| ▲ | paxys a day ago |
| Apple was the ringleader in the illegal anti-poaching agreements between SV companies a couple decades ago. |
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| ▲ | rpaik 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | soperj 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No they really didn't. $5000 is not really decent considering how much they would have gained without that agreement. | | |
| ▲ | rpaik 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | The amount was dependent on their seniority and a lot of people received bigger checks. Regardless, we can all argue if any amount was sufficient to compensate for limiting peoples' movement among these companies back then.... |
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| ▲ | fortran77 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I personally received a check. It was only a few thousand. |
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| ▲ | sandeepkd 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > 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? |
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| ▲ | skeeter2020 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It was mass-collusion between big companies to prevent people from exercising labour mobility. Poaching is illegal, i.e. theft from an individual or the crown; we shouldn't encourage treating people like company property. | |
| ▲ | adastra22 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes and they got in huge trouble for it. It was a massive scandal. The only reason Apple wasn’t made an example of was because all the other big companies followed suit and did the same thing. It was Steve Jobs that drove this monopolistic behavior that could have turned out much worse for Apple. | |
| ▲ | beambot 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | yes, which is why Apple got massively fined for doing it -- nowhere near enough to compensate all the depressed engineering salaries though. |
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| ▲ | Melatonic 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And successfully at the time (illegally) squashed unionization efforts by software engineers |
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| ▲ | bilekas 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think that's just standard across the US. But the unions are a people problem not a company problem necessarily. People can still form unions even with massive investments to squash them.. Europe has proven that. But the story told to all US workers SEEMS to be, you have to suffer and grind to make money. I might be wrong but that's the impression I get when talking with US people about unions and workers rights. | | |
| ▲ | WarmWash 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Unions primarily benefit the weakest workers, and in places like SV, usually the top workers already are getting fat plates and others are pushing hard to get there. Think of it like a football club holding a vote to flatten player pay. The benchwarmers will be falling over themselves to unionize, and the top players will be looking where to move too. This is why union efforts fail, which many find perplexing. The most valuable players get better deals negotiating without a union. | | | |
| ▲ | adastra22 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If Silicon Valley had unions, employee stock options would end. And along with it, most of the incentive structure that drives innovation in the valley. | | |
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| ▲ | cyanydeez 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| wasn't that just last decade? |
