3 ms·

Well, I don't consider not cold-calling as a price fixing scheme. As long as normal hiring process continues, all you're doing is shifting recruiting from a sma

Well, I don't consider not cold-calling as a price fixing scheme. As long as normal hiring process continues, all you're doing is shifting recruiting from a smaller pool of highly compensated engineers, to a large pool of less compensated engineers. It would only be price fixing if there was an industry wide agreement to put a cap on engineer salaries. Rather instead, what you have is an agreement to shop in one market exchange instead of another. I mean, what do you think is better for both engineers in general, as well as the companies: Trading a small set of engineers back and forth with ever more escalating compensation in a bidding war, or, hiring from a large, general pool of applicants? One way leads to disruption, mono-culture, and somewhat unfair bias towards those not on the roster already of the big companies. If anything, not cold calling should increase diversity as well. This scheme only seems slimy to me, because any agreement between companies in secret, seems slimy. But I am really not seeing it as a price fixing scheme, and I find it hard to get myself motivated to Occupy Mountain View protesting. This reminds me of several years ago when Google switched the Holiday gift from giving $1000 tax free cash in an envelope, to giving a free device (phone/tablet/etc). Some people were irritated by it and complained, but I found the complaints to be a solo on the world's tiniest violin. Seriously, there are people starving on Christmas, unable to even buy their children toys or clothes, and people earning in the top 1%-10% are annoyed that instead of $1000 cash, they get a $500 device for free. It's an even more absurd version of Louis C.K.'s "everything is awesome and no one is happy."

existencebox 13y ago
I can understand this stance, but I'd point out the section that makes the issue cross the line of "appropriate collusion" (god that's a terrible phrase) for me, that being the "We do not hire from these people even if approached in the normal application process" groupings Focusing recruiting, sure. But pre-filtering on the basis of factors "not relevant" to the person performing the job starts to get into a very grey territory in terms of discrimination. (I realize on the surface this seems silly since where you are working is totally relevant to a new job, but not in the context in which it was being utilized.) I really don't intend to draw a strawman with this, but that I see a big difference between their limiting their effort, and their prohibiting your effort.
- lsaferite 13y ago
  I find it interesting that had they framed the 'do not hire' rules under the concept of avoiding lawsuits due to trade secrets, then there would be zero 'evil' in the whole thing (Not that I think it was evil in any case). On top of that, unless I missed something, the documents I've read excluded engineers, the ones getting their jimmies ruffled, from the 'do not hire' list and simply had them on a 'no cold call' list. It was management and sales that were under some 'do not hire' list, right? In this whole thing, the only part that I find morally/legally suspect is the agreement to not hire certain categories of employees from certain companies. Everything else is just a bunch of hand waving from highly paid people that want to be paid even more. And even that, had it been worded slightly different, would be arguably legal.
  - existencebox 13y ago
    And that's exactly what I'm getting at. Once you establish that there has been a breach of law, you _have_ to take the context/wording into account, which is highly "slimy" on its own merit, as the grandparent post puts it, and turns what might otherwise be a "don't word your hiring practices in such a way or collude them between companies" reprimand into a "you're clearly doing really underhanded things, and are even _self effacing_ about this" (citing the "let's not put on paper something we could get sued over" memos) I (as an engineer) have my "jimmies rustled" because this sets a really worrying precedent for the behaviors of these companies I do/might work for, and is frankly the sort of behavior that makes me have implicitly low trust for people with this sort of power, which is an unfortunate state of things. (I'd really like to be able to trust people, I promise...)

existencebox 13y ago

I can understand this stance, but I'd point out the section that makes the issue cross the line of "appropriate collusion" (god that's a terrible phrase) for me, that being the "We do not hire from these people even if approached in the normal application process" groupings Focusing recruiting, sure. But pre-filtering on the basis of factors "not relevant" to the person performing the job starts to get into a very grey territory in terms of discrimination. (I realize on the surface this seems silly since where you are working is totally relevant to a new job, but not in the context in which it was being utilized.) I really don't intend to draw a strawman with this, but that I see a big difference between their limiting their effort, and their prohibiting your effort.

lsaferite 13y ago
I find it interesting that had they framed the 'do not hire' rules under the concept of avoiding lawsuits due to trade secrets, then there would be zero 'evil' in the whole thing (Not that I think it was evil in any case). On top of that, unless I missed something, the documents I've read excluded engineers, the ones getting their jimmies ruffled, from the 'do not hire' list and simply had them on a 'no cold call' list. It was management and sales that were under some 'do not hire' list, right? In this whole thing, the only part that I find morally/legally suspect is the agreement to not hire certain categories of employees from certain companies. Everything else is just a bunch of hand waving from highly paid people that want to be paid even more. And even that, had it been worded slightly different, would be arguably legal.
- existencebox 13y ago
  And that's exactly what I'm getting at. Once you establish that there has been a breach of law, you _have_ to take the context/wording into account, which is highly "slimy" on its own merit, as the grandparent post puts it, and turns what might otherwise be a "don't word your hiring practices in such a way or collude them between companies" reprimand into a "you're clearly doing really underhanded things, and are even _self effacing_ about this" (citing the "let's not put on paper something we could get sued over" memos) I (as an engineer) have my "jimmies rustled" because this sets a really worrying precedent for the behaviors of these companies I do/might work for, and is frankly the sort of behavior that makes me have implicitly low trust for people with this sort of power, which is an unfortunate state of things. (I'd really like to be able to trust people, I promise...)