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Steve Jobs Threatened Palm To Stop Poaching Employees
An anonymous reader writes with more news about the no-poach agreements that seemed to plague tech companies. From the article: "Steve Jobs threatened patent litigation if Palm wouldn't agree to stop hiring Apple employees, says former Palm CEO Edward Colligan in a statement dated August 7th, 2012. The allegation is backed up by a trove of recently-released evidence that shows just how deeply Silicon Valley's no-hire agreements pervaded in the mid-2000s. Apple, Google, Intel, and others are the focus of a civil lawsuit into the 'gentleman's agreements,' in which affected employees are fighting for class action status and damages from resulting lost wages, potentially reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars."
Isn't this basically what patents have amounted to now?
Ammo to gain leverage....and still loose and flexible to be used on practically everything.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Companies demand "right to work" laws to protect them from unions, under the pretense that this also gives the worker the right to leave anytime and go work wherever they choose. Exposing crap like this just shows how much a farce that really is. "Right to work" only benefits companies, NEVER employees.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Jobs is the reason I have never owned nor ever will own an Apple product. Evil man.
Nor Oracle products, or use Facebook.
Yeah, kind of lame, but if everyone would say, enough is enough, things might change. Not holding out much hope for that...
Are you going to extend that to all the other companies that participated in this? For example Google? Because if you read that link, Eric Schmidt not only complies, but even is on record as wanting to do things verbally so there are no paper trails.
This is a BUNCH of people being fucking colluding dick bags. Singling one out lets the others off the hook.
I wish some of this stuff had come out while he was alive.
A lot of it did. His asshole rep was pretty well-known long before he died. It just couldn't penetrate through the mass of fanboy and media adoration.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It's a general corporate douchebaggery problem.. not a problem with an individual corporate douchebag.
Though what is being said about Jobs isn't probably off the mark, either...
They are certainly all to blame. That does not prevent us from saying someone specific is an asshole because of that, and does not make it less true either. I am tired of seeing people here thinking that being one among others makes you less guilty than if you were doing it alone.
I wouldn't call it collusion if Apple used the threat of a patent lawsuit to coerce Palm.
I call that duress.
And this is different from any other major, publicly held company how exactly?
Better PR
Now, obviously whiny labor who wants a great deal of money for no work is not going to like this. While the worker could use libertarian and free market values to make his or her life better, such as opening a consulting firm, find a new line of work and an employer outside the syndicate, or work within the rules of management to rise up the defined chain of responsibility, many will attack the system instead.
For instance, they will ask the government to come into and regulate the businesses by and create a crime where no crime existed by making such syndicates illegal. Or they will tell management that they must follow government rules, not the rules that will naturally create the most efficient labor market that will maximize short term profits. In the most agressive and impetuous cases, labor will organize as if they have the same rights and profit motivations as management and the firms in order to form their own syndicate to maximize the profits of labor.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Define poaching.
Palm employees have every right to speak to Apple employees when those Apple employees are not on the clock. Why should calling an Apple employee be any different than calling any any person?
Apple does not own these folks, and has no right to say who they can speak when not on the clock. Steve Jobs was such an asshole he stole from Woz. You know the guy that without Apple would never have even existed.
So you're willing to go without technology altogether? Then what are you doing here? You're a hypocrite.
I'm willing to boycott products where it's easy for me to not use them. But (since my career is in the tech field) I'm not going to go live under a bridge just because all the big Silicon Valley companies were complicit in this.
I think even employees that didn't look for new jobs should be part of the class. After all, if the companies knew they'd have a hard time leaving, it would allow them to keep they wages of ALL employees lower.
How about a Ford car? Henry Ford was outright evil. Ever play a record or use a light bulb? Edison was evil as well.
Good-bye
> It's quite another if recruiters from Palm are actively poaching their competitors' employees.
And this is what is wrong with your outlook as well as the outlook of most corporations.
You seem to feel that these companies own their employees, keeping them on their "employee farms" and only their King can kill them.
Kind of like cattle.
Now, please let me know what is wrong with receiving an offer of employment at another firm for a better salary?
Regards.
What you say is absolutely true. And if it was purely based on intrinsic talent of the employee, then employers wouldn't object to it so much.
The problem is this scenario: An employee employed and trained by Employer A, much of his worth is what he knows about the industry that he gained whilst working for Employer A plus the secrets of employer A.
Employer B that poaches him is not just getting the benefit of the talent that the employee brought to the table, but the value that was added by their employment at employer A.
Employer B may well be poaching as a shortcut to competing with Employer A, taking advantage of information that they wouldn't otherwise have.
Whilst anti-poaching agreements are illegal in some jurisdictions, others recognise that poaching can be unfair. For example when Symbian's Juha Christensen was poached by Microsoft, the matter was taken to court, and Juha was ordered to delay starting work with Microsoft for 6 months, so that current business secrets would have less value. So called "gardening leave".