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Steve Jobs Defied Convention, and Perhaps the Law
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that recent revelations that Steve Jobs was the driving force in a conspiracy to prevent competitors from poaching employees raises the question: If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail? Jobs 'was a walking antitrust violation. I'm simply astounded by the risks he seemed willing to take,' says Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an expert in antitrust law. 'Didn't he have lawyers advising him? You see this kind of behavior sometimes in small, private or family-run companies, but almost never in large public companies like Apple.' In 2007, Jobs threatened Palm with patent litigation unless Palm agreed not to recruit Apple employees, even though Palm's then-chief executive, Edward Colligan, told him that such a plan was 'likely illegal.' That same year, Jobs wrote Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google at the time, 'I would be extremely pleased if Google would stop doing this,' referring to its efforts to recruit an Apple engineer. When Jobs learned that the Google recruiter who contacted the Apple employee would be 'fired within the hour,' he responded with a smiley face. 'How could anyone have approved that?' says Hovenkamp. 'Any competent antitrust counsel would know that's illegal. And they had to know they'd get caught eventually.'" (Read more, below.)
Pickens continues: "But the anti-poaching pact was hardly Jobs's only brush with the law. Jobs behavior was at the center of an e-book price-fixing conspiracy with major publishers where a federal judge ruled that "Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy." (Apple has appealed the decision. The publishers all settled the case.) Jobs also figured prominently in the options backdating scandal that rocked Silicon Valley eight years ago. An investigation by Apple's lawyers cleared Jobs of wrongdoing, saying he didn't understand the accounting implications but five executives of other companies went to prison for backdating options, while Jobs was never charged.
There's no way of knowing whether Jobs, had he lived and been healthy, would have faced charges, especially since he was a recidivist. Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial, says Hovenkamp. Jobs probably came closest to being prosecuted in the backdating scandal, but by then he was already known to have pancreatic cancer. Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson notes that 'over and over, people referred to his reality distortion field.' Isaacson added, 'The rules just didn't apply to him, whether he was getting a license plate that let him use handicapped parking or building products that people said weren't possible. Most of the time he was right, and he got away with it.'"
There's no way of knowing whether Jobs, had he lived and been healthy, would have faced charges, especially since he was a recidivist. Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial, says Hovenkamp. Jobs probably came closest to being prosecuted in the backdating scandal, but by then he was already known to have pancreatic cancer. Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson notes that 'over and over, people referred to his reality distortion field.' Isaacson added, 'The rules just didn't apply to him, whether he was getting a license plate that let him use handicapped parking or building products that people said weren't possible. Most of the time he was right, and he got away with it.'"
It seems pretty silly to ask whether Jobs would have gone to jail. Of course he wouldn't.
Between his celebrity status and bankroll, there's a snowball's chance in hell that he could get convicted of anything, barring committing the crime right there in the courtroom.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I can't seems to stop a suspicion from forming in the back of my mind that somewhere someone is trying to shift blame on the recent news of anti-trust behavior onto the one guy who is no longer here. Doesn't it take 2 to tango? In this very news story, I read that Google was complicate in the scheme of preventing a competitive job market. So let's report on the story that should be reported, please -- Who in Google is going to jail over this?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Why do people who have achieved nothing in life love to find fault with the innovators that are the engine of modern economic growth. (Ford, Gates, Jobs), were they aggressive business people, yes. Is our world better because of them, YES !!!!
Plah-ease!
For the billionaire class, they don't go to jail for minor things like this. At best their company get fined - at the stockholder's expense: the you and me with our 401Ks and IRA with the obscene fees.
The CEOs can commit crimes as a result of their decisions and the company gets fined, they get their bonuses and at worst, they get fire with their golden parachutes.
Bernie Madoff only went to jail because he screwed over the billionaires. If he just went after us peons, he would just paid some fines and made off to a nice cushy estate somewhere.
Seriously, where do they get off saying it's rare for big companies to do illegal shit? Name me one that *doesn't* at least walk really close to that line.
