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Google has already been convicted in a wage fixing scheme with other Silicon Valley firms. They wouldn’t even interview me when I was trying to leave Apple. I

Google has already been convicted in a wage fixing scheme with other Silicon Valley firms. They wouldn’t even interview me when I was trying to leave Apple. I made a cool $3k from the settlement. Guys, hey guys, I’m starting to think the “Don’t be evil” thing has always been bullshit, at least when it comes to workers rights.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Yeah a corporation isn't some cooperative integrated intelligence making decisions. Its hundreds of managers all working fairly independently. Hard for it to be anything but a vegetative growth, that locally optimizes for more growth.
- istjohn 7y ago
  Corporations are typically highly coordinated, hierarchical organizations with a chain of command that leads from the CEO to frontline employees. No, CEO's are not omniscient, but they have significant control over company culture and policy and should bear responsibility for patterns of corporate misbehavior. Corporations are absolutely capable of weighing benefits and risks to itself and outside stakeholders and making and acting on decisions.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    And managers are motivated to locally optimize their part of the whole. CEO can blather on all they want about corporate morals. But if the managers are rewarded on how efficiently they deploy their resources (and they are), then any rational manager will do that. Locally optimize. Just look at what measure the manager's bonus depends upon, and you can substantially predict their behavior. Giant companies are not just a CEO and some managers. There are typically half a dozen layers between the CEO and the footsoldier. And its the middle layer folks that create the true behavior of the beast.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    This is incredibly untrue of Google, and every other organization I've ever worked in (excluding the tiny ones). I can't imagine how you could've come to this conclusion while ever having worked at a corporation (or indeed, any institution above a certain very low floor of employees). Note that this isn't directly relevant to the case under discussion, which was coordinated at the CEO level
- kevingadd 7y ago
  I can say with confidence that managers at Google are not even fairly independent. Lots of pressure (and toxicity) can float down from higher up in the org chart. My first eng manager at Google was really mistreated by people higher up in the org and as a result didn't have much freedom to make things right for our team (or our project, which generally struggled a lot as a result). This is not extrapolation or speculation: He confirmed it to me. If anything, I think engineers at Google probably have more independence and freedom than managers do, because they're really only accountable for their own work and personal results. Managers have to corral all those independent engineers into a group they can get away with taking responsibility for, and the upper levels of the chain don't always act in a way that acknowledges how hard management can be. The disconnect also means that "best for a manager's career" is not automatically going to be compatible with the career health of their reports. The gap between "labor" and "management" in this scenario is also a great example of why unions for labor are important - it's very difficult to represent the needs of both labor and management collectively, so a good method is for them to each bargain collectively based on their own needs and interests.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Unclear where that's going? Sounds like, managers are responsible for measures (unspecified?) that are not in alignment with direct reports' interests. Sure, agreed. Managers are almost always responsible for some fiscal efficiency measure. Which is why they 'locally optimize'. Right?
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      My argument is that in many cases it's not local optimization at all. It's not optimal for anyone, their freedom is constrained by upper level management (the hierarchy / the corporation / the hivemind) which means neither the managers or their reports have freedom. If the managers actually had more freedom, you'd get something closer to a bunch of small groups optimizing locally and producing (ideally, with the right incentive) collectively good results. Here's a really easy example from my career (not Google, though): A manager needs to deliver on schedule. He has a set number of people on his team. One of those people is going to quit because he has a baby on the way, and the company's salary is not good enough. If the manager had enough freedom, they'd have options available. The company is going to cut some of those off, but I'll enumerate some of the ones we potentially had at our fingertips (I was one of the team's managers in this situation): * Give him a raise so he stays * Promote someone qualified from the team, hire a junior employee to replace them * Hire a senior employee to replace him and train them up ASAP to fill the gap * Adjust the schedule to make up for the loss of his contribution * Adjust the scope of the project to same as the above In the end the studio head basically told us to go fuck ourselves, and the report ended up quitting. The project came in late, as I expected. This happened multiple times and in multiple cases it was direct interference from higher nodes in the chain - neither us in management or the labor below us were able to optimize at all. The product as a whole ended up shipping multiple years late due to lots of smaller-scale interference like that.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  From: Arnon Geshuri (Google Senior Staffing Strategist) ... On this specific case, the sourcer who contacted this Apple employee should not have and will be terminated within the hour. We are scrubbing the sourcer’s records to ensure she did not contact anyone else. ... From: Shona Brown (Google VP of Human Resources) Appropriate response. Please make a public example of this termination within the group. Please also make it a very strong part of new hire training for the group. I want it clear that we have a zero-tolerance policy for violating our policies. This should (hopefully) prevent future occurrences. From Eric Schmidt: Steve, as a followup we investigated the recruiter’s actions and she violated our policies. Apologies again on this and I’m including a portion of the email I received from our head of recruiting [Arnnon Geshuri—M.A.]