportunity trade the negative of disruption against the positive of the opportunity offered. So long as the cold caller is legitimately offering you something of value, I think they can reasonably make the case that their call is ethical.

Re:Cold calls?

[ranton]

I'm a pharmacist and I get cold called, at work, at least 4 times every month. I want to shove the phone up their ass and twist it.

You get a call about once a week from someone offering you significantly more money to come work for them ... and you are pissed about it? I do get annoyed by recruiters who consistently email and call me, but that is just because they never really have a specific job they need you for. But this story is talking about companies specifically targetting valuable employees they want to hire (with a high enough salary bump to make them jump ship).

Any recruiter who wants to call me right now for a 33% pay raise to work at a premier tech company will never piss me off, even if I don't take his offer. And I am very content with my current gig.

open salary discussion

[anthony_greer]

These conracts couldnt ever really work if people were allowed talk salary...There is nothing for me that is more awkward than when I have to answer that question from a prospective employer about salary, I don't know if I am really too high for the market or if he is BSing me to pay me less...

I just wish people were a little less shy about talking salary...am i worth 70 80 or 110k per year? I honestly don't know, so I just take a guess, its like throwing darts, I cant really put much stock in sites like CBSalaries and Glassdoor because I dont know where they get their data, how do I know it isnt just the companies putting in low ball salaries?