Exactly. It began at least a dozen years ago and the case lasted a long time: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-six-high-tech-compani

Exactly. It began at least a dozen years ago and the case lasted a long time: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-six-high-tech-companies-stop-entering-anticompetitive-employee https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-s... http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ Most likely the $5K payout per employee was 5-10 times lower than what was lost by all the employees collectively. Maybe that's not true and the tech giants wouldn't have hired as many people but I think all those companies collectively could've easily afforded an extra $5 billion over that timespan. Perhaps they would've innovated even more! I expect the effects of this to last a lot longer. Edit: I changed "nearly a dozen" to "at least a dozen"