. Should this ever happen again please let me know immediately and we will handle. Thanks !! Eric From Steve Jobs: :) From Sergei Brin: Wow, Steve used a smiley. God, I never got one of those. Source: https://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-steve-jobs-brutally-callous-response-after-getting-a-google-employee-fired/ https://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-s... Edit: Fixed the Shona Brown email. She's on the board of Atlassian now so I guess avoid those people too.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Yeah at the highest management levels, managers (VPs?) are responsible to CEO direction. But at middle manager levels (hundreds of people, not a handful, in very large companies) they're not directly responsible to the CEO. Nor are they directly responsible to the customer/market. They're in 'middle management limbo' where all they have to work with, is local incentives. Usually financial - optimize the budget for results. Sadly, this usually ends with middle managers trying to maximize their budget and minimize their required output, to increase their chances of success. Which means, the most expensive product possible. That's what I mean by 'locally optimize'.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      That's a much more general point than the specific one at issue, which is the CEOs illegally conspiring to not hire staff from each other and terminating someone who refused to go along with the illegal conspiracy. This wasn't something the managers organically came up with.
estomagordo 7y ago
Wait, what, you received a damages payment because a company wouldn't interview you?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Because a company illegally colluded with their competitors not to interview them. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-settlement/apple-google-intel-adobe-to-pay-325-million-to-settle-hiring-lawsuit-idUSBREA4M0MY20140523 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-settlement/a...
  - twinge 7y ago
    Interviews were allowed, but recruiters weren't allowed to make the initial contact with employees.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      Given the high level attention involved - direct emails between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt - I'd fully expect that policy to bleed over into "don't interview/hire" to avoid any appearance of having recruited them.
- burkaman 7y ago
  In a class action lawsuit, where the company was accused of conspiring with several other companies to keep wages artificially low.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  I received damages because I was employed by one of the companies found guilty in the conspiracy. The settlement was so low that the judge threw it out initially. The fact that they didn’t interview me is just the real outcome of their policy. They called me, unprompted, about 2 months after I left Apple.
- estomagordo 7y ago
  Thanks, all, for clarifying. Still not sure I think it sounds entirely reasonable. But makes a lot more sense to me now. (Am not American).
billman 7y ago
I have always thought of corporations as a system that reacts to the forces working upon and within it.
- cartoonworld 7y ago
  They sure are, I call those forces "Greenbacks".
  - billman 7y ago
    true dat
Pigo 7y ago
>a cool $3K I'm sorry you didn't get more from the settlement, but at least you were able to write something on here that made me laugh.
strathmeyer 7y ago
I interviewed at Google. They didn't want to hire me, but called me back every year for five years to ask what I was up to until I asked them to stop. That's not normal. I even remember when Google started hiring in the early aughts. Instead of asking for resumes from you directly, they asked you to submit the resumes of any smart people you know. That's not normal.
- beckler 7y ago
  Asking for other peoples resumes is becoming the new normal for some recruiters. I view it as desperation more than anything else.
  - Pmop 7y ago
    Also, by sending other peoples resumes, aren't you doing the job the recruiter is being paid to (or at least part of it)?
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  When I was in undergrad, a Google recruiter found my resume and contacted me about an internship. Google decided I didn't have enough background and they wouldn't even offer me a phone interview - meaning they made the decision purely on that same resume. Fair enough, they probably sent it to an engineer who disagreed. But two days later, another recruiter with no knowledge of the first messaged me about my "very interesting resume". I still hear from their recruiters at semi-random, each saying they're my "new point of contact at Google". Sometimes there's nothing for a year, then I'll get two "new points of contact' within one week. Recruiting is always a mess, but it's a bit surprising to see an in-house team get up to the same antics I expect from third party services. The most recent approach was the most persuasive, though: Dear [appplicant], I'm writing to because I saw your resume and I think you could be a great fit for Google. I'm particularly interested in your work with [background], which I think prepares you very well for [position].
- tnecniv 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if they stole this from academic hiring. It's well known that, when professors go up for tenure at Harvard, their recommenders are required to list other people they think Harvard might want to consider hiring for the spot.
TurkishPoptart 7y ago
Did you have to interact with a lawyer? There've been a few times where I think it would have been to my advantage to talk to a lawyer about corporate wrongdoings, but I've never known how to go about it, and have zero experience dealing with them.
Pmop 7y ago
Wow. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that their engagement in the "make software development more accessible" thing is actually intended to increase supply, and then decrease wages accordingly.
koheripbal 7y ago
What does this have to do with OP's article? These non-poaching agreements (Wall Street has them also) are not related to Union law. I doubt it's even the same people in the company that write these two different policies.
- blueboo 7y ago
  It shows a guy who confused correlation for causation got laid off at Apple.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

