Steve Jobs wasn't even okay with Google hiring former Apple engineers | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs wasn't even okay with Google hiring former Apple engineers

tuaw.com

189 pointsanderzole114 comments

>Adding a bit more context to these emails, a 2008 article from TechCrunch details that Hullot and other members from Apple's Paris engineering team were actually given pink slips.

So he was not okay with Google hiring former engineers Apple let go. Unbelieveable.

I guess that when Jobs told them, "you'll never work in this business again" he was serious.

It might come as a total shock to you, but "this business" doesn't end with Apple and Google.

You're supposed to laugh.

Neither do the anti-poaching agreements. Zing!

Thanks, I'll be here all night!

Unbelieveable.

At the level of principle, I agree. At the level of practicalities, knowing a little about Steve Jobs, this is believable, unfortunately.

Hopefully history remembers him as the dick he really was.

I doubt it since many historical figures that be look up to were bigger dicks.

Yes, but as long being a dick is concerned Jobs was class apart.

I dunno, Gandhi is the most obvious and he was WAY worse than Jobs.

Ask the Dakota about Lincoln and see what they think.

I'm amazed by how much of this agreement seems to have been driven by him. I know these investigations take a really long time to process, but part of me wonders if his passing on had anything to do with this being discovered.

Nothing really made me not like Jobs previous to this but I feel the same way, this was his doing and it changed my opinion of him. However I never thought he treated Woz right and that should have been a tell on how he saw engineers no longer working with him.

High talent fields do seem to get pretty sport/league like where talent are locked in by agreements/contracts, only here the companies got the sole benefit. Maybe we need a Programmers League with free agency.

I wonder if in the ongoing process of this 'scandal' any numbers will appear on how many people were rejected because of such agreements. This is such an unfair move towards people who have great talent who might just be better off working for Google instead of Apple or vice versa because of their mindset. I hope for high penalties for the involved companies.

Screw 'penalties.' Have you looked at Wall Street over the past decade? Every month or so there's some 'settlement' with a regulatory agency with some fine or the other for all kinds of issues. Class-action lawsuits also enrich the lawyers mostly. It would be best if the engineers themselves would get compensated, but not sure how it would be possible to identify the plaintiffs.

> Class-action lawsuits also enrich the lawyers mostly

Many companies love to use the public's negative sentiment against plaintiffs' lawyers to their favor, by invoking precisely the "class-action lawsuits also enrich the lawyers mostly" canard. This is a sleight of hand. The value of class-action suits is deterrence. Otherwise, it can be very profitable to steal a little bit of money or cause a little bit of harm to a large number of people. Look at it another way: if the alternative is the companies keeping the ill-gotten gains, is that better?

It's not necessarily sleight of hand when it's often true.

Sleight of hand is about manipulating attention. What I'm doing with my other hand that you're watching is "true" - what you're seeing that hand do is what it's doing - but you should have been paying attention to my elbow.

It's (let's grant) true that the lawyers make most of the money in a class action suit, but they're doing the work and taking much of the risk. Denying a legitimate claim to spite the lawyers is wrong if it means the company keeps whatever incentives lead it to hurt people.

I don't think I was necessarily disagreeing with your second point, although a person with a legitimate claim doesn't necessarily have to join the class-action unless forced to by the court.

As for sleight-of-hand, I was referring more to the context that somehow the lawyers are pulling a fast one when it's quite clear what the outcome shall be.

But I can see how my statement can be misunderstood.

And honestly, you'd have trouble convincing many people that wages were kept all that low. What's the median salary of an engineer in the Valley? [1] would seem to indicate a starting range in the low 6-figures is common. I don't know if these things go to juries, but if it came down to that, I imagine that an engineer complaining of a low 6-figure salary with stock options will convince a jury that (s)he is really being hurt that much will be very tough.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/record-salaries-for-valley-pr...

Edited to fix grammar.

The Valley is also an expensive place to live. I was at a conference in San Jose; and the organizers donated a portion of their income to a local Charity.

The charity organizer spoke a bit during one of the keynotes and said that any income under $70K was considered below poverty level due to the cost of living.

With that said, a 6 figure salary is not hurting, but not rolling in it.

