13 ms·

Steve Jobs's response after getting a Google employee fired.

258 points by omegant 13y ago

pjmlp 13y ago
"Do no evil." When will geeks learn there are no good or bad corporations?
- psbp 13y ago
  When you learn the slogan.
  - papasmrf 13y ago
    Glad to see Paul Graham's pending comments machine is working so well here.
    - nkurz 13y ago
      They didn't happen, although perhaps they are what is needed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7475834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7475834
boldpanda 13y ago
I don't think we should pile on these tech execs. It happens elsewhere. I'd speculate it's rather widespread. I worked for a Fortune 500 market research / consumer data company and I know for a fact that the Senior VP of our office would call Fortune 500 clients and kindly request they not "poach" our employees. Most of it is done casually and "innocently". I doubt most execs even thought they were breaking the law before this came to light.
- davidw 13y ago
  > It happens elsewhere. I'd speculate it's rather widespread. Does that make it ok?
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Add up the cost to salaried employees. It's a multi-billion dollar crime.
a2tech 13y ago
The smiley at the end is rough. However, I'd like to point out that Google took the action of firing the employee so quickly and strongly. Job's simply asked that Google's recruitment department please stop.
- incision 13y ago
  >"Job's simply asked that Google's recruitment department please stop." Hardly. When one executive contacts another directly the intent is implicit. If destroying this person was not the clear desire this communication would have taken place at another level.
  - javert 13y ago
    What you said is just made-up nonsense. You can claim that when somebody says X they really mean Y, but without evidence for that, it is a bogus claim. Sipmle logic states that Steve Jobs actually cared about maintaining the scheme he had with Google and couldn't care less about one particular Google employee. Why would he? If he really were some kind of perverted power-luster he had plenty of his own employees to torture, but he just wasn't like that. He was always pursuing HIS GOALS ruthlessly, he wasn't out to get his rocks off by hurting people or exercising power. (None of this is from direct experience, but it's evident from public information.)
    - jroseattle 13y ago
      But alas, we don't live in a world of simple logic. It's important to remember that Schmidt was on Apple's Board of Directors at the time this occurred (he joined in the fall of 2006.) The Board was hand-picked in its entirety by Jobs. These are power guys, and if Schmidt doesn't do something strongly, he will be perceived as weak. The implicitness in this email was a basic alpha-male locker-room challenge for Schmidt to show if he had any balls. To me, this looks like a survivalist-move on the part of Schmidt to show Jobs he is "in charge" at Google. It's obvious Jobs knew how to push his buttons; otherwise, why would he (Schmidt) jump when the CEO of another company (Jobs) said "jump"?
yrochat 13y ago
Brin's reaction is hilarious... and scary at the same time. I never imagined that these people could have so much contempt toward their employees.
- VeejayRampay 13y ago
  Employees who endanger relations between tech giants by trying to poach employees even though they've been specifically asked not to by their superiors. I mean, I agree that the treatment is rough, but the employee really was at fault for going rogue.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    It's a stretch to assume the employee "went rogue" in the sense of crossing a well-defined boundary. I'd hazard a guess that the no-poach rule was phrased (or at least understood) more as a suggestion, since explaining the reasoning behind the policy would hand HR evidence of the illegal cartel. Perhaps they even gave the HR people a BS reason, like "poaching leads to salary asymmetries and conflict in teams," which the unknowing HR employee proved wrong under the assumption that she could successfully work around the stated issue. When the no-poach suggestion didn't work, they needed to resort to making an example of someone to get the subtext across using the time-honored strategy of creating a "obey me without question" atmosphere to avoid uncomfortable discussions.
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    Tech giants, are they above human people? Because your comment makes them look so. 'Was at fault' for going rogue... I wonder what she will think once the current investigation ends. Sometimes the right thing to do is to go 'rogue' against tech giants who ask of you things they should not.
  - pmorici 13y ago
    "the employee really was at fault for going rogue." None of the details surrounding the contact are included. For all we know that person didn't know they were contacting an Apple employee until after the fact.