Yeah a corporation isn't some cooperative integrated intelligence making decisions. Its hundreds of managers all working fairly independently. Hard for it to be anything but a vegetative growth, that locally optimizes for more growth.

istjohn 7y ago
Corporations are typically highly coordinated, hierarchical organizations with a chain of command that leads from the CEO to frontline employees. No, CEO's are not omniscient, but they have significant control over company culture and policy and should bear responsibility for patterns of corporate misbehavior. Corporations are absolutely capable of weighing benefits and risks to itself and outside stakeholders and making and acting on decisions.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  And managers are motivated to locally optimize their part of the whole. CEO can blather on all they want about corporate morals. But if the managers are rewarded on how efficiently they deploy their resources (and they are), then any rational manager will do that. Locally optimize. Just look at what measure the manager's bonus depends upon, and you can substantially predict their behavior. Giant companies are not just a CEO and some managers. There are typically half a dozen layers between the CEO and the footsoldier. And its the middle layer folks that create the true behavior of the beast.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  This is incredibly untrue of Google, and every other organization I've ever worked in (excluding the tiny ones). I can't imagine how you could've come to this conclusion while ever having worked at a corporation (or indeed, any institution above a certain very low floor of employees). Note that this isn't directly relevant to the case under discussion, which was coordinated at the CEO level
kevingadd 7y ago
I can say with confidence that managers at Google are not even fairly independent. Lots of pressure (and toxicity) can float down from higher up in the org chart. My first eng manager at Google was really mistreated by people higher up in the org and as a result didn't have much freedom to make things right for our team (or our project, which generally struggled a lot as a result). This is not extrapolation or speculation: He confirmed it to me. If anything, I think engineers at Google probably have more independence and freedom than managers do, because they're really only accountable for their own work and personal results. Managers have to corral all those independent engineers into a group they can get away with taking responsibility for, and the upper levels of the chain don't always act in a way that acknowledges how hard management can be. The disconnect also means that "best for a manager's career" is not automatically going to be compatible with the career health of their reports. The gap between "labor" and "management" in this scenario is also a great example of why unions for labor are important - it's very difficult to represent the needs of both labor and management collectively, so a good method is for them to each bargain collectively based on their own needs and interests.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Unclear where that's going? Sounds like, managers are responsible for measures (unspecified?) that are not in alignment with direct reports' interests. Sure, agreed. Managers are almost always responsible for some fiscal efficiency measure. Which is why they 'locally optimize'. Right?
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    My argument is that in many cases it's not local optimization at all. It's not optimal for anyone, their freedom is constrained by upper level management (the hierarchy / the corporation / the hivemind) which means neither the managers or their reports have freedom. If the managers actually had more freedom, you'd get something closer to a bunch of small groups optimizing locally and producing (ideally, with the right incentive) collectively good results. Here's a really easy example from my career (not Google, though): A manager needs to deliver on schedule. He has a set number of people on his team. One of those people is going to quit because he has a baby on the way, and the company's salary is not good enough. If the manager had enough freedom, they'd have options available. The company is going to cut some of those off, but I'll enumerate some of the ones we potentially had at our fingertips (I was one of the team's managers in this situation): * Give him a raise so he stays * Promote someone qualified from the team, hire a junior employee to replace them * Hire a senior employee to replace him and train them up ASAP to fill the gap * Adjust the schedule to make up for the loss of his contribution * Adjust the scope of the project to same as the above In the end the studio head basically told us to go fuck ourselves, and the report ended up quitting. The project came in late, as I expected. This happened multiple times and in multiple cases it was direct interference from higher nodes in the chain - neither us in management or the labor below us were able to optimize at all. The product as a whole ended up shipping multiple years late due to lots of smaller-scale interference like that.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
From: Arnon Geshuri (Google Senior Staffing Strategist) ... On this specific case, the sourcer who contacted this Apple employee should not have and will be terminated within the hour. We are scrubbing the sourcer’s records to ensure she did not contact anyone else. ... From: Shona Brown (Google VP of Human Resources) Appropriate response. Please make a public example of this termination within the group. Please also make it a very strong part of new hire training for the group. I want it clear that we have a zero-tolerance policy for violating our policies. This should (hopefully) prevent future occurrences. From Eric Schmidt: Steve, as a followup we investigated the recruiter’s actions and she violated our policies. Apologies again on this and I’m including a portion of the email I received from our head of recruiting [Arnnon Geshuri—M.A.]. Should this ever happen again please let me know immediately and we will handle. Thanks !! Eric From Steve Jobs: :) From Sergei Brin: Wow, Steve used a smiley. God, I never got one of those. Source: https://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-steve-jobs-brutally-callous-response-after-getting-a-google-employee-fired/ https://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-s... Edit: Fixed the Shona Brown email. She's on the board of Atlassian now so I guess avoid those people too.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Yeah at the highest management levels, managers (VPs?) are responsible to CEO direction. But at middle manager levels (hundreds of people, not a handful, in very large companies) they're not directly responsible to the CEO. Nor are they directly responsible to the customer/market. They're in 'middle management limbo' where all they have to work with, is local incentives. Usually financial - optimize the budget for results. Sadly, this usually ends with middle managers trying to maximize their budget and minimize their required output, to increase their chances of success. Which means, the most expensive product possible. That's what I mean by 'locally optimize'.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    That's a much more general point than the specific one at issue, which is the CEOs illegally conspiring to not hire staff from each other and terminating someone who refused to go along with the illegal conspiracy. This wasn't something the managers organically came up with.

