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Emails Reveal Battle Over Employee Poaching Between Google and Facebook
colinneagle (2544914) writes "Apple, Google, and a slew of other high-tech firms are currently embroiled in a class-action lawsuit on allegations that they all adhered to tacit anti-poaching agreements. With that case currently ongoing, we've seen a number of interesting executive emails come to light, including emails showing that Steve Jobs threatened Palm's CEO with a full-fledged legal assault if the company kept going after Apple engineers. There is also correspondence between Sergey Brin, Marissa Mayer, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, and Google's Jonathan Rosenberg discussing the threat that Google saw in Facebook hiring its engineers. The discussion elevates, with Sandberg pointing out the hypocrisy of Google growing to prominence by hiring engineers from major Silicon Valley firms. Rosenberg then hints at the potential for a 'deeper relationship' that Google would be willing to reach as long as Facebook stops hiring its engineers, going so far as to tell Sandberg to 'fix this problem.'"
"Finally, we (or basically I) have not done a good enough job of high rewards for high performance." - Sergey Brin
If there was a bigger sign that said "we are not interested in training our employees and have a terrible corporate culture" poaching would be it.
So its okay for employees to have unions ... but not for businesses?
Hypocrisy at its greatest.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Oh the humanity.
Ultimate fanboi war!
Still trying to square Google up with its tagline - "Don't be evil" when time and time again they choose the dark side. Then I realized...
Anakin Skywalker: From my point of view, it is the Jedi who are evil.
From their perspective, what we call evil is good.
Except the relationship is not symmetrical in any other ways either, e.g. the employees cannot fire the CEO and/or the board at any time for whatever reason
With a collective bargaining agreement in place the CEO often cannot fire a union employee at will either. In fact with a sufficiently restrictive CBA in place union employees can be nearly impossible to fire even for actions that arguably should get them fired, like showing up for work stoned.
For employees it is evil a sort of substitute for slaves and indentured servants.
Seriously folks. Let's not for a moment pretend that this is remotely similar to actual slavery. We're talking about two companies to collude to suppress wages for employees that by all objective standards are paid pretty well and have pretty good lives. Are you seriously going to claim that that is in any way comparable to being the property of another human being?
Yes this collusion is wrong. No it isn't even close to slavery. Claiming that the two are anything similar is unbelievably clueless.
When I was little, my daddy told me "never attribute to malice what might as well be ignorance." And I believed this. So I was a libertarian and was suspicious of regulations on business. Let companies compete in the free market! Leave them be, government busybodies!
But then I grew up.
It is not the purpose of government to serve the people. It is the purpose of government to preserve the status quo. To keep the rich rich and the poor poor. These corporations give massive amounts of money to both political parties, and they get what they pay for. Fat government contracts. Protection from competitors, foreign and domestic. You think they give a shit about unemployment? Hell no. They LOVE unemployment. Keeps the workers in line knowing there's 5 other people who would love to take their job if they get uppity. Student loan debt forgiveness? Hells no. Debt keeps the slaves tied to their wheels. And if our barristas have Ph.Ds, all the better. Damn tech workers think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle? Haha, bring in the H1-Bs! Secret backroom deals to cap salaries! The nerve thinking Americans should earn middle class wages...in America. Working at the most profitable companies in history. We need that money to maximize shareholder value! The Dow's through the roof with massive unemployment? Perfect!
That is not ignorance. That is malice.
So, fuck 'em. Fuck 'em hard. I am a socialist.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
As an engineer that could have been affected by these shenanigans, I hope that each of these companies gets spanked and spanked hard. A message needs to be sent that abusing their talented, non-union labor force will have stinging consequences.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Adam Smith wrote eloquently about this vary topic in 1776! He wrote "Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this [natural] rate". Smith means the natural rate as determined by market supply and demand. Apparently this is precisely what occurred. Those who feel compelled to pen remarks would be well advised to read Adam Smith instead.
Shaka, when the walls fell! Gorbachev and Regan, at Geneva. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!
Google, when the being wasn't evil. Zuckerberg, his fucks dumb. Eric Schmidt, with nothing to hide. Dathon and Picard at El Adrel.
Custer, his last stand. Murphey, his law unbroken. Snowden, his PRISM wide open.
There is a major difference between agreeing not to hire from each other, and just not actively going after each other's employees. I have worked at Google in the past, and while I was working there I was actively being approach by facebook recruiters. I was not the only person being approach like that. I heard from multiple colleagues that they too were being contacted by facebook recruiters. I am aware of multiple of my former colleagues who actually did get jobs at facebook.
To me facebook felt too aggressive in their pursuit of Google engineers. There was a real practice among facebook recruiters to search through linkedin and any other source, where they could identify Google engineers and contact them. I saw enough evidence pointing towards those people being contacted simply because they were currently working for Google. Personally I had zero interest in switching from Google to facebook, I don't think I even bother answering, when I was approached by facebook.
If Google and facebook had reached an agreement under which facebook would be a little less aggressive in their pursuit of Google engineers, I would not have feared this would have a negative impact on my salary. And it would have felt a bit more reasonable to me. The recruiters could still look for talented employees, and if by chance they end up finding Google employees, they could still approach them just like they would have, if they had not been Google employees. As long as they weren't directly picking candidates based on them working for Google, I would call it an improvement.
Some people have argued those companies shouldn't even actively be contacting candidates. Instead they should wait for interested candidates to submit a resume on their own. Even that would not even get close to not hiring each other's employees.