  - 13y ago
ctz 13y ago
Don't be evil.
newaccountfool 13y ago
This is something people would have thought happened at Wall Street company, just shows that tech is ruthless to.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Wall Street is, in general, much more employee-friendly than your typical F500. It's the result of most of the big investment banks having been partnerships rather than corporations until relatively recently.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
This has very little to do with Jobs. It sounds like the employee broke a known rule and Google reacted once they were informed (although I'd argue they acted too harshly).
- lawncheer 13y ago
  A known "rule", that was illegal to follow in the first place.
  - peteretep 13y ago
    Why was it illegal to /follow/?
    - lawncheer 13y ago
      I am not an expert; and could be way off base, but I would assume, that knowingly following a corporate policy that is against the law, would be illegal, even if you aren't the one who implemented it. I am also making the assumption from what I read that everyone knew what this policy really was, from the way the emails between the two companies framed things. Again, this could be off base as well.
      - Zigurd 13y ago
        It's roughly the same as if these companies colluded to drive down the price on components.
- davidw 13y ago
  Little to do with Jobs? "That evening, Steve Jobs forwarded her email to Eric Schmidt with this note:" The whole thing would not have happened without him, and his illegal scheme to prevent companies from competing.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    I see you left out his note. All it said was: "I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this." All Google had to do was remind employees they aren't allowed to recruit Apple employees. Google took the drastic action of firing the employee.
JeremyMorgan 13y ago
Are people surprised when tech executives act like other power hungry execs? The worst part of it was "make a public example of this termination". This doesn't make it any more or less illegal but it shows how drunk on power on he is.
- Wohui 13y ago
  >it shows how drunk on power on he is. Read the article properly.
  - JeremyMorgan 13y ago
    I did. This isn't about Jobs, it's about the reaction to his demand.
- mikeash 13y ago
  "Make a public example of this termination" was written by by Google's VP of HR, not Jobs.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    VP of HR so the over-promoted clerical assistant who gets the coffee and biscuits at meetings then :-)
    - mikeash 13y ago
      I imagine you don't mean this and ended up doing this by accident because you didn't bother to research the person at all, but this comment ends up being unbelievably sexist. I would like to have an interesting and informed discussion, but that requires that the other participants do some basic reading before making snide remarks.
      - namdnay 13y ago
        I don't believe he made any reference to the sex of the VP of HR, either explicitly or grammatically...
csbrooks 13y ago
Are non-solicitation agreements between companies illegal? I'm guessing blacklisting people is illegal, but is not actively soliciting employees illegal? (I'm not commenting on morality here, just legality.) My last employer had a non-solicitation agreement in place with partner companies they were working with. Is that illegal, I wonder?
- kasey_junk 13y ago
  Was the agreement between the employers or between the employees? In some jurisdictions it is completely fine to have non-compete agreements and they very often are used to prevent vendor/customer poaching.
  - csbrooks 13y ago
    It was between the employers, who were also working together on business projects. They asked us to help enforce it, by telling them if a recruiter reached out to us from one of our partners. Felt questionable to me.
    - talmand 13y ago
      It probably varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in many cases a non-compete agreement is between the employer and the employee. Meaning that you can't quit one company to go work for a competitor. Most of the time the reasoning is because you may know trade secrets that you then may share with the company's competitor, which may be why they hired you away. Sometimes these agreements hold up in court and sometimes not. A non-compete agreement between your employer and another company without your consent or input will likely not hold up in court and could be illegal depending on local laws.
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  Conspiring to keep wages down is. Non-solicitation agreements are an action that, while not illegal in themselves, in some circumstances would constitute the larger offence.
- 13y ago
melling 13y ago
It's strange that Google was so worried about placating Steve on this issue, yet they went on to redesign Android to be more like the iPhone, after it was announced. http://mashable.com/2013/12/20/android-iphone-start-over/ http://mashable.com/2013/12/20/android-iphone-start-over/
- ngcazz 13y ago
  For an earlier example, does anyone remember Google expressing actual outward praise (better yet, free marketing posing as ass-kissing) to Apple? http://i54.tinypic.com/rw6np3.jpg http://i54.tinypic.com/rw6np3.jpg
  - BrandonMarc 13y ago
    Thanks for that ... triggered some nostalgia to see a screenshot of Google.com circa 2005. I kinda miss those little icons letting you choose which "engine" you wanted to use (i.e. web / images / maps / video / etc)
- fafner 13y ago
  Google was probably more worried about the potential consequences of breaking the non-solicitation agreement than about Jobs. Breaking it would have meant Apple starting to hire Google engineers as well. And even if they didn't care about this then why start a fight over such a trivial thing?
