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Emails Reveal Battle Over Employee Poaching Between Google and Facebook

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-scratch-my-back dept.

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.'"

2 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Poaching is bad for employees too by SpzToid · · Score: 3, Informative

    Poaching and wanting H1-B rules relaxed means I.T. workers whose knowledge is perishable in the marketplace as technology evolves are getting screwed from the tech billionaires. Been that way for decades, and if that's not enough to make you puke, young Zuckerberg and his buddies even started a PAC to lobby on their behalf.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/Innov...

    --
    You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
  2. This is NOT slavery by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.