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Comment by thesmallestcat | Hacker News Reader

Quite recently, Google was found guilty of colluding to depress engineer salaries via "no poaching" agreements. Google doesn't get the "free market" benefit of the doubt anymore in these matters.

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I never gave them the benefit of the doubt, and knew that "Don't Be Evil" wasn't much good if you can't recognize that something isn't necessarily good just because it's good for you. And indeed, the "no poaching" stuff is pretty sorry.

They should have depressed salaries with non-competes like everyone else does.

"no poaching" is illegal but it doesn't go against free market principles. It's just companies willingly agreeing not to poach, as long as there is no coercion, it doesn't go against free market principles. Now, the question of whether it is unethical or not is a whole other topic. I think that "no poaching" is not very efficient anyway as it usually happens between incumbent companies only whose stock isn't growing as much as it used to. There's always an Uber or a Facebook around to poach your best employees anyway with generous stock options offers, and they do.

  "no poaching" is illegal but it doesn't go against free market principles.

I call bullshit. A no poaching agreement very much resembles a cartel. Same as companies colluding in order to squeeze the highest possible value out of, say, tenders for public works.

If poaching agreements are in line with free markets then so are lying, cheating and violating just about every aspect which is the basis of contract law.

I don't think no-poaching agreements infringe anyone's liberty and it that sense I don't see how it goes against free market principles. If you sign a contract with your employee saying you won't do no-poaching then doing so would be a breach of contract obviously but that would be a specific use-case. I totally agree that it breaks the laws though as it is illegal in the US. I was talking about free-market principles and no-poaching doesn't break these principles.

Since it's a distortion of the market it can't really adhere to free market principles, which (in theory) do not allow that.

It seems we need to agree to disagree at this point.

My definition of the free market is the absence of coercion (ie all actors are free), not whether people should be allowed or not to sign contracts you think may distort it which seems pretty subjective. I think making people not free to sign no-poaching contracts they willingly want to would be the distortion here, the no-poaching agreements may or may not have a negative effect overall but that is not a distortion of the free market. The only characteristic of the free market is that it is free, not that it is inefficient or not. The theory is that free markets tend to be more efficient, but they are not always so.

> If you sign a contract with your employee saying you won't do no-poaching then doing so would be a breach of contract obviously but that would be a specific use-case.

You contract is "employment law" + "your contract". I they don't agree with employment law they have to override it in your contract, in this case with a non-compete clause. If they don't, you have both agreed to the terms in "employment law" + "your contract".

> You contract is "employment law" + "your contract"

I don't live in the US so these laws do not apply to me, I was talking about free market principles in general.

As far as I know the concept is the same in every country. I really don't understand what you are talking about. When you sign a contract you agree to become an employee under the terms of the contract and employment law. When they agree to make you an employee they agree to follow employment law. So if they don't they are effectively breaking the contract. If the don't want that they have to not sign such an agreement. Which would sometimes be breaking the law but that is another issue.

They were only successfully accused of poaching in the USA, but the accused are global companies, and it seems unlikely they didn't do the same elsewhere too. They might well still be doing it too.

how did that story end? last time I heard the lawyers were trying to low-ball the defendants by accepting a ridiculously low payout

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