Steve Jobs personally asked Eric Schmidt to stop poaching employees
theverge.com
theverge.com
If I work at Pixar and prospect Intel for a job, they will tell my boss and my carreer at Pixar will be messed for ever.
I had a boss that liked to fire employees who he knew were searching for jobs elsewhere. He would announce in job sites good offers asking for candidates with the skills used in his company, and didn't disclosed the company name. When he got answers from his own employees, he would fire them in the best opportunity. A great way to create a culture of fear.
This flies counter with Google's "do no evil" statement and certainly doesn't paint a positive posthumous picture of Jobs.
Can we all agree that the word Evil has a more sinister use - ie knowing endangering lives, environmental damage, maybe closing press freedoms? And, therefore, we should be more selective in its application?
This is turning into another version of the Godwin's law - whereby it only takes so long before Google is accused of being evil (by breaking the not-be-evil pledge).
Google is now like Microsoft.
So if someone wants to say that Google is becoming like MSFT - say that (incidentally regarding MST being evil I recently read this: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/01/antitrust_kills....)
But I think that we should not dilute the definition of Evil.
Tell that to the employee who was "terminated within the hour."
But in all fairness, non-poaching agreements are not right. What if every tech company did this? You better hope you never have to leave that company after they hire you... Cause otherwise you'll have to consider a career change.
That is not the case here as Google and the others embroiled in this scandal were evil in that they willfully broke antitrust laws.
The problem with a word like evil is that it is so subjective. For some, obeying repressive laws in China would be the ultimate evil Google has committed. Using Google's own definition of evil, using the entire right side of the search results for self-advertising could be seen as evil.
However, ultimately I agree. Since evil is so subjective, very little information is provided by calling out Google in particular for being evil and thus hypocritical.
Condemning all the involved companies equally would make more sense.
(But I can't help feeling more disappointed Google was part of this).
Using that version of "evil", makes it a completely empty marketing statement. Surely no company does "real" evil on purpose.
Actually, you'd be hard pressed to find a legit company that does "real" evil even by accident.
> Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out," adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent."
"Exploiting the users" doesn't fit your definition of "evil", but it appears to have fit Google's.
Occurs when individuals or groups embrace codes of conduct or standards of behavior for their own personal well being and social approval, yet violate those very same codes or standards to undermine the personal well being and social approval of others.
There's degrees of evil, but no shades. Evil was being done to people in this case.
The point of "Don't be evil" is to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and not less us take the easy way out. That, IMHO, is what made Google great in the first place.
I'm not going to comment on the specific case here - I don't know the facts - but the reason for "Don't be evil" is as much motivational as moral.
Sad to see. I'm not surprised by the behaviour of Apple and others, but I thought better of Google than this.
CEO to the employee: You are indispensable; therefore you can't leave for a better paying job.
Unless we are talking about Steve Jobs.
In 2001, the company gifted him a $90 million Gulfstream jet, and paid for all related expenses.
According to Apple’s proxy statement from February 2011, Jobs owned about 5.5-million shares of Apple stock. In addition, he owned about $5 Billion of Disney stock, which gave him an annual dividend of about $50 Million.
Scary.
Things are fucked up, so we should expect it to continue being fucked up, and now that it is expected, we shall deem it acceptable...
> It's a sad state of affairs when we, as employees, wholly expect this behavior...
Well, this isn't an attack against you personally, or a tit-for-tat sort of comment, but...
> We have to work among the group of people for which this behavior is standard procedure.
You ARE saying that this is acceptable, since "we have to" work among them, and I just don't agree :)
If "we" don't show that this behavior is wrong, through our actions, it will continue...
As far my views on alternatives there is: unemployment: bankruptcy, couch surfing or living in a shelter self funded startup: doesn't pay and likely to fail. without external factors like connections or rich uncle, probably won't get off the ground before bankruptcy. small team of equal partners: doesn't pay, requires capital to pay in, "equal" partners will probably try to push each other out. incubator: pays very bad, greeks bearing gifts, silly patronizing, reality tv-like environment. angel investor: can't find these unless you're famous, have well-connected family, or already successful. small company/startup: founders will shit all over your day. will take everything personally (including payday) and want you to conform to their values. Don't like golf? Not a drinker?, gtfo. pay is shit. big evil company: Half a dozen middle managers are trying to figure out how screwing you improves their situation. ceo is probably doing bad things. pay is good.
So, yeah, if you take the financial aspect out of work, there are a wide array of alternatives.
In the words of Dwight Shrute: "False!". Most of the employees in question in this case and probably every other case where poaching is worthwhile are autodidacts. These employees are valuable precisely because they work hard to increase their own value. They know that, and they deserve to be paid accordingly by shopping themselves around.
It is in the market for autodidacts where actions like these are most damaging to the individuals affected.
The purpose behind these companies actions was nothing less than to artificially deflate the market value of these individuals, which is completely despicable.
1) It makes other companies (not involved in the agreement) more attractive, as their salaries will be closer to the salaries offered by the companies involved in the cartel.
2) This means that the pool of potential employees is reduced due the agreement, which means that the companies involved in the cartel will have to bear higher recruiting costs.
