I don't even think that the no poach agreements are that bad. It would be one thing if the companies just didn't hire former employees but that's not the case,

I don't even think that the no poach agreements are that bad. It would be one thing if the companies just didn't hire former employees but that's not the case, as some articles seem to mention or even imply. The issue was that Google's recruiters were proactively looking for entire teams of Apple's employees and simply offering them more money to come work for Google. That sounds really great for employees except that there's a very fine line for companies. There was never a formal anti-poaching agreement between these companies. It was more of an informal agreement that said "We don't want to take these to court because hiring entire teams of people out from under us falls under laws that prohibit tortious interference with business (contractual) relations so let's just agree to not actively go after our employees." The issue was not that these companies were trying to keep people from moving up in their careers, they were trying to avoid the gray area that results from them having business relationships and using those to cripple each other. It's a bigger pain in the rear to go to court over these than it is to just not proactively do it.