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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I think we should stop using the word "poach" when describing these job changes. Use of this word suggests that we (technology workers) are the property of our employer, and that other employers are "stealing" that property away. I don't consider myself akin to a cow owned by my previous employer, stolen by my current one. I hope you don't either. My relationship with my employer is one of equals, freely and mutually entered into, and does not imply any ownership of my person.

Hate to be the PC police, but I personally feel offended by the use of this word, and I'm surprised that more people aren't. I'd like to propose using a more neutral phrase, like "hire away" to describe this practice, instead of "poach". I hope, upon reflection about their own role in the employer-employee relationship, others might come to this conclusion and stop using this word as well.

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As an H1-B visa holder in a right to work state, my presence here is dictated by either the benevolence of my employer or by my own duplicitousness when I carefully conceal my interviews with other firms.

yeah, things are so different!

Nicely put.

I think you mean "at-will employment"[1]. "right to work"[2] states limit the ability of union shops to exclude non-union workers. There really needs to be better terminology because people constantly confuse the two.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

They're both propaganda labels anyway. If the words had more of a direct relationship to what they were describing, they could never be passed.

People do want the right to work, and also want to have employment at will. They are generally patriots, wish communication was more decent, and would love to be allowed to trade freely.

I don't know. I think popular opinion is against having closed shops, though perhaps not uniformly.

And at first blush, people might react negatively to at-will employment states, but the devil is in the details on proposals to replace at-will employment.

I think you are being the PC police. There is a difference.

1) Google employee applies to Facebook on their own.

2) Facebook employee tells a Facebook recruiter, who the best Google engineers are based on his experience at Google.

3) Facebook hires a popular and charismatic Google manager, and their first assignment is to bring over the best engineers in the group.

What terms do you use to describe these situations? I am happy to adopt a more PC term, but there is a difference between being "hired" and being "poached". When you are hired, you do a shit load of interviews, when you are poached, you get a bunch more money and don't have to do a bunch of interviews.

Why wouldn't you call it recruiting?

It is recruiting, but it isn't just recruiting because it's explicitly targeting employees of another company, often a competitor.

That is too generic. That would mean no-hire, no-poach.

I agree and disagree. I agree that there's something out of kilter here: Items 2 and 3 are possible breaches of the employee's non disclosure agreement with Google. And "poaching" is the widely used term for this kind of activity.

On the other hand I see nothing fundamentally wrong with getting a job and a salary bump without an interview, based on a personal recommendation, if it's information that can be freely disclosed. I got my first job out of school with only a cursory interview.

For 2) and 3), I think "headhunt" is more flattering term.

I agree, headhunt is nicer. I find both equally flattering. Being targeted for you brain, or being targeted as a special rhino are both nice terms.

In this specific context, no-headhunting would be ambiguous.

"Poaching" is offensive because it suggests that the employees are chattel and powerless to resist another company's offer.

The irony is that while "poaching" traditionally referred to illegal activities, the opposite is true in the business world: preventing the "poaching" of employees is illegal.

>What terms do you use to describe these situations?

Recruiting fits very well.

No. "Recruiting" doesn't create any differentiation at all between the two modes: 1. Typical hiring processes and 2. Collusion among tech giants.

Free market competition.

The distinction you're trying to make is not real, as these no-poaching aggrements are many times also about rejecting candidates that apply out of their own will. Sometimes this involves notifying their employer too.

Salaries in other industries have been dropping due to market forces - supply bigger than demand, etc... but the free market cuts both ways, as can be seen in the software industry and no-poaching aggreements should be illegal.

It's all called "competing for talent". So instead of "poaching" you can say "loosing/challenging in/to the competition for talent".

Never considered that connotation, but a good point.

Personally, I take much bigger offense at the word "resources", because it is very dehumanizing. "FTE" is another term I'm not a fan of, because it's often used with fractional numbers like "1.5 FTE", as if we can chop a person in half.

That's just petty semantics - people use those words all the time even about themselves, in reference to the work provided by the person, not the person him/herself.

FTE = Full Time Equivalent = "a unit that indicates the workload of an employed person" (Wikipedia). Perhaps you were thinking E = employee?

>"FTE" is another term I'm not a fan of, because it's often used with fractional numbers like "1.5 FTE", as if we can chop a person in half.

Huh. See, I actually think that employee quality of life would be much better, at least on the high end, if employers really thought that two half-time folks were worth one full-time, and you could work half-time for half-pay. I dono about you, but I can live well on half what the market would pay me. Yeah, I like having more money, but at some point? half the money for half the time starts looking pretty good, especially with marginal tax rates being what they are.

In my experience, if you want to go part-time at a high-paying job you can, but it is quite difficult. You have to prove yourself to be difficult to replace, then use the leverage that would normally get you a large raise or a promotion, and spend that leverage on going part-time. You usually also, in my experience, lose company benefits.

> Yeah, I like having more money, but at some point? half the money for half the time starts looking pretty good, especially with marginal tax rates being what they are.

Not only that there's nothing to stop you spending that newly-freed time on your own choice of work, assuming you have a sensible contract with your employer. 20 hours/week is a bit too much for me to fill without some direction!

This is getting common in Denmark, I think due to two reasons:

1. It's very common for students to work 1 or 2 days/wk while in university, so companies (esp. tech companies) are already set up for it. This is because the way university funding is structured students have an incentive to work ~5-15 hrs/wk, but cannot work more than 15. Some stick with the same arrangement even after they graduate, working 15 hrs/wk to fund a startup, or game company, or whatever.

2. Since benefits (healthcare/childcare/etc.) are provided directly by the state, not tied to your employment, part-time vs. full-time doesn't matter from that perspective.

The word has evolved to mean much more than that narrow definition. Language is a living thing.

The word has not evolved past the negative connotations. Poach implies that someone is being wronged, but you being offered a higher salary for your skills is not wrong.

Everything you said is true and yet does not imply the parent's conclusion. You're making the point that poaching someone is not unethical despite the word's tone, while the parent is claiming that using the word "poach" makes someone sound like property. You're conflating those two claims.

I have heard plenty of execs and managers use the word "poach." Perhaps if we accept that it reflects badly on them rather than us.

"Seduce"

I've always thought "poaching" referred to actions of the potential employer. It doesn't really say anything to me about the employee. That aside, the connotation depends on whether your the poacher or the one being preyed upon.

A poacher (in the employer sense) wouldn't really consider their actions evil - just necessary to get the best employees.

The companies being preyed upon would obviously view the poacher as, at best, a bounder and a cad of the lowest kind.

I can understand moderating terminology when we're referring to humans (or not, wild game poachers are evil people) but this term is being used in reference to corporations, which need not be spared harsh terminology to preserve a sense of well-being.

Despite the best efforts of lawyers everywhere, I believe that a corporation, while composed of people, is just a thing, akin to a table or a vase, though maybe not as corporeal.

>>Use of this word suggests that we (technology workers) are the property of our employer, and that other employers are "stealing" that property away

Free will averages out at a bigger scale. Employees are resources and with more capital you can secure more resources. period.

I think the word is apt in the context of employer-employee or employer-employer relationships involving ownership claims.

That bothered me too.

Unfortunately as the USA is a common law based system employees are seen as "servants"

Oh I rained on some ones parade there :-)

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