I kind of think the high cost of living thing is not that relevant here. The cost of living is high because the people who live there make a lot of money. If they made more money the Valley wouldn't be more affordable for them. It would just be more expensive.

There are many other factors that influence cost of living in a given area, not just income.

Plus, in some cases increases in income lags behind increases in cost of living.

Not everyone in the bay area makes a lot of money. There are a lot of blue collar/service workers who don't even know what hackernews is who would kill to make that 70k a year.

Correct but they have nothing to do with the conversation we're having.

$69,000/year is not "below poverty level" in the Bay Area. I mean, maybe some random charity has a very idiosyncratic view of what they personally view as "poverty," but it's not below the poverty line in any official sense, and, practically speaking, a $69,000/year wage makes you much richer in terms of purchasing power in the Bay Area than $11,000/year (ie, below the actual poverty line) in rural Alabama.

The high 6 figure salaries for entry level positions should be reserved for the finance industry, where real value is generated.

The problem is not just wages in the valley, for example the people on this article were in france.

And not only people that work in companies of the valley, for example, Google Brazil can pay here less than they pay in the valley, and other companies here end paying less than google pay, the result for example, is me. (I get 16k USD year, and I earn more than the average programmer here).

I'm sorry but 16k USD is not a good salary for a senior programmer in Brazil, at least not in Rio or São Paulo, working for a large company.

USD 26k to 37k is a common range for senior developers in my employer. And I'm not counting "13 salary", bonuses, overtime pay, health and dental care.

I doubt the average is less than 16k.

Then Catho, past companies where I worked and people I know are all liars?

The highest I was paid was 5k BRL as contractor (no 13, bonuses, overtime, etc...) and back then I was one of the highest paid persons of the company (that had about 50 programmers). I remember talking to other people and lots of people except DBAs and exotic language specialists working on IBM had also similar pays.

I have no ideas for companies you worked for, but I wouldn' trust Catho :-)

apinfo.com.br salary survey matches my experience for average salary. BRL 5k is an average salary for a senior developer. I was making BRL 4k after I graduated from UFRJ about five years ago.

A senior specialist (band 8) working for IBM earns way more than that, plus benefits.

At the same time, we're talking about a class of even more affluent people screwing engineers out of money. If that's what it looks like near the top, how does that play out down the pyramid? Not to mention, that this is an affront to free mobility of labor. Even if this is a "top 1% of the first world" problem, I do think it's worth taking a principled stand.

A likely tactic if this goes to litigation is to argue a combined halo effect and "rising tide lifts all boats", and assert that if the jury assigns penalties to the companies to award the benefits thereof to these high-falutin' Silicon Valley engineers, then all the trodden-upon blokes unfairly hammered elsewhere in this fine nation of ours would get their just and due market wages. Throw in talk of the Great Recession and how dare these companies perpetrate such outrages when these hard working less-compensated engineers were barely hanging onto their houses with some sob stories with real faces, and testimony from compensation experts that yes, if so-and-so in the Valley got their "fair" compensation that is 150% of their current level, then whosit in Podunk, Middle America would get at least a 15% bump as the overall scale goes up everywhere. Cue a "if I just had 10% more we would have kept the family farm" sob story, and the cartel could prevail in court and still lose in the court of public opinion, and end up paying more in PR, marketing and lobbying expenses to clean up the aftermath than they could have ever saved in just not setting up the cartel in the first place.

If this blows up into a viral meme of some sort, it becomes political Kryptonite for any politician coming anywhere close to various high-tech visa-related legislation, who won't want to associate with any members of the cartel until the issue blows over (probably in about a year or less). So all sorts of visas get snarled up for a year or two, tying up various projects, driving up costs of this even more.

There are some interesting PR angles that Apple and Google can engage in to nip this sort of trial-by-heart-tugs, but I bet they will get control on the media image and quash this whole affair in the mainstream news media well before it gets to that stage. If they can limit any fallout litigation and the media coverage especially to just within the industry itself and not let it seep out into severe regulatory sanctions or public consciousness, then the cost-benefit of the cartel will work out fine. I predict wrist-slap sanctions if any, and a successful management of the media image, as this is a nice example of how agency challenges work out in a large, complex system.