3) These recruiting costs make a mistake in hiring more costly. It gets harder to "test" employees and let them go when they are a bad fit, because expenditures from your HR budget are shifted to the front (on the promise of savings down the line).
4) Further, when the cartel breaks (as it will, each company has an incentive to cheat on the other members) the payoff of this inflated recruiting "investment" disappears.
Now, many of companies started with excellent ethical standards, but that is getting slowly lost as companies grow.
I wonder if there is some similar work as "Innovators Dilemma" but about company's ethical standards: explaining why and when a company's become very prone to "fuck ethics" approach.
Yes, companies are large entities that maximize shareholder profit and therefore talking about "good companies" or "bad companies" is meaningless. But I always understood the "no evil" slogan to be accepting of that. To me, "do no evil" was the mentality that no matter how corporate the company may become, the humans who are part of it wont let anything blatantly horrible happen. The company might become a giant corporate machine, but the human cogs will always retain enough power to stop horrible mistakes.
Increasingly, I'm starting to believe that every company mutates into the same corporate mass given enough time. Pick a large corporation with dirty business practices. If you look far back enough in history, it was probably a wonderful place to work with great work ethics.
Tell that to the employee who was "terminated within the hour."
Yikes. Sounds positively medieval.
I worked for Intel. Their HR is a nightmare. Be careful about telling them anything (more than what you are legally obligated).
When they get pushy, push back. Intel has deep enough pockets to handle a little push-back from their employees.
Would fast firing even be possible with long-term contracts? Firing fast isn't something that is done for the sake of saving money. It is done for the sake of avoiding the damaging effects of keeping someone on the team that hurts the productivity of the other team members.
I am saying there are legal ways to prevent an employee from leaving a company but it costs the company money to have that privilege.
It's not like a manager can just "bench" an employee that isn't working out for them.
What would make sense, especially in a market where there is a crunch for talent is a guarantee from the company that if it doesn't work out, that the applicant, would get 1-2 months salary after being cut to look for another place to work.
(Also, to the person who down voted me: This is HN, not Reddit. You don't down vote because you disagree with what was said. You down vote them because their detracting from the conversation, such as trolling.)
He's 8 days away from not having scored a single goal in an entire calendar year.
And his contract is for 2 more years.
And you know what? The team is still going to pay him. Because that was the contract that was signed. If you think having a software guy around for a year when he wasn't a great hire is a long time what about having someone around for 5+ years that not only isn't any good but (due to the cap) actively hinders the team's ability to get anyone better to replace him.
And yet the sports world seems to get along just fine this way.
This happens everywhere and at all levels.
But despite of distaste, people does it.
Kind of ironic that The AOL Way was supposed to be the reason The Verge guys left to start a new blog. It looks like the only thing they were tired of was Engadget's layout. The AOL Way doesn't deserve traffic.
also, could there be a situation where there is some conflict of interest based on nature of business of both firms?
Mind you, they have a great incentive. Only a handful of companies recognise 10x (or 100x) developers and they would like to continue paying just 2x for them.
In my world, poaching employees == offering them better options in exchange for the value generating capabilities that they bring to the table. Quid pro quo, and if someone else offers a better quo...
They were trying to nail me into a contract doing even more unpaid work: 'Sometimes that happens in a small company' -> 'Yes, I do the in-house IT, and it's part of the job, but I'm letting you know that it's every day' -> 'Yes, sometimes that happens' -> 'Every day is 'sometimes'?' -> 'Yes, sometimes that happens...'.
The other great comment was 'You have to expect a little overtime when you're on a good salary'. My salary is right on the national average wage - neither good nor bad by definition.
If you're paid hourly, or work as a contractor, you should be paid for all your hours.
I'm in London in the UK, do a 37 hour week, earn $80k equiv, work from home 4 days a week and live about 5 miles from the company (just over an hour scenic river walk or cycle).
Stop selling yourselves into slavery, grow some balls and either get paid for what you do or stop working so much.
Time is finite, don't waste it.
* Apple
* Lucasfilm
* Adobe
* Intuit
* Intel
* Pixar
Good to know. I shall follow this case with interest.
Of course, they might settle to avoid among other things more dirty laundry coming out or being solidly confirmed.
Who do VCs spend their skiing trips with: ramen-fed, sleep-deprived startup founders, or other VCs? Of course, they hang out with each other.
Same with executives at large companies. They might be nominally "competitors", but they've already learned that they have more in common with one another than with employees in the companies they run.
Let's say that you're talking to an investor and you tell him that you're being courted by another VC and that he needs to act fast. What's the first thing he'll do, if he takes you seriously? Pick up the phone and call the guy (they were classmates in business school, and it's "bros before schmos", man.) If there was proper competition, that sort of thing would never happen.
Social class is an ugly reality and people in higher social classes always look out for each other first. The real competition is insiders vs. outsiders. Human societies are naturally conspiratorial. I don't know what the solution to this problem is (other than, individually, to just keep working hard and trying to be awesome enough that the general wankbasketry of humanity doesn't matter) but it's obvious that our current regulatory machinery is too thin.
Don't be so fast to downvote the grandparent if you didn't understand the question.