Employees could still move from Google to facebook, they just had to take initiative to submit a resume. I would only consider there to be a real problem, if facebook would reject resumes submitted by candidates, just because they happened to work for Google. I have seen no evidence of such a practice existing.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
There's always going to be a struggle on hiring and retaining the best employees. They have a hard time of making sure intellectual property stays put as it is...but should this spill over to limit talented people's opportunities? Who will the law sway in favor of? This reminds me of a similar post from Ben Horowitz's blog (portraying the situation on a smaller scale) - Is it Okay to Hire People from your Friend's Company? http://www.bhorowitz.com/is_it...
Google and Facebook with their little pissing matches?
Come to work in the government contracting world. Where the players decide who will win which contracts and which employees each will need. And if you don't play ball, you might have a career as a barista at Starbucks. But they'll make any other companies life hell if they try and hire key people away.
Have gnu, will travel.
lololololololo llololololololol
Really, the issue is that people like to attach labels to things so they can strawman you. There really isn't such a thing as a left and a right in American mainstream politics; it is one big Corporate Party where we get the "left" and "right" labels based on which corporate industry you pander to the most. They fight with each other so much only because the industries they represent happen to often be at odds. It's not because either really subscribes to a real philosophy.
In past elections, when the country has a "vote the bums out" attitude, we see massive switch over from one party to the other. After Bush, there was a flood of congresspeople to the Democrat side for the election so they could be "Not Bush/Republican". After the antics of Obama's first term, we saw a flood of people switching parties to Republican to be "Not Obama/Democrat". Really, the party title means little now because most of these bozos are the SAME PEOPLE, they switch their party affiliation as the wind blows to try to stay in office.
I say all of this because being leftist/socialist is not necessarily shown as a bad thing just because there are some douches in power that align with the "left". That is a logical fallacy in itself, and we must all try to rise above that and not let the labels define us -- which is exactly what the "left" and "right" want us to do. Let's have a real conversation on the problems of the country, and possible fixes.
Vote Green Party, Justice Party, or Libertarian Party, in 2014!
a war between Germany and Japan in 1939--nothing good will come from it. Both of them need to focus on their customers as opposed to the profitability of their plutocratic shareholders.
that the grownups here know that the parties switched a few decades back. Better get some more talking point from your master.
a. Sergey: supply and demand, it's call competition. deal with it.
b. Facebook: "we have the right to refuse service"-- I guess you have that right.
c. Any tech employee: your hiring or salary is NOT based on performance, nor skill, it's based on Human Resource games. You are afterall non-union and working on a voluntary basis (employment at will according to law). HR and management decide who climbs the ladder, who makes what bonus and who get credit. You only have a 10% influence in those metrics no matter what you do.
In the end for the tech worker: this is messed up.
Apparently you've not heard of the world of contract labor. Staffing agencies, and all other equivalent forms of contingent labor are the employer's version of the union.
This is due to:
* Employer pays dues to agency for a set pool of workers
* Agency organizes workers
* Businesses gain labor-union style of protections from workers
If anything, this is a case where Right to Work should be applied, so that workers are not bound by conditions of employment to go with some form of contingent/temporary/etc. employment.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Just more Jews fighting to fuck you goyim out of the right to compete for a high wage in a fair job market.
But you guys ask for too much money. Look at me, all I want is $1 per year for my vast genius intellectual input. You guys are too greedy, do you see me taking more than a dollar from the poor company? NO you don't.
Remember well all love our company, and it does not evil, it's our child, and I have spent several years hiring the correct people to nurture it into the cuddly soft ball of fluff it is now.
So stop being greedy and running to other companies, unless it is packaging bags in wallmart, in which case say hi to my servants when they are in or and my users.
Thanks for understanding,
Sergey, creator of email, searching and youtube.
Here are some excerpts from the Declaration of Causes of Secession. Its all about slavery.
The real question is, can you accept new factual data and change you view? That is something only a thinking person can accomplish, so I have my doubts.
Georgia:
" For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."
Mississippi: Note the sue of the term 'products'
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin"
South Carolina:
"But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."
texas
She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-w...
Those aren't even the most disturbing parts of the declarations of secession
Consider yourself schooled.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Given the quality of life that Facebook and Google create, this battle over available talent is funny indeed. Both companies should be flushed down the toilet for degrading their customers and the quality of computer science applications, that they give computing a big black eye. I laugh at both of them and wish that they and all the engineers they employ would just go away. And I know something about this having followed python as an important application language at Google and experienced the failings of Facebook's UI and I live within a couple of miles of both companies. I am embarrassed for smart people everywhere when I consider the crap of these designs and the poor ethics of social media and Big Data applications generally, they give Capitalism a bad name too. So, screw them all!
This comes in the wake of the announcement that the FBI is investigating milisecond equities traders for violations of SEC laws and for speculation that has ruined the U.S. Economy. The same abuse of Big Data could apply to these companies, but under different law. This is not a new problem for Silicon Valley for the whole high availability computing movement begun by companies like Sun Microsystems and taken up by Oracle has trappings of the same sort of abuses of information and the use of Big Data against citizens. If the NSA data collection is the most obvious example of the abuse of information, remember it is the tip of the iceberg and the hardware was supplied by IBM. Oracle, and HP, remember that. Remember that social media is but a result of the Big Data application and its abuses, so good riddance to all those engineers who do that crap!