A judge would never allow that kind of grandstanding. I've worked on a price fixing litigation. What happens is that the parties hire antitrust economists to estimate the damages based on empirical data and theoretical models. Then these economists present their reports to the jury as expert testimony.

I imagine that an engineer complaining of a low 6-figure salary with stock options will convince a jury that (s)he is really being hurt that much will be very tough.

I don't find that hard to imagine. In fact, I think the opposite would be true and I'll give my logic.

I believe in wrongful death suits (e.g. airline crashes) the earnings potential of the victim is considered i.e. higher payouts go to higher earners.

I assume a jury would follow the same logic and would be able to understand that the more an engineer earns, the greater the damages should be. i.e. a 1st year grad might have been hurt to the tune of $20K / year ... while it might have cost a more senior engineer $200K / year.

You're expecting a jury that will probably not be making 6 figures to award an senior engineer $200k / year without death or injury being involved? I don't think they'll get that kind of settlement.

its not like employment suits are a mystery

you see high paid professionals (i-bankers, brokers, lawyers, etc) win big awards all the time.

here's one about Merrill

Then, in the spring of 2004, an arbitration panel found Merrill had systemically discriminated against female brokers and awarded $2.2 million to a single employee.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-27/merrill-lync...

it's not exactly the same but you get the idea. Juries look at the possible damages and base the award of that. The higher the salary, the higher the potential damages.

Male vs Female suits are one thing, and sticking it to Merrill is a bonus, but I wouldn't bet on the jury in this one. I'm just not confident developers are going to win this one.

A jury of peers in the Valley might agree. In fact a good attorney would argue that paying non-colluded wages to engineers lifts all boats, so the blue collar workers on the jury would presumably have had more pay themselves had the engineer been paid properly.

Then again, maybe all the money would have gone to rent which is what seems to be happening now unless you won the IPO lottery where it is now all cash offers on million dollar homes.

Are you from the bay area?

This place is so expensive you need to 40kpa(of your gross income) just to live in 620sqft apartment.

If you make 100k here, you might be able to save 12k a year tops.

What I'm mostly learning though this saga is that an uncomfortable number of SV executives are feckless weaklings in the face of a sociopath like Jobs.

Yep if I ever started a company that became as prominent as google etc I cant imagine a scenario where some ahole ceo of another company like jobs calls me and bitches me out and I just say yes sir and roll over and start doing fraudulent illegal shit like these douches at google did.

It probably began as a friendly gentlemen a agreement. "Don't steal my engineers. I won't steal yours. Helps keeps costs down. It's all in the shareholders interests right?"

Not really though, when the Palm CEO comes out and says Jobs told him if he didn't agree to do it they'd attack Palm with patent lawsuits.

I don't understand why the Palm CEO didn't just say "Fine. We'll tell everyone why you're doing that."

Seems to me the downside to Apple of having their illegal collusion exposed would have had to be far greater than the cost of the engineers Palm could have hired away.

The problem is that even as powerful as Google is, Apple eclipses everyone in the money-and-power department, especially in the late 2000's. Also note that having Google services kicked off of the iPhone in the late 2000's simply was not an option for Google. It's easy to do armchair quarterbacking from behind your keyboard but when there's billions of dollars on the line it's not as simple to give someone the middle finger.

Note I do not condone the behavior and would have liked to see it turn into a thermonuclear bidding war for engineers just like everyone else. But I sure as hell understand why a lot of these people rolled over. I do like that Facebook told Apple to get fucked though. That was nice to see.

There some of us engineers go again, playing checkers for temporary baubles with those who play chess and for keeps and the deed of the land the game is played upon, never mind the milk and cow. If the most the fevered imaginations some engineers can come up with on an upside scenario of this wage-fixing affair is "thermonuclear bidding war for engineers", then this subset of engineers as a group don't believe the power of their own constructions, and deserve to lose control over what they make.

This period we live in today is where we are still building the nascent infrastructure of what is likely going to be looked upon as a seminal and epochal change in the species' economic (at least, if not other areas of human endeavor) development in the far (10+ generations) future. Another impactful change like this won't happen again for a long, long time; this is mass adoption of the printing press change, modern banking practices establishment type change. Entire Great Law of the Iroquois spans of time (seven generations) pass without these types of changes. We would likely need some development like perfecting self-sustaining fusion power or Drexlerian nanotech to arrive at such a pivotal moment again.

