Regardless of what the ultimate consequences would have been of any price fixing scheme, do you or don't you believe it is wrong? You can argue all day about the hypotheticals of how much or how little this all actually affected wages, but if you believe in principle that some general free market mechanism should be the determining factor in private sector wages, then you should disagree with what happened. Even if in the end it's a fight between the merely wealthy (which, btw, I don't think every engineer at Google/Apple/etc are making those top wages, at least not based off median numbers I've seen) with the super wealthy you still had an unfair practice that skewed what should have been market wages and put more money into the pockets of the super wealthy.
I think it's acceptable to say that this scheme was bad and wrong and also to acknowledge that there are more significant and severe wealth and wage problems in this country for a large group of people outside engineering, law, medicine, etc. and those problems need to be addressed. I don't like the attitude of saying hey, the engineers are doing pretty good guys, it's ok if the even richer take money from them they should have rightfully earned. That won't solve any problems, least of all the more severe wage discrepancies or plight of the poor.
Well, I don't consider not cold-calling as a price fixing scheme. As long as normal hiring process continues, all you're doing is shifting recruiting from a smaller pool of highly compensated engineers, to a large pool of less compensated engineers.
It would only be price fixing if there was an industry wide agreement to put a cap on engineer salaries. Rather instead, what you have is an agreement to shop in one market exchange instead of another.
I mean, what do you think is better for both engineers in general, as well as the companies: Trading a small set of engineers back and forth with ever more escalating compensation in a bidding war, or, hiring from a large, general pool of applicants?
One way leads to disruption, mono-culture, and somewhat unfair bias towards those not on the roster already of the big companies. If anything, not cold calling should increase diversity as well.
This scheme only seems slimy to me, because any agreement between companies in secret, seems slimy. But I am really not seeing it as a price fixing scheme, and I find it hard to get myself motivated to Occupy Mountain View protesting.
This reminds me of several years ago when Google switched the Holiday gift from giving $1000 tax free cash in an envelope, to giving a free device (phone/tablet/etc). Some people were irritated by it and complained, but I found the complaints to be a solo on the world's tiniest violin. Seriously, there are people starving on Christmas, unable to even buy their children toys or clothes, and people earning in the top 1%-10% are annoyed that instead of $1000 cash, they get a $500 device for free. It's an even more absurd version of Louis C.K.'s "everything is awesome and no one is happy."
I can understand this stance, but I'd point out the section that makes the issue cross the line of "appropriate collusion" (god that's a terrible phrase) for me, that being the "We do not hire from these people even if approached in the normal application process" groupings
Focusing recruiting, sure. But pre-filtering on the basis of factors "not relevant" to the person performing the job starts to get into a very grey territory in terms of discrimination. (I realize on the surface this seems silly since where you are working is totally relevant to a new job, but not in the context in which it was being utilized.) I really don't intend to draw a strawman with this, but that I see a big difference between their limiting their effort, and their prohibiting your effort.
I find it interesting that had they framed the 'do not hire' rules under the concept of avoiding lawsuits due to trade secrets, then there would be zero 'evil' in the whole thing (Not that I think it was evil in any case).
On top of that, unless I missed something, the documents I've read excluded engineers, the ones getting their jimmies ruffled, from the 'do not hire' list and simply had them on a 'no cold call' list. It was management and sales that were under some 'do not hire' list, right?
In this whole thing, the only part that I find morally/legally suspect is the agreement to not hire certain categories of employees from certain companies. Everything else is just a bunch of hand waving from highly paid people that want to be paid even more. And even that, had it been worded slightly different, would be arguably legal.
And that's exactly what I'm getting at. Once you establish that there has been a breach of law, you _have_ to take the context/wording into account, which is highly "slimy" on its own merit, as the grandparent post puts it, and turns what might otherwise be a "don't word your hiring practices in such a way or collude them between companies" reprimand into a "you're clearly doing really underhanded things, and are even _self effacing_ about this" (citing the "let's not put on paper something we could get sued over" memos)
I (as an engineer) have my "jimmies rustled" because this sets a really worrying precedent for the behaviors of these companies I do/might work for, and is frankly the sort of behavior that makes me have implicitly low trust for people with this sort of power, which is an unfortunate state of things. (I'd really like to be able to trust people, I promise...)
> Regardless of what the ultimate consequences would have been of any price fixing scheme, do you or don't you believe it is wrong? You can argue all day about the hypotheticals of how much or how little this all actually affected wages, but if you believe in principle that some general free market mechanism should be the determining factor in private sector wages, then you should disagree with what happened.
I know it isn't a popular view, but I see nothing morally wrong with two companies agreeing not to hire each other's employees. I see no rights being violated. Apple employees have no right to be hired by Google, and vice versa - therefore Google and Apple not hiring the other company's workers does not constitute a violations of rights.
Nor do I think it violates any free market ideas, at least not mine. What Google and Apple essentially are doing is disadvantaging themselves compared to their competitors. Any company that does not enter into a no-poach agreement is at a competitive advantage compared to all the companies who do. Let's say Samsung is not in this agreement, the result is that Samsung can hire both Google and Apple employees, while neither Apple nor Google have this privilege. The talent pool for Samsung would be greater than that of both Google and Apple, and it will be at a better position to hire the people with the qualifications they need.
Now, if Steve Jobs start making threatening calls to Samsung's CEOs, then we would have something that would constitute criminal activity. That is not acceptable. Steve Jobs cold-calling Brin/Page/Schmidt (can't remember who it was), and telling them in an agitated manner not to hire his employees is also on the verge of being criminal, at least if threats were involved. But my impression is that Jobs knew at least Schmidt fairly well privately, which makes it another matter than cold-calling some CEO at some company you've never heard of, and shouting at them not to hire your employees.
I think it's acceptable to say that this scheme was bad and wrong and also to acknowledge that there are more significant and severe wealth and wage problems in this country for a large group of people outside engineering, law, medicine, etc. and those problems need to be addressed. I don't like the attitude of saying hey, the engineers are doing pretty good guys, it's ok if the even richer take money from them they should have rightfully earned. That won't solve any problems, least of all the more severe wage discrepancies or plight of the poor.