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Jobs' comments: >OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position co
by aspensmonster 13y ago
Jobs' comments:
>OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly?
>if you [Brin] hire a single one of these people that means war.
Chizen's comment:
>if I tell Steve [Jobs] it’s open season (other than senior managers), he will deliberately poach Adobe just to prove a point. Knowing Steve, he will go after some of our top Mac talent…
Jobs sounds like a Grade-A Asshole, along with every other player involved in this mess. Makes me even less likely to relocate to SV than I already was. Though now I'm curious to know whether these wage-theft pacts extend beyond SV, perhaps to Austin... Many of the same players have a significant presence here. Seriously. If you've got info, hit me up.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- zaidf 13y agoThis is where he crosses the asshole line over to scumbag and crook territory. I say this as someone who respects Jobs deeply for his product vision.
- kirubakaran 13y agoHe has always been there. "Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak
- 31reasons 13y agoWoz is someone who is straight out of fairytales. I wish I had a friend like him.
- wozniacki 13y agoWozniak on Jobs : *...told Jobs the good things these machines could do for humanity, not the reverse. I begged Steve that we donate the first Apple I to a woman who took computers into elementary schools but he made my buy it and donate it myself.* http://i.imgur.com/a1I9DTs.jpg http://i.imgur.com/a1I9DTs.jpg https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf
- chris_wot 13y agoI seriously consider Steve Jobs to be a sociopath.
- JetSpiegel 13y agoHow can he be so successful otherwise? By a certain measure of successful.
- chris_wot 13y agoHe wasn't successful at being a human being. That counts for a lot in my book.
- johnmaddox 13y agoAfter all this why does Steve Wozniak stay with him.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoBecause any maker wants their stuff to be in front of as many people as possible - and staying with Jobs sure made that happen.
- wavefunction 13y agoBecause he's the Woz, he's immutable and immovable like the Bhudda Funny how Jobs was the 'Bhuddist.'
- Natsu 13y agoNo matter what I hear about him, it seems like I always end up respecting Steve Wozniak more.
- dba7dba 13y agoUnfortunately most people only know/worship Jobs. Few non-geeks know about Wozniak. Sad.
- RuCrazy 13y agoi know the mofo Woz!
- Already__Taken 13y agoIt sounds like he likes it that way.
- SkyMarshal 13y agoNot when it results in lies and historical revisionism that besmirch his true legacy: https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf
- danellis 13y agoTime for a Kickstarter for iWoz: The Movie.
- blueskin_ 13y ago...and this is why, even as a major Apple hater * , I like and respect Wozniak. * Although, to be fair to myself, Apple only turned into its current form after he left.
- johnmaddox 13y agoI really respect Steve Wozniak. But why does he not rebel and leave him. Why does any body surrender when they have a choice unlike most others. And this is the reason i wish there are more people like RMS who are both talented and have deep philosophy.
- dchichkov 13y agoWould you care to guess why?
- johnmaddox 13y agoI am not able to. Money? It can not be atleast in case of Woz.
- kayoone 13y agoA lot of Woz' generosity comes from him not caring about money and power but that doesn't make him any less likable of course.
- wutbrodo 13y agoIs this the first negative thing you've read about him? None of them are flattering at all, and most of them are at the scumbag/crook level.
- OnyeaboAduba 13y agoI don’t want to sound like I am excusing this behavior but this type of thing happens all the time in various other industries all over the country. This is not an isolated sv disease. And as much as it is about money in regards to salaries it’s also about employee retention which is also about money haha.
- lmg643 13y agoThis whole episode is pretty depressing. But, it's far better for people to live without illusions about the nature of their bosses, etc. At the risk of a hundred downvotes, I wonder how many people can see the parallels in the current silicon valley push for "immigration reform." Having watched H1B farms style companies up close and personal, I can say there is very little to recommend about this model of employment, other than the CEOs like having a lower employee expense base. It might sound more exciting to hear the pitch from a wunderkind like Mark Z, but it's still the same story.