If you do not want to bemoan in late life regrets for not seizing this historical moment and for leaving it to non-technical people to seize it instead, then the wage-fixing should be a clear signal that what we build has far more significance than technical accomplishment in exchange for temporary compensation. There is vast wealth being constructed here, and lots of non-engineers are intent upon seizing control of it. Wage-fixing is a tool of such control, but not in the obvious manner. The subtext not explored sufficiently is the wage-fixing serves a larger purpose: wages high enough to keep employees satisfied to stay on (and the wage-fixing "encourages" them to stay in one place), but not quite high enough to cause too many of them to literally afford the opportunity to strike out on their own and capture a slice of the wealth being created by using their creative efforts to build their own piece of the emerging wealth. That to me is the more meaningful aspect of control about the wage-fixing. The mentality of the top leadership at these companies is decidedly not cornucopian-oriented in the time frames they operate in when thinking about employee compensation, so leaving and successfully building anything on your own is a straight zero sum loss to them (because time preference differ between the parties).

I don't need to be telling HN readers this as here lies gathered an immense pool of people breaking out and building their own piece of the future wealth horizon; that's preaching to the choir. But the wider technical audience needs to be informed about this battle for control over a future wealth source of humanity.

Feeling self important today much? Talk about some hyperbole. You speak as if you have 20/20 vision from the future. There are other things than technical talent needed to build this future you speak of - including sociology, political acumen, and taste to name a few. Please don't over inflate our powers.

It was in Google's best interest to make the agreement and to enforce it aggressively. It helped keep salaries down and it reduced the flow of proprietary info out of the company.

I'm not saying that's right--because it's not. I'm just saying, thinking that Apple pushed Google around is the wrong reading. Google did what they did because they wanted to.

I don't think it's necessarily that other SV executives were weaklings, it's that they thought the non-poaching agreement was in their interests too. Jobs was definitely cunning and ruthless but he wasn't all brute force, he set up a deal whereby these other companies would see things his way due to their own greed.

I think that scenario played out a couple of times in Jobs' career. He would do something ruthless or somewhat distasteful, but because the people he was pushing his idea on stood to profit in some way they agreed with it, even though it enriched Jobs a lot more than it enriched them.

On the other side of things, it provides a nice reason to not hire those people. I've seen managers take it on as a bit of "rationalization debt." If you can't give a good reason for something, find something or someone to blame it on.

> Jobs was definitely cunning and ruthless but he wasn't all brute force, he set up a deal whereby these other companies would see things his way due to their own greed.

So, basically, he did the same thing for employees that he did for iTunes music licensing.

Funny how this comment made me think "Putin vs. West"

Don't forget, by the way, that when Steve Jobs left Apple to found a new company in a line of business perilously close to Apple's he took a number of important Apple people with him, despite giving a misleading promise not to do so.

Jobs had a personal scorched-earth vendetta against Google ever since they stabbed him in the back with Android (as he seems to have viewed it).

I imagine if he thought there was any way he could accomplish it he would have banned Google employees from buying Apple products or getting within 1000 feet of an Apple store.

Your comment doesn't apply here. Android was released in 2008 and these emails were written in 2006.

This is not correspondence between companies at war. On the contrary, Apple was leveraging their strategic partnership with Google to block the hires.

Google acquired Android Inc. in 2005: http://www.webcitation.org/5wk7sIvVb

So it was before the shape of Google's mobile ambitions became clear, but the acquisition made it pretty obvious that Google had some kind of mobile ambitions.

There is nothing to indicate Google & Apple relationships soured before 2007, when Android was unveiled. Prior to that, by all public accounts they enjoyed a relatively amicable partnership.

Moreover, simply having a mobile ambition isn't that big of a deal in and of itself. Jobs viewed the close imitation of iOS features as being tantamount to theft. I'm thinking of grid layout, multitouch, swipe to unlock, etc. This is, at least by his own account, what lay behind all the "thermonuclear war" hyperbole.