I think most people here would rather hang out with another techie from a rival company than they would with the head of marketing from their own company.
The evil-evils don't meet in shadowy mansions with bad lighting and creepy piano music. They meet in private parties in Aspen and executive boardrooms and on the boards of "charities" that really exist as a scoreboard for the social status of rich people. They also don't have huge orgies. They visit prostitutes half their age whom they pay $1500/night to endure their post-coital crying about their mistakes (such as marrying dumb trophy/corporate wives and having to write high-six-figure donation checks to shove their low-IQ kids into Ivies).
There isn't "one conspiracy to rule them all", but there are lower-case-c conspiracies all over the place.
The Orwellification of the word is such that, only when we try to apply this term to the powerful do we suddenly become crazy kooks, despite the fact that the powerful are often the ones with the motive, and certainly the means, to engage in conspiracy.
The same thing is true in programming languages - eg people who go back to basics and throw out the cached thoughts that make up a web of assumptions that everyone clings to, and in the process create something weird yet powerful (like Haskell or whatever).
When you talk about shadowy mansions and orgies, it sounds to me like you're invoking a straw man conspiracy. But real conspiracies are plenty shadowy (isn't that the whole idea?) The upper level meetings of the very powerful seem to be quite secretive, with great security, be they in boardrooms or at parties in Aspen.
What frustrates me is that "conspiracy theory" has just become code for "thing that can't possibly be even considered". This is the message that comes down to us whenever people want to discuss, e.g. income equality, or the reasons for going to war. People internalize this, making it difficult for them to evaluate the real everyday conspiracies that take place around them, and, of course, benefiting conspirators.
I am guessing it would be possible to pull it out of Google+ profile pages, but I am not sure it has historical data, or been around long enough for that matter.
Facebook would surely have it but I doubt this information is accessible.
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/17/poaching-etiquette-how-to...
This is important because it means that new hires are probably getting less equity than they should be getting. Equity and belief in what the company is building should be enough to not require anti-poaching agreements.
Would they have engaged in collusion without Jobs at the center?
As an entreppreneur, I would not want my employees poached. I do not miind them seeking out other opportunities, but I would want them to make the move, not an external entity. Poaching can create artificial demand.
A satisfied employee an become unsatisfied overnight if he is offered a higher salary elsewhere which you don't/can't match.
If I had the way to stop poaching, I will. If my employee wants to seek new opportunities, I will not stop him.
The sacking of the person that was doing the recruiting is totally unacceptable to me. He was just doiing his job
It is another thing to actually do them.
If your employee can't do the tasks you require of him, you fire him. If you can't pay your employees what they are worth, they go elsewhere. That's the way the world works.
Would you be happy if someone just came and offered that much? Considering the time taken to recruit and money to train him.
In essence, Facebook (or big spenders) can make a small talented startup their official recruiting arm.
As the guy being recruited, it is great. As an employer, it sucks.
I reiterate, if the employee wants to leave and initiates the process, I would not have a problem it that. However, I would not want my employees or business unsettled.
You may not like it but guess what, tough shit. Suck it up and offer your employees more incentive to stay other than salary.
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On a tangential note, I am worried about the groupthink of HNers (I am not talking about you). the one directional thinking is astounding sometimes.
Is there a problem looking at a situation from an alternative view point?
It would be wrong for him to turn down job applications from one of your two employees [on the grounds that they work for you, not based on their not matching his needs] and then inform you that they applied, allowing you to victimise them while torpedoing their own chances at the other company.
what happened here is much bigger than a deal that goes between two friends who run a startup. it by all means seems like collusion by the overlords to ensure the minions are kept where they are to 'serve' them ( a minor exaggeration). Parts of this story is revolting, like firing and making an example of the recruiter who poached a google employee.This sickens me and is surprising , probably cause, I am not cynical enough..
In summary, these practices are extremely common, and Ben Horowitz recommends them. However, they are technically illegal in California.
Yes.
But isn't that what America is all about? Aren't your shoes, clothes, electronics, etc. made by low wage workers at companies run by men and women who are willing to do anything for an extra dollar? Isn't that capitalism? Isn't that their "fiduciary duty to the shareholders"?
In the world of engineering, engineers are a resource just as oil is a resource for an oil company. Do you also get angry when oil companies hire lobbyists to wine-and-dine politicians until they give favorable exploration rights on federal lands to those companies? How is this any different, morally?
Ultimately, the really hard question is: would we have the iPod, iPhone, MacBook Air, iPad if Jobs had not done what he did?
Of course, that's the danger in a cult of personality, isn't it?
EDIT: Removed inflammatory remark.
Yes, this does anger me, what is your point? I think a lot of people are angered by this, however this issue being discussed here is a bit "closer to home" in that we are probably more empowered to do something this issue than that of corruption in political lobbying.
I can't really fathom that is what you are saying. Personally, I've never bought into Jobs' cargo cult following. I've always thought the dude was a bit shifty and, frankly, an asshole. I hope history remembers him that way instead of saying "everything was ok because of the ipod". So, I guess I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are NOT saying Jobs is a good guy and everything is ok...but if you are, shame on you.