3 ms·

Probably not that funny to the engineer in question, and Im willing to bet that Jobs didn't once approach him and offer him more money to stay.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
I wouldn't make that bet. Jobs played favorites and I believe he was known to amply reward his favorites.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Would he reward a favorite who was just about to jump ship before he got the offer rescinded?
  - blitzar 4y ago
    > about to jump ship Sounds like a traitor to me ...
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  this email's aim is to suppress market wages. you're mythologizing and neglecting the market-wide knock-on effects of rampant illegal wage theft collusion like this.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It doesn't appear to be. The email's intention appears to be accusing Google of poaching browser developers to build a competing browser to Safari. It's less about price and more about Apple changing their strategy if they conclude that a company they think is a partner has designs on competing directly with one of their key application offerings. Which, of course, they eventually did. If anything, I take this email to be indicative of how companies can lose sight of the effect on their actual employees of market strategization. Jobs isn't worried about having to pay his team more here; he's worried that he's about to see the world's largest online advertiser launch a browser that could cut Apple's control of their users' online experience out from under them. If anything, I don't think they're really thinking about how much people need to get paid (which is, indeed, a problem).
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      they were convicted of illegal wage suppression as a result of this. fighting poaching through collusion is functionally equivalent to wage suppression. you're mythologizing. these are billionaire businessmen, they fully grasp the intent and result of their actions. wage suppression is the whole game whether legal or illegally played. that's their profit.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        No disagreement that was the end effect. What I'm saying is it's interesting to observe how easy would be to slip from strategization to "oops we are illegally suppressing wages" without that being the intent. What apple is seeing here is a company they believe to be a partner pulling key staff away from an extremely important project to them (Jobs took the success of Safari very personally), which they didn't anticipate because that's a partner harming them on what they believe to be a shared goal. It's like "dudes... You want Safari to succeed too. Why are you pulling away the staff that would make it succeed?" Which is why I suspect he jumps to the conclusion that Google is working on a competing browser, not the Google is simply following recommendation chains and executing their standard strategy of hiring the smartest people in the room.
    - milemi 4y ago
      What war other than the bidding war for talent was Jobs threatening?
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        At the time, Google was the default search engine for Safari. Apple could have changed their opinion on that. Google was also trying very hard to build and maintain a coalition of smaller browsers (at the time) that can compete with IE's complete stranglehold on the technical web ecosystem by virtue of its sheer mass. Apple is a notoriously fickle partner in any kind of technical coalition (note how they got bored with other companies dragging their heels on the usb-c standard and released their own standard several years earlier). They had the leverage of both their own browser and their mobile phone platform to position against Google or towards Microsoft if they chose to.
  - the-rc 4y ago
    Aim? Eventual consequence, yes, most likely, but only as a secondary effect. Eric and co., down to the Maps leadership, were on the receiving end of similar outbursts pretty regularly. It wasn't just about hiring. Sometimes it was about patents, like the pinch to zoom one, which actually existed only in Jobs' fantastic tales. Sometimes it was about YouTube. Sometimes it was about Maps features that he wanted Google to implement (and then attempt to patent for himself). Or it was about Android, which eventually became the straw that broke the camel's back: he threatened war in these 2005 mails and did follow through with the iPhone patent battles. Pretty much everything was a zero sum game, in his book. As someone (RIP) said, dealing with him was like dealing with Khrushchev, minus the shoes. Anyway, most of the above have little to do directly with wages and a lot to do with pride, bullying, control and/or things that smell a lot like narcissistic injuries (see also former presidents and current tech CEOs prone to meltdowns). I'm not a psychologist or play one, though, so take that with a grain of salt. Eric and co. simply appeased him way too often. They did push back and occasionally even troll him (like the night before the Nexus One launch), but nowhere enough. If only they had penned a reply like Palm's.
  - tuyiown 4y ago
    I think it's purely a strategic tech stance. Google building an at least on-par browser competing with safari was not good for apple, and the faster way to achieve that for google was to poach engineers, especially that the iPhone was probably in the pipes at this time. For engineer, compensation is not everything, regardless of money, going to google to build a browser would easily look like a good idea at the time.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

