These companies (e.g., Intel, Google, etc.) also had to compensate their employees as a part of the settlement. Especially for people in engineering orgs, many of them received decent settlement checks.

> anti-poaching

The term make it sounds like a good thing, however I do not know if this was really a net positive. It might have helped the companies but isn't this anti-competitive at the employee level?

And successfully at the time (illegally) squashed unionization efforts by software engineers

wasn't that just last decade?

It's worse. "Cutthroat" implies being ruthless but legitimate. So-called "poaching" is completely moral and legal, whereas trying to get others not to "poach" "your" employees is immoral and illegal.

There's a bright, clear line between targeted attempts to hire someone who has a job working for a competitor, and trying to get that person to take confidential information with them when they switch jobs. The latter is wrong and will rightfully result in legal action. The former is perfectly fine, and good for employees, which I'd wager still includes most of this site's audience despite the startup-founder focus.

Remember, employers don't own the people who work for them. They cannot be "poached." They can only be given a better offer. If your employee decides they'd be better off working for your competitor instead, then you have only yourself to blame for not giving them enough incentive to stay. Either up your game, or give them a friendly goodbye.

> [OpenAI instructing recruits to exfiltrate proprietary data from their current employer] gives them tremendous negotiating leverage

how?

OpenAI did not launch any hardware (yet), and I don't think their IPO pricing hinges on them launching an iPhone competitor. To me, it looks like Apple wants to launch a similar AI hardware and is slowing-down the competition to be the first-to-market.

Funny thing: they are barking at the wrong tree here.

How is it notable? Apple’s complaint is that these are corporate secrets. If it wasn’t secret, there would be no case.

> You're obliged to maximize [shareholder] earnings.

One of the most pernicious and harmful lies of the past 50 years.

Management is obliged to act in shareholders' interests. Executives are paid in stock. Maximizing earnings makes the stock price go up, which makes executives more money personally. So they're happy to let everyone believe they are legally required to make the stock price go up.

There is no law or court precedent making it illegal for management to de-prioritize short-term profit as long as they aren't hurting the shareholders interests and advancing their own.

> You're obliged to maximize their earnings.

You're not though, legally anyway. Courts will generally not second-guess a board's business decisions so long as the board acted in "good faith" even if that decision results in loss for shareholders, or does something that does not maximize their returns.

Board just has to link the decision and the long term health of the company. But it's just that, health of the company which is legally distinct from the health or short-term desires of individual shareholders and investors.

> You're obliged to maximize their earnings.

Sometimes I think it’s time to give shareholder supremacy a rest. If they don’t like what they own, they can sell it. But this is probably also why I’m not on a board of directors.

> You're obliged to maximize their earnings.

This is not true. Fiduciary responsibility does not mean "maximize earnings". This one fiction has done more damage in the name of unfettered capitalism than anything else.

Please don't use epithets like this on HN. It's unkind, even if there’s any truth to it. It's not about anything you owe to the person being discussed, but about the way we talk about people on HN. If there's an anecdote that illustrates what you mean, please share it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That example does a pretty good job of showing how toxic both CEOs are/were

It's not alleged, it's sadly confirmed. There's been comments on HN over the years from people who have worked under him.