1) break the law
2) profit
3) maybe get caught
4) if caught, pay a fine of 1% of the excess profits
Why *wouldn't* a company break the law in such circumstances? There is absolutely no reason for it to stop until it becomes routine to either fine corporations an amount much greater than the excess profits (to compensate for all the times they presumably didn't get caught), or it becomes normal to hold the executives personally liable for the corporate actions they endorsed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
that the best programmers/software engineers are astoundingly more productive; something like 10 to 25 times faster then average ones. He obviously wanted to do what it took to retain them, since he was knew that his new product developments relied on impossibly fast deadlines.
That seems to be a big reason for wanting to be rich and powerful. You get to flout the rules. You see this mentality all the time, from buying a license to speed to Leona Helmsley's assertion that only the little people pay taxes.
The article is about how jobs subverted the law, consistently. There is hard evidence proving he did just this. This has nothing to do with discrediting, and nothing to do with government access. Stop trying to distract people from the original topic.
IMHO, the problem is that Jobs didn't invent light bulbs or put on a good act to be remembered. He made toys, and in 5-10 years, the "insanely great" products may be something of yesteryear. People don't remember Sony's MP3 devices which were groundbreaking, nor Creative and the Nomad Jukebox which was one of the first popular players.
With that in mind, he seemed to leave a lot of negative legacies. His ship and the large sums of money owed on that, the handicapped parking place issue (be it real or a rumor), and the fact that he is on record for giving $0 to any charity. There isn't a Jobs foundation for the arts. Nor is there a Jobs foundation for anything. He might have donated behind the scenes, but that doesn't matter to history where it matters what is on the books.
One can contrast him to the 19th century robber barons. They at least left behind hospitals, schools, foundations, and trusts as a legacy which persists today.
IMHO, once his devices become items from a bygone time, there won't be much positive that Jobs will be remembered for other than yet another brutal CEO.
I think Steve Jobs was a psychopathic individual.
It wouldn't surprise me if Larry Ellison is, too.
I would argue that selling the products was also a stepping stone for him. He was more concerned with building great products. That was always the fundamental difference between Apple and MS. Microsoft was all about marketing and maybe delivering what they promised. Apple was about building the one true right thing and believing that it will sell because it will be better than anything else. This is why Google will eventually beat both the Apple philosophy and the MS philosophy. Google's mission is not sales or products. Google's mission is in enabling as many people in as many technology contexts as possible.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Jobs was well known to be a sociopath. He cared nothing for people or anything that didn't directly further his vision. That's part of what made him such a successful artist and business man, but it's very obvious to anyone that spent any time at all with him that he just didn't care about the law or anything that he saw as standing in his way of getting what he wanted. Just watch any video with him talking about his competitors. He's dismissive, and rude, and obnoxious. And for some reason, people loved him for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Why do people who have achieved nothing in life love to find fault with the innovators that are the engine of modern economic growth.
So because Hitler was the driving force behind the autobahn, VW, and the foundations of modern space exploration we should just give him a pass on that little Holocaust thing? I mean, he was even partly responsible for bringing the US out of the Great Depression!
Ugh... its worse than that, because the idea that Jobs was a true innovator is a myth I'm getting disgusted by. Maybe a shrewd and ruthless businessman, who was good at marketing, but not an inventor or innovator.
Even while people mythologize Jobs, we forget the engineers, innovators and inventors who actually underlie all the growth and progress we've seen. John McCarthy, the inventor of LISP and a giant in computer science, died at almost the same time as Jobs, and arguably had a much greater influence on computing than him. He's a giant in the history of computer science and engineering. But where's the discussion of McCarthy? Where were all the television shows and books? Why aren't we discussing him?
The first Apple-Samsung trial was about what? Patenting a rectangle? With an outcome determined by a lying, aggressive juror? Where are our priorities?
I have no problem with honoring those who contribute to the progress of society, but the idolization of Jobs is not that. For me, it represents everything wrong with society. It's not only misplaced, but harmful in that it neglects those who actually move society forward and perpetuates the myth of the lone creator. You can call me a hater if you want, but sometimes it's necessary to point out problems before we can move on.
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Except that when pancreatic cancer manifests itself, it's already too late.
Except Jobs didn't have a standard "pancreatic cancer", that is, usually an exocrine adenocarcinoma . He had a neuroendocrine insulinoma. That's a quite atypical variant, indolent, localised, and eminently resectable with a much lower probability of mets if caught early when compared with an adenocarcinoma.
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