Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Steve Jobs Threatened Palm To Stop Poaching Employees

Posted by Unknown on from the asymmetry-of-financial-resources dept.

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."

12 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. I never liked him but... by jareth-0205 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's still surprising when we get a bit more data on exactly *how much* of a dick he was. I wish some of this stuff had come out while he was alive.

    1. Re:I never liked him but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    2. Re:I never liked him but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:I never liked him but... by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?
    4. Re:I never liked him but... by Virtucon · · Score: 5, Informative

      You didn't need to wait until after his death. There are plenty of people out there who knew this, ex-employees and partners all have spoken up.. Frankly, he fit the mold of every modern industrialist when it came to competition. It amazes me now how much people want to white wash him as some visionary and cult hero, he was just a ruthless entrepreneur who would walk over anybody to get what he wanted. Now it would be really great if the planet could get off his dried up nutsack.

      Here's some of his less famous exploits.

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    5. Re:I never liked him but... by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    6. Re:I never liked him but... by fredprado · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:I never liked him but... by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Eye-bleedingly high fine by N1AK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It doesn't affect me directly but I really do hope that this ends in an eye-bleedingly high cost to the companies found to have colluded. They manipulated the labour market to artificially keep wages down and that needs to be punished by costs so big that anyone considering it in the future would have to be certifiably insane.

    Factor in that the cost to employees could potentially be equivalent to years of lost wages and the ability to utilise this money and it really wouldn't be unreasonable to see a figure of a few $100,000 per employee theoretically covered by the no hire agreement. Give them that figure then take double as much as a fine to penalise the behaviour and you could be talking considerably more than a billion dollars and that imo is exactly what they deserve.

  3. Interviews with Former Employees by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Former Apple Employee 1: Look, we went to Palm of our own free accord.
    Former Apple Employee 2: That's right, it came down to who treated us better is all.
    Former Apple Employee 3: I mean, you get to hear the cute stories about how Steve Jobs dropped the first prototype of the iPod -- after being told it was as compact as possible -- into a fish tank and when he saw bubbles he said it could be made smaller. But what you didn't hear was later that day when he brought the engineer onto a stage and asked him if he was as smart as possible. When the engineer said "yes" Steve pushed him into a tank with sharks in front of everyone and said, "If he's so smart, how come he just let me push him into a tank of sharks?" Oh those screams will haunt me forever.
    Former Apple Employee 2: Yeah! And when I went to work at Palm I got blankets and clothing and food.
    Former Apple Employee 1: Steve would make us sleep in completely bare rooms on Swedish ergonomic beds and we would have to rub turmeric all over our bodies each day and then we could only wear Apple printed paper clothing and forage for berries in the yard.
    Former Apple Employee 2: After I went to work at Palm they let me get my citizenship!
    Former Apple Employee 3: That's right, Steve had captured Dmitri here in Russia and wouldn't let him be exposed to daylight ... he would scream "NO YOU FOOL IT RUINS THE MEAT!" if he saw someone showing Dmitri a picture of the sun.
    Former Apple Employee 1: We were just happier at Palm is all. There were so many problems at Apple like the Apple tattoos that later became just cast iron branding. I remember Jobs doing mine personally himself with his hand in his pants while screaming "HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?" as he pushed the hot brand from the fire again and again into my lower back.
    Former Apple Employee 2: And the Apple brand shock collars so we couldn't leave campus ...
    Former Apple Employee 3: And the time Jeb got beyond the walled garden only to find there was perimeter after perimeter of different obstacles like spheres that just floated up out of the ground and engulfed you.
    Former Apple Employee 1: Yeah, when he came back, he just didn't have any legs. "A permanent fixture now with fewer buttons" is how Jobs reintroduced him to the work force.
    Former Apple Employee 2: You see, Palm was just nicer. We're happier now and feel once again like human beings.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  4. Re:Just exposes the joke of "right to work" by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But the issue of Poaching or Employees going to a competitor is a problem.

    It is only a problem if you haven't made it so that your employees really *want* to work for you. You can do that a lot of ways: high salary, really really nice offices, free lunches for everyone, a 40- or even 36-hour work week, really cool code, etc.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  5. Re:Just exposes the joke of "right to work" by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So now employees are slaves?

    A company does not invest in employees, it pays them for their time. They are not things to own. If the company wants to avoid any "investment", they can only hire employees trained in exactly what they want. If none can be found the company can feel free to close up shop.

    I sell my time, if you want to make my time more valuable to you by training me during this time I am selling you that is your choice. Once the time you have bought has come to an end I owe you nothing. If this was not the case then I would have a pension, and raises that kept me at market salary. Instead we now have to switch jobs to get the market rate as raises never increase at that rate.