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So, what would have happened had Apple and Google ruthlessly poached from each other and from every other smaller tech company like Adobe? A few engineers would

• epistasis 13y ago
  It depends on how you define success. If success is producing better products that please more customers, I would hazard a guess that they actually suppressed their success. If success means minimizing short-term labor costs, then these companies were definitely successful. Minimizing short-term labor costs is an obvious win for executives, it makes them look good. For shareholders, its hard to say if they won or lost, due to longer term potential for harm. For the consumer market, it's probably a loss, because there could have been better products if companies were willing to poach the right people to get better products. And for the labor itself, a definite loss. It's also a loss for the startup community, because there's fewer people with financial independence to start their own company. And since that's where a good chunk of innovation happens, I think we all lose out quite a bit.