I wouldn't make that bet. Jobs played favorites and I believe he was known to amply reward his favorites.

googlryas 4y ago
Would he reward a favorite who was just about to jump ship before he got the offer rescinded?
- blitzar 4y ago
  > about to jump ship Sounds like a traitor to me ...
wahnfrieden 4y ago
this email's aim is to suppress market wages. you're mythologizing and neglecting the market-wide knock-on effects of rampant illegal wage theft collusion like this.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It doesn't appear to be. The email's intention appears to be accusing Google of poaching browser developers to build a competing browser to Safari. It's less about price and more about Apple changing their strategy if they conclude that a company they think is a partner has designs on competing directly with one of their key application offerings. Which, of course, they eventually did. If anything, I take this email to be indicative of how companies can lose sight of the effect on their actual employees of market strategization. Jobs isn't worried about having to pay his team more here; he's worried that he's about to see the world's largest online advertiser launch a browser that could cut Apple's control of their users' online experience out from under them. If anything, I don't think they're really thinking about how much people need to get paid (which is, indeed, a problem).
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    they were convicted of illegal wage suppression as a result of this. fighting poaching through collusion is functionally equivalent to wage suppression. you're mythologizing. these are billionaire businessmen, they fully grasp the intent and result of their actions. wage suppression is the whole game whether legal or illegally played. that's their profit.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      No disagreement that was the end effect. What I'm saying is it's interesting to observe how easy would be to slip from strategization to "oops we are illegally suppressing wages" without that being the intent. What apple is seeing here is a company they believe to be a partner pulling key staff away from an extremely important project to them (Jobs took the success of Safari very personally), which they didn't anticipate because that's a partner harming them on what they believe to be a shared goal. It's like "dudes... You want Safari to succeed too. Why are you pulling away the staff that would make it succeed?" Which is why I suspect he jumps to the conclusion that Google is working on a competing browser, not the Google is simply following recommendation chains and executing their standard strategy of hiring the smartest people in the room.
  - milemi 4y ago
    What war other than the bidding war for talent was Jobs threatening?
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      At the time, Google was the default search engine for Safari. Apple could have changed their opinion on that. Google was also trying very hard to build and maintain a coalition of smaller browsers (at the time) that can compete with IE's complete stranglehold on the technical web ecosystem by virtue of its sheer mass. Apple is a notoriously fickle partner in any kind of technical coalition (note how they got bored with other companies dragging their heels on the usb-c standard and released their own standard several years earlier). They had the leverage of both their own browser and their mobile phone platform to position against Google or towards Microsoft if they chose to.
- the-rc 4y ago
  Aim? Eventual consequence, yes, most likely, but only as a secondary effect. Eric and co., down to the Maps leadership, were on the receiving end of similar outbursts pretty regularly. It wasn't just about hiring. Sometimes it was about patents, like the pinch to zoom one, which actually existed only in Jobs' fantastic tales. Sometimes it was about YouTube. Sometimes it was about Maps features that he wanted Google to implement (and then attempt to patent for himself). Or it was about Android, which eventually became the straw that broke the camel's back: he threatened war in these 2005 mails and did follow through with the iPhone patent battles. Pretty much everything was a zero sum game, in his book. As someone (RIP) said, dealing with him was like dealing with Khrushchev, minus the shoes. Anyway, most of the above have little to do directly with wages and a lot to do with pride, bullying, control and/or things that smell a lot like narcissistic injuries (see also former presidents and current tech CEOs prone to meltdowns). I'm not a psychologist or play one, though, so take that with a grain of salt. Eric and co. simply appeased him way too often. They did push back and occasionally even troll him (like the night before the Nexus One launch), but nowhere enough. If only they had penned a reply like Palm's.
- tuyiown 4y ago
  I think it's purely a strategic tech stance. Google building an at least on-par browser competing with safari was not good for apple, and the faster way to achieve that for google was to poach engineers, especially that the iPhone was probably in the pipes at this time. For engineer, compensation is not everything, regardless of money, going to google to build a browser would easily look like a good idea at the time.