- erikpukinskis 13y ago
  This kind of policing of UI bothers me for same reason patens on things like "One-Click Shopping" bother me. Many properties of the iPhone are things motivated design students would've independently arrived at. I know this because I was in design school a few years before the iPhone and we did come up with many of iPhone's interface choices during phone design exercises. Samsung precisely copying the visual styling of the iPhone is a different matter. But policing supposed copying of basic UI design choices rubs me the wrong way.
davidw 13y ago
This kind of thing is the reason I like working at smaller companies. People do stupid stuff at those too, but there seems to be less of this "just following orders" herd mentality.
- yardie 13y ago
  I enjoy working at smaller companies because I actually feel like I make a difference. How little do you actually contribute to your company if you can be fired within the hour.
pyrrhotech 13y ago
Getting fired from your cushy silicon valley recruiting job is far from the end of the world. He probably had another one in a week. Who gives a shit? :) was a fine response.
- beshrkayali 13y ago
  I assume this wouldn't be your reaction if you were at the receiving end of this reaction for an "illegal" deal in the first place.
  - lsaferite 13y ago
    Well, I'd say that if you violate company policy about who you can and cannot contact you should expect consequences. The fact that the policy itself may be illegal is secondary.
- dTal 13y ago
  The employee was female, as established in the first line of the article.
  - lsaferite 13y ago
    Does the gender pronoun really change the persons post at all?
boiler_up800 13y ago
None of the language in the emails seems that shocking or "brutal" (as the article says) to me. I guess the smiley face is a little strange, but I don't think it was particularly malicious.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  Exactly To me it means, "I am pleased with the response" One thing I've learned from email communication is that you can't grok the emotional response from text alone (even with emoticons) This could be either a thankful smile, a loathful grin or anything in between.
- 3minus1 13y ago
  Yeah, a lot of editorializing going on in that article. Better if you just read the emails.
- thinkpad20 13y ago
  Yeah I agree. A smiley face just means "thanks" or "good", not "MUAHAHAHAAA". It doesn't mean this is all OK, but the article really goes over the top trying to drum up emotions (warning: the next email you're going to read will scar you for life and possibly kill you). It's almost cartoonish.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    Steve Jobs's reply was almost cartoonish.
- talmand 13y ago
  It's not shocking to me because I'm not surprised at the behavior. I would imagine that the person who was fired might disagree with you on the brutal part since Google's reaction was overblown. They could have simply told the person not to do it again. But they went with the instant firing without any second thought in an effort to keep Jobs happy. The smiley face at the end is indicative of how happy Jobs was over how much power he had over them in that someone was fired over something he simply asked them to stop doing.
- 13y ago
victorhooi 13y ago
I previously had a lot of respect for the Google founders, and figured they were decent human beings. That behaviour from Steve Jobs I can kind of expect - he's fairly consistently shown that he's basically just a bad seed. However, the behaviour from Brin also sounds like pretty a*sehole behaviour. Curious is anybody can confirm if they're actually like this? Or was this all taken out of context? Surely he's actually nicer than this in person?
- Touche 13y ago
  He knowingly participated in a scheme that suppressed the wages of every engineer in the Valley. That should tell you enough.
  - xauronx 13y ago
    I'm bouncing back and forth between "ah shit, and I thought they were cool..." and... Well, engineers are finicky and will bounce back and forth between companies each time they're offered a few grand more... Why don't we just avoid that?
    - Touche 13y ago
      That's because wages are too low. Eventually an industry hits an equilibrium and people stop changing jobs unless it's too move up the ladder.
    - talmand 13y ago
      It seems easy to avoid to me. You either pay the wages required to keep important people in the building or you illegally collude with your competitors to keep them in the building. Bonus that the second option lowers your payroll costs as well.