estomagordo 7y ago

Wait, what, you received a damages payment because a company wouldn't interview you?

ceejayoz 7y ago
Because a company illegally colluded with their competitors not to interview them. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-settlement/apple-google-intel-adobe-to-pay-325-million-to-settle-hiring-lawsuit-idUSBREA4M0MY20140523 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-settlement/a...
- twinge 7y ago
  Interviews were allowed, but recruiters weren't allowed to make the initial contact with employees.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Given the high level attention involved - direct emails between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt - I'd fully expect that policy to bleed over into "don't interview/hire" to avoid any appearance of having recruited them.
burkaman 7y ago
In a class action lawsuit, where the company was accused of conspiring with several other companies to keep wages artificially low.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
I received damages because I was employed by one of the companies found guilty in the conspiracy. The settlement was so low that the judge threw it out initially. The fact that they didn’t interview me is just the real outcome of their policy. They called me, unprompted, about 2 months after I left Apple.
estomagordo 7y ago
Thanks, all, for clarifying. Still not sure I think it sounds entirely reasonable. But makes a lot more sense to me now. (Am not American).

billman 7y ago

I have always thought of corporations as a system that reacts to the forces working upon and within it.

cartoonworld 7y ago
They sure are, I call those forces "Greenbacks".
- billman 7y ago
  true dat

Pigo 7y ago

>a cool $3K I'm sorry you didn't get more from the settlement, but at least you were able to write something on here that made me laugh.

strathmeyer 7y ago

I interviewed at Google. They didn't want to hire me, but called me back every year for five years to ask what I was up to until I asked them to stop. That's not normal. I even remember when Google started hiring in the early aughts. Instead of asking for resumes from you directly, they asked you to submit the resumes of any smart people you know. That's not normal.

beckler 7y ago
Asking for other peoples resumes is becoming the new normal for some recruiters. I view it as desperation more than anything else.
- Pmop 7y ago
  Also, by sending other peoples resumes, aren't you doing the job the recruiter is being paid to (or at least part of it)?
Bartweiss 7y ago
When I was in undergrad, a Google recruiter found my resume and contacted me about an internship. Google decided I didn't have enough background and they wouldn't even offer me a phone interview - meaning they made the decision purely on that same resume. Fair enough, they probably sent it to an engineer who disagreed. But two days later, another recruiter with no knowledge of the first messaged me about my "very interesting resume". I still hear from their recruiters at semi-random, each saying they're my "new point of contact at Google". Sometimes there's nothing for a year, then I'll get two "new points of contact' within one week. Recruiting is always a mess, but it's a bit surprising to see an in-house team get up to the same antics I expect from third party services. The most recent approach was the most persuasive, though: Dear [appplicant], I'm writing to because I saw your resume and I think you could be a great fit for Google. I'm particularly interested in your work with [background], which I think prepares you very well for [position].
tnecniv 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they stole this from academic hiring. It's well known that, when professors go up for tenure at Harvard, their recommenders are required to list other people they think Harvard might want to consider hiring for the spot.

TurkishPoptart 7y ago

Did you have to interact with a lawyer? There've been a few times where I think it would have been to my advantage to talk to a lawyer about corporate wrongdoings, but I've never known how to go about it, and have zero experience dealing with them.

Pmop 7y ago

Wow. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that their engagement in the "make software development more accessible" thing is actually intended to increase supply, and then decrease wages accordingly.

koheripbal 7y ago

What does this have to do with OP's article? These non-poaching agreements (Wall Street has them also) are not related to Union law. I doubt it's even the same people in the company that write these two different policies.

blueboo 7y ago
It shows a guy who confused correlation for causation got laid off at Apple.