>If you were around during the last dot-com boom, you may remember the ridiculous poaching that went on... >I'm somewhat sympathetic to the notion that compani

>If you were around during the last dot-com boom, you may remember the ridiculous poaching that went on... >I'm somewhat sympathetic to the notion that companies want to avoid aggressive and invasive poaching on each other's workforces... >If I had a startup, I'd be pissed of someone came along (and poached my employees instead of an acqui-hire) that I spent significant amounts of resources recruiting and training... I find the term "poaching" in this context to be disgusting. Employees aren't game captured by underhanded or illicit tactics. Employees are human beings that think and make decisions for themselves, and talk of them being "poached" as if it wasn't their choice is offensive. >There's already an apparent bubble in asset prices and cost of living in the Bay Area House prices are artificially high because of NIMBY zoning laws set by the very wealthy , and NOT the tech employees in question. The strata of middle class are being pitted against each other by the wealthy. > and while it seems good for some tech workers in the short term to have salaries pumped through the roof, I'm not sure it's good for the overall tech economy, or the economy in general. When a company keeps the money instead of paying its employees, the money is funneled to stockholders, who are in general richer and fewer in number than the employees. Are you seriously suggesting, in spite of the abject failure of trickle down economics, that giving money to the middle class tech workers instead of the wealthy (owners of the company, and shareholders) is bad for the economy? >To read some of the press articles, you'd think this was the Grapes of Wrath or something, that poor tech workers, the ones who drive around in luxury busses and pay $3000-5000/mo for studio apartments in SF, are woefully under compensated "No poaching agreements" ineluctably means THEFT. $10,000 a year extra is a lot of money for tech workers and their families. The victims were skilled workers that were deserving of the pay stolen from them. Your suggestion that we shouldn't empathize with any victims of theft if they're not destitute is fatuous and offensive.