    - Morgawr 13y ago
      Is a man not entitled to his own worth and value? I see nothing wrong with that, if your engineer can easily be sniped by a competing company willing to offer enough salary increase to convince somebody to move out of his job and jump to a new platform/environment/learning process, maybe you should be paying him more. You're not willing to? Well maybe that single engineer wasn't that vital to your company after all.
rockshassa 13y ago
If you're trying to make us feel sorry for a tech recruiter, you may have come to the wrong place.
- ericb 13y ago
  I hear you, but do you know how many people would kill to have people stalking them with job offers.
zhaphod 13y ago
I was indifferent towards all the hate/worship Jobs got. But seeing that smiley in response to some one getting fired makes me think he was a douche. He could simply have said that Google handled it the way he wanted. No need to take such pleasure in this matter.
simon_ 13y ago
Although I get that these sorts of agreements may well have been illegal and unethical, all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me. Try putting yourself in Eric Schmidt's shoes: from his perspective, the greed of an individual employee to generate recruiting commissions by violating a strict policy endangered a key strategic relationship. This could obviously not be tolerated and the lack of a strong response would make enforcing the whole landscape of mission critical policies harder. These guys HAVE TO think of the system before the individual or the system will not work. And in general, in any industry and any role, if you start a fire that the senior management team 10 levels up has to put out... you will expect harsh treatment.
- sremani 13y ago
  The behavior is not acceptable. This is a cartel to "fix" the wages of workers - esp. when these tech companies claim their workers are the most important resource. Now, I am not surprised the book price fixing Apple did with the publishers. But both Apple and Google get a pass - think if it is done by Oracle or MSFT, well we would be talking about Evil Empire and Death-star
  - Piskvorrr 13y ago
    Yup. "It was St.Steve of Cupertino, and the Do-No-Evil Company Inc., so that makes it quite all right."
  - mikeash 13y ago
    What do you mean "get a pass"? This story has been on and off HN's front page for months and the companies involved, including Apple and Google, have received nothing but strong criticism every time.
    - davidw 13y ago
      > What do you mean "get a pass"? This is what he's referring to: > all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me I'm no "occupy wall street" fan, but I think taking millions of dollars from the pockets of a lot of workers is very much something to be outraged about.
retube 13y ago
Wildly successful people exposed as utterly ruthless shock </sarcasm>
c0nsumer 13y ago
I can't help but wonder who the recruiter was. I was going through Google's interview process right around this time, knew the recruiter that I was working with had connections to folks at Apple, and one day she was mysteriously no longer with Google. It makes me wonder if it was the same person...
- CoolGuySteve 13y ago
  Apple layed off a bunch of HR people around 2009-2010 as well. I knew one of them. Why would a company with so much cash layoff part of a single division? It's incredibly suspicious.
dmethvin 13y ago
In plenty of companies I've seen people get off with warnings for at least their first few offenses of sexual harassment, being drunk or stoned on the job, and abusive language towards others. Yet here is something the execs should have known is clearly illegal and they're firing employees on the first offense. Supposedly recruiters were given a briefing about it but you have to wonder how much it was emphasized or written down, especially if their supervisors realized it was illegal.
criswell 13y ago
I admire and despise Jobs completely.
- klepra 13y ago
  I despise Jobs completely. FIXED.
coreymgilmore 13y ago
These companies are run by cutthroat persons. I'm not too surprised this stuff happens. They all want to compete and dominate their market, and that requires working together at times (even though its still competition...so maybe oligopoly). But Steve's response is great :)
erokar 13y ago
There is mounting evidence Steve Jobs was a sociopath. Corporations select for these traits in their CEOs and Google is no expection. Not surprising, not shocking, but sad.
- clef 13y ago
  Well who would be naive enough to think you can make it to the top and play with the big boys by being Mr NiceGuy? Being acquired by Facebook/google/Microsoft/apple is probably what saves a lot of "founders" from becoming the next "charismatic" sociopaths...
wil421 13y ago
Could the fired employee seek damages for wrongful termination? I dont recall what brought about this whole non poaching case.
voidlogic 13y ago
Does this employee now have recourse to sue for wrongful termination since she was fired due to failure to comply with an illegal policy?
