How Silicon Valley CEOs Conspired To Suppress Engineers' Wages

Oneflower writes "As we discussed last week, a lawsuit is moving forward that alleges widespread conspiracy among the CEOs of Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar to suppress the wages of their tech staff. Mark Ames at Pando explains how it happened, and showcases some of the emails involving Steve Jobs and other CEOs. Quoting: 'Shortly after sealing the pact with Google, Jobs strong-armed Adobe into joining after he complained to CEO Bruce Chizen that Adobe was recruiting Apple’s employees. Chizen sheepishly responded that he thought only a small class of employees were off-limits: "I thought we agreed not to recruit any senior level employees. I would propose we keep it that way. Open to discuss. It would be good to agree." Jobs responded by threatening war: "OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly?" Adobe’s Chizen immediately backed down.'"

Comments

Not Unique to Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Technical Director (read: Guy in charge of a group of programmers), I know our company had similar agreements with other programming studios and technical firms in the geographical area we were located in. I learned of it by a slip of the tongue by our HR Director during a meeting.

I responded along the lines of "Well, if we would pay our programmers what they're worth after 3 years, instead of insisting on keeping them at Junior programmer rates, then we don't have a problem, and shouldn't need special back room deals to keep our talent". I unfortunately did not have the final say in pay increases, and did lose some of my staff to better payment offers. It was all I could do to compensate with treating the team with the highest levels of respect to keep them around due to shitty pay.

This was happening in Canada for context.