- dredmorbius 13y agoThe H1B issue is absolutely about providing cheap, endentured labour: visa holders are tied to their sponsoring employer and must appeal to be allowed to seek other employment. Norm Matloff of UC Davis has literally been trying to expose this for decades, with little luck: http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b.html http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b.html http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b10min.html http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b10min.html Moreover: this is entirely consistent with behavior of employer first observed in the 18th century: [I]n every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent, and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another. What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour. It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. Marx, you ask? No. Engles? No. That's Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2HCH0008 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...
- Fasebook 13y agoWhat vision? The idea to make technology easy to use? What a mind blowing idea. I'm sure nobody thought of that before, in 10,000 years of human history. But you know, Jobs actually DID IT, he had the balls to hire a bunch of engineers to make his personal phone easier to use, and stiff them over and over systematically, like any business would.. Wait, what exactly did Jobs do? He had a lot of money.
- primelens 13y agoAll of this is so very Godfather ... we should be glad no one woke up next to horse's heads.
- steveklabnik 13y agoFor more "Steve Jobs does shady things via email," you might enjoy http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/the-steve-jobs-emails-that-show-how-to-win-a-hard-nosed-negotiation/276136/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/the-stev...
- aragot 13y agoReferring to the "Bill Gates does not assume his email is taped" debate, Steve Jobs doesn't seem to care either about those written forsenics. Which is twice surprising since I've read elsewhere that he was very tight on his own privacy.
- debt 13y agoIf you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. It's probably the best place in the world right now to be a software developer. This wage-theft stuff is for very experienced echelons of engineers.
- peterb 13y agoThe wage-theft stuff lowers the curve for everyone, not just the top tier. It lowers the entire wage curve.
- accountoftheday 13y agoThe article does not support this claim. My reading is that GOOG's HR department kept/keeps the salary curve artificially flat (over-rewarding low performers) to manage pay within a narrow band and thereby prevent having to negotiate with top performers.
- nerfhammer 13y agoThis is also an effect of the "flat" org structure. Few annoying managers! and also almost no chance of becoming one of those managers.
- judk 13y agoI don't understand how employee A's salary is a factor in whether Employee B gets negotiated with.
- nerfhammer 13y agoFrom the article: > Google, like the others, used a “salary algorithm” to ensure salaries remained within a tight band across like jobs. Although tech companies like to claim that talent and hard work are rewarded, in private, Google’s “People Ops” department kept overall compensation essentially equitable by making sure that lower-paid employees who performed well got higher salary increases than higher-paid employees who also performed well.
- tomphoolery 13y agoIt's hard to say, from just this snippet. You forgot to mention that Chizen tried to slime his way out of the problem by claiming he was only hiring junior-level staff. So Steve responded, rather sarcastically, "Okay, so everyone is open game then?", and then Chizen goes "No I was just kidding! Let's just be friends! Tee hee!". I mean, Steve was a douche for a lot of other reasons. But this is savvy business right here. He had Chizen by the balls. Considering there's no mention of Apple intentionally trying to recruit from other companies in this article, I have to assume (until other evidence is provided, of course) that Apple was not doing such things. To me it sounds like Steve knew he had the advantage, and he exploited that to keep his top talent where they were.
- icambron 13y agoHe was also breaking the law.
- aragot 13y agoAnd compelled Chizen to stay in the game.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago"he exploited that to keep his top talent where they were" ... rather than pay them market rate wages. Savvy business and being a "douche" seem to overlap here.
- bjourne 13y agoOf course they do. They extend everywhere in the world. That's why sensible people form wage-stealing-back pacts, also known as "unions."
- MagicWishMonkey 13y agoThis would definitely depress wages throughout the industry, SV doesn't exist in a vacuum.
- outside1234 13y agoJobs was an asshole. He was a sociopath, like many of the folks in this article.
- n6mac41717 13y agoI think you can assume that this kind of thing goes on outside of SV, so it shouldn't color your relocation-to-SV utility curve...
- coronadelmar 13y agoIn what moral universe is offering someone a job (and a better paying one) being an asshole? Additionally, this is gossip and presumption.