- sjg007 13y ago
  She should contact a labor attorney and probably has a strong case.
bernardom 13y ago
This article is so sensationalist. They could have just reported the facts without the histrionics and it would have been so much better. This, especially: "The language is brutal, and as you’ll see, there’s an almost sadistic, military glee on all sides with the way in which the Google recruiter is 'terminated'" The email following that description was exactly what I would have expected. "Yes, this person screwed up. We have a clear policy that they failed to follow. We're checking to see if they did this more than once. We've fired that person. Please apologize on our behalf, it won't happen again." Making the story about "brutal" this and "sadistic" that is senseless, naive, and detracts from the real story, which is that they had these (illegal!) policies in the first place. Stop buzzfeedifying the news.
- joshvm 13y ago
  If a contract is breached, you terminate it, as in "We terminated your employment contract". It's not sadistic, it's professional language. Firing and sacking are very much colloquial; fairly rare for anyone to actually say "You're fired" notwithstanding how difficult it is to simply get rid of someone.
  - danieldk 13y ago
    If a contract is breached, you terminate it, Programmers accidentally introduce bugs, a recruiter can be mistaken about someone's current employer. Even if the no-poaching agreements were legal, this is completely unwarranted for. What about starting with a warning first? Maybe it's not sadistic, but their behaviour was certainly emotionless and inhumane.
- Tomis02 13y ago
  Well it is brutal and sadistic because such a policy is neither moral nor legal, as you pointed out, even though the email masks it with "professional" language. Here comes another example of Godwin's law.. the quick termination of Jews in WW2 was done very professionally by the day's standards. Sometime readers (especially the young ones) need to be spoon-fed for a while before they start understanding and interpreting facts on their own, qualifiers that you mention are most likely meant for them. And, had we had a completely objective article we wouldn't have had little gems like this - "apologizing and grovelling to Steve Jobs is a recurring theme" - which I find very accurate. Also - "Please make a public example of this termination within the group". I guess when you go work for Google you need to leave your moral compass at the entrance.
jroseattle 13y ago
October 7, 2009: Eric Schmidt, responding to a question about why Google would not go the same way as Microsoft now that it is so large and powerful. “There are many, many reasons why we are not going to be like Microsoft. The first has to do with the culture of the founders, the culture of the company, the value systems. The second has to do with the majority of the users, and usage is one click away from moving to a competitor, which is not true of more embedded platforms in high tech. It is very difficult to move out your database system, it is very difficult to move out of Windows, for technological reasons whereas it is quite easy to move out of these online services. “The third is that, having taken such a strong position as a company, if somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and somehow evil came all over us and we exited that room and we announced an evil strategy, we would be destroyed. We would be destroyed in reputation, we would be destroyed in consumer behaviour, consumers would mass against us, and so forth. There is a fundamental trust relationship between Google and its users. “And the fourth is that none of us would ever want to go through the kind of legal proceedings that would then follow in enough countries to make it painful. So there are positive reasons and there are good negative reasons, plus I do not think any of us are going anywhere and we have not yet found the evil room on our campus.” For those keeping score on the timeline, this quote is two years after the incident mentioned in the pando.com article. Reference: http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2009/10/eric-schmidt-thinks-that-microsoft-has-an-evil-room/ http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2009/10/eric-schmidt-thinks...
cjf4 13y ago
I'll avoid the legality of the suit, but I think the smiley face is being spun a bit by the article. Jobs wasn't sending the smiley face as some sort of grave dancing gesture, he was sending it as a "here, I took care of this problem for you" gesture to the team member that more than likely brought the issue to his attention. HR had a problem with something Google's HR did, so to cross borders they needed the boss to make the comment. It's still sort of callous, but I don't think the author's framing this the right way.
afhsfsfdsss88 13y ago
The sociopathic CEO stereotype is affirmed once again. I look forward to the coming Apple/Google/XXXX apologists vs. Lucid observer comment war.
papasmrf 13y ago
"Don't be evil." Should have been read as "Don't be evil, unless it helps Google get ahead." This all brings up the age old question..... how much money is enough?
victorhooi 13y ago
I previously thought the Google heads were pretty cool guys. However, if you can believe the tabloids, it seem Sergey Brin is engaged in some messy affair with another Google employee: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579067/Google-CEO-Larry-Page-stopped-talking-founder-Sergey-Brin-affair-younger-employee.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579067/Google-CEO-L... http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-rosenberg-affair http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda... If you combine that with his pretty callous behaviour in those emails, maybe he really is a bad character.