Yep. Recall even that Eric Schmidt was on hand for the iPhone reveal in 2007 and went on stage to tout the device's integration with Google services.

Definitely a good reason why he would be paranoid about his employees doing the same; the wage suppression it seems is a negative side effect

To a large extent they're two sides of the same coin, though, since you persuade key employees not to leave (partly) by increasing their compensation.

There are two things here that are new. Firstly it's got an international angle, and laws around the world do definitely differ on things like poaching and anti-competes.

More interesting is Alan Eustace's comment about the value of the Apple relationship to Google, in 2006. Were they really that close? I struggle to think of why they viewed their relationship as of particular strategic importance at that time.

Eric Schmidt was on their board.

Apple was putting Google Search and Maps in front and center of iPhone experience among other things. This would be hugely valuable relationship, ofcourse.

The iPhone didn't come out until 2007.

That partnership didn't come about on the day the iPhone was released. It had to have been brewing for quite some time.

What shocked me is that Steve was seen as such a sociopath that he didn't even dare go back and ask why out of fear of messing up whatever relationship he had with Steve and Apple.

I think these poaching agreements had more to do with IP than salary escalation. The interaction here makes it clear - the employees were no longer with apple, hence there was no hypothetical counter offer to give.

Very good point. I haven't heard anyone mention that facet yet.

There are already laws against transmitting IP, there was no agreement necessary to deal with it. Risk-minimization, perhaps, but companies have been dealing with business secrets since before the Industrial Revolution. Frankly, I think an unexamined angle is the fragility of these companies that the agreements imply.

The tone that Eustace, a Senior Vice President at Google, uses with Jobs is beyond deferential.

"Based on your strong preference that we not hire the ex-Apple engineers, Jean-Marie and I decided not to open a Google Paris engineering center. I appreciate your input into this decision, and your continued support of the Google/Apple partnership."

I'd be surprised to see one of my peers use this kind of tone with the President of the United States.

The POTUS seems a tad more sane than Jobs with regards to taking offence to trivial matters.

Wow Google, as if your embarrassment couldn't go any further on this story.

Not to get dramatic, but we're talking about dignity, integrity, the moral center to understand the difference between right and wrong. Didn't anyone at Google have the ability to get beyond groupthink?

All that money and resources and control and influence, and the only thing that mattered to everyone was....getting more of it. How sad for all of you in those companies to act like this and affect the livelihood of others, all in the name of a few bucks.

Funny thing about money; it's so damn expensive.

Very well put :)

The surprising thing is people tend to get worse as they get richer.

> This is such an unfair move

Which unfair move?

Google could have gone ahead and hire these people anyway. Nothing prevented them from doing so except their decision to not risk angering Jobs.

Unfair against the people that deserved those jobs.

This isn't about being intimidated by Jobs, it's about colluding to defeat an iterated prisoner's dilemma that lies at the heart of the value proposition of free market economics. They are capable of thinking more than one move ahead.

Jobs's wrath was a tiny concern next to the prospect of losing tens or hundreds of millions a year to engineers that could suddenly start playing big companies off one another.

I've read all the released documents, I get the impression that most of this was instigated by Jobs. Sure they played along for this purpose, but the threats and escalation started with the Job's emails in 05.

Sounds to me like Steve was a serious control freak.. Article after article, it's the same thing... Don't get me wrong. The stuff his company did was cool, but cheesh..

As a CEO, this situation is more than complex. There are times when you are working with 'partners' or anyone in the same industry. And you can not avoid collaborating with each other. Apple needed Google, as much as Google needed Apple.

However then there is the ugly part, since your partners are in the same industry, they are ultimately your competitors too. It's not about laws or specific rules. It's about human nature, you will be less pissed if someone hooked up with your Ex, but things could be entirely different, if your Ex is hooked up with one of your friends.

This is perhaps not a smart analogy, but it's somewhat relevant, remember a time when Eric was on Apple board, and then they went on to launch Android? It certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth and incites a war.

So what you are saying is that the "everyone acts in their self interest" free market ideology is bullshit and that we are all in fact people after all? Avoiding the ravages of the market is important for profit. Capitalists always hated the market when it comes to their own business...

