Hacker News Reader

> According to news reports, both Acton and Koum “took a year off to tour South America” not long before applying to work at Facebook, giving both a recent period of prolonged unemployment.

I haven't seen any mention of Facebook participating in the hiring cartel in these various news reports, including the one you linked to.

That agreement doesn't seem to cover new talent. If the companies are screaming about lacking talent, that they could only acquire more engineers by hiring from each other would be positive evidence for that claim.

Ahem... http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-eric-schmidt-sergey-br...

Double AHEM..

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/google-viewed-fac...

Yup.