I am not saying what Apple did was right. Actually this is anti-competition and as a consumer I hate it. However I was making a totally different point, being a CEO of small enterprise myself, I just pointed out, that perhaps I would have the same restrictions in place, but it does not justify them.

I'd be surprised if any CEO was OK with former employees going to an arch competitor.

It's perfectly legal for them to not be OK with it. It's not legal to get the competitor to agree not to hire them.

Can someone speculate as to why Jobs would have been opposed to this? The only thing I can come up with is that Jobs was trying to minimize the amount of times that "I know a guy at Google" was spoken in the halls of Apple.

He might not have wanted engineers to carry knowledge of Apple's programs and projects to a competitor.

Every employee signs an NDA, problem solved.

You forgot the /s

Perhaps because they were good engineers, and they would turn a profit for his competitor (Google). If you could make an important decision for your competitor, wouldn't you try to undermine them?

Isn't it obvious that this is related to the culture of silency around future products at Apple?

He wouldn't want Google to know "hey, we're making a new thing called the iPad/whatever and it's like so and so".

It's not like Google would know. Those engineers signed NDAs and non-competes, just like practically everyone in the tech world.

NDAs are fine, but non-competes? You have to be kidding. They're of questionable legality and amount to an agreement to not use your one of your more valuable assets - domain knowledge.

No thanks!

In California, unenforceable for the likes of us.

After long thought (years, really), I'm convinced that this is the real secret to Silicon Valley's long running success. It's certainly the only thing totally unique about California WRT to high tech.

This occurred to me after about 1 week of working in a software company! It's so obvious, I wish we could get similar laws through here in the UK.

The easy way in the UK is to refuse...

Have you had non-compete clauses? I've been in UK software roles for the last 15(ish) years but never really had a non-compete... always assumed it wouldn't really fly here.

A quick search on the web says this is a grey area - in the UK non-competes are only ever enforcable if the business can prove loss beyond simply increased competition. A generic non-compete seems worthless.

Not so much non-competes, but restrictions on working on side projects while employed at a company, even if on my own time and with my own resources and on something not directly related to the companies area of business. Tbf, I'm still quite young and have only worked for one company, and so wasn't in much of a position to negotiate when I interviewed.

Having read his biography, I strongly doubt the reason was something anyone else would find defensible. I'm not even sure he felt it was defensible. Pretty sure it's yet another one of his "asshole" moves, the likes of which fill the book.

I hope Apple and Google would get penalized aside from paying penalties.

Both companies have plenty of cash so even a $100 million penalty won't make a difference.

I don't have any idea though on what they could be penalized with aside from money.

I always thought collusion was one of those things for which executives could be personally prosecuted and jailed if they were found guilty, but I'd guess it depends on the jurisdiction.

Steve Jobs wasn't okay with Google hiring anyone who ever applied for a job at Apple. Or really, even people with last names that began with "Mac"

Worse than the anti-competitive angle of this story is the idea that Jobs prevented engineers, with families, from obtaining jobs. That's just inexcusable.

Don't know a clever way to say this but.. Bureaucracy sucks. List a million reasons why it impedes a happier life.

Do no evil?

Do know evil

Just when I thought Jobs couldn't be a bigger scumbag! Someone dig up his grave and make an example of him in front of all of Silicon Valley. It's what he would have done.

Not helping.

All opinions aside, I'm pretty sure Steve would have respected the dead.

I think it's helpful to accurately represent Steve's character. Many of those who love Apple products automatically love Steve. If he wasn't what they thought, it's truthful to reveal it.

Now I see what pg was talking about comment moderation. C'mon guys. Let's class it up.

I'm confused, has "pending comments" not been fully activated yet?

I have over 1000 karma, and I've never seen it. I know it was given a quick trial after it was first announced, but from my surfing since then it doesn't seem to have been turned back on.

No. He activated it, but after a bunch of people complained, he turned it back off and said moderators could activate it again for special threads that they think need it (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449857).

You mean all of the time I spent writing brilliant comments just to get over 1000 karma was unnecessary? Well bah!

Downvotes seem to be doing a very good job here. The text is almost completely invisible.

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