- jtbigwoo 13y ago
  We're getting off-topic, but... I suspect a decade living like the normal rules don't apply to you will make you think that the rules don't apply to you. Brin, like most executives, probably has an group of people around him invisibly smoothing out his problems and shuttling him past all sorts of obstacles. I'm basing this on a couple conversations with a retired telecom CEO (Charles) I used to know. Here's what he had: -If he mentions that someone is bothering him, that person is removed from his presence. (Charles wasn't even aware that this was happening for the first five years of his tenure as CEO--his wife pointed it out to him.) -There are people who prepare him and make him look good in every conversation. If he doesn't know the answer to a question, he says, "I'll get back to you." Someone else writes the question down and a thoughtful, well-formulated answer appears on his desk the next morning. -A medical plan that includes a 24/7 on-call doctor. The doctors in his plan specifically take very few patients so Charles and his family can get appointments almost immediately. -If there's a line or waiting list, he is ushered around the line or someone waits in line on his behalf. Charles literally never waited in line for anything for 15 years. Charles was thoughtful and empathetic and was lucky to have a wife who kept him grounded. (She would say some variation of, "Don't screw it all up today," as he left the house each morning.) I suspect that most people wouldn't be able to keep a healthy perspective. Edit: removed an extra word
  - yuhong 13y ago
    In this case, I wonder if Schmidt being responsible for handling the legal stuff didn't help here.
techhackblob 13y ago
Colluding to keep down wages, which would attract more people into programming, and then always complaining that there are not enough software developers while, also illegally, discriminating against expensive older programmers. Shows money is the main factor with respect to programmers ability.
- papasmrf 13y ago
  The real complaint is that there are not enough programmers that they can pay cheaply. The idea that there are not enough programmers is just bs.
pskocik 13y ago
I think English dictionaries should redefine "don't recall" as an idiom meaning "find it convenient to pretend not to remember" :)
- talmand 13y ago
  In Congressional hearings it's a common method to avoid invoking the fifth amendment which could be cause for further investigation. If they don't recall, maybe there's nothing to it; if they invoke the fifth, there's likely something there and you just have to find it elsewhere.
adsr 13y ago
What an odd spin on this story. Job's response is just a detail, the policy is agreed upon between both companies which is clear from the correspondence and Google's actions here.
willaa 13y ago
I just wonder how did Steve find out this email? Did the employee hand it in? Did Apple have a scanner on their email server?
Wohui 13y ago
This reads like a UK tabloid article. (the internet should never feel that way) As in, you're told what to think in advance of all info.
poofyleek 13y ago
:)
candybar 13y ago
I think people are overreacting in the sense that non-solicitation agreements are not illegal per se and exist almost everywhere - tons of corporate partnership/vendor/contractor/etc agreements include such language because sometimes it's difficult for companies to work together closely in good faith without such agreement in place. The main reason that the agreement is deemed illegal here is that they were made with a specific intent to manipulate the market at large and because they are deemed to have kind of market power, being a cartel of large employers. Also, the nature of the agreement is far too broad and the companies involved is far too numerous for them to argue in good faith that their intent was much more narrow. I completely agree that they overstepped and should be held liable, but some of the outrage seems misguided. The HR executive involved, for instance, may or may not be in position to know that the policy is part of an illegal scheme and the fired employee certainly was not. Also, unless you're one of the star programmers who were highly in demand, it's quite unlikely that your salary was all that depressed over this. If anything, the impact may have been slightly positive for average employees - at a lot of places, superstars aren't necessarily substitutes for average employees, but rather complements and lowering prices of superstars can boost rather than depress wages of average employees: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html On the whole, this is kind of the replay of the Microsoft anti-trust trials. Bundling web browsers with operating systems is not illegal - the illegal part was the context in which such action occurred. It was seen as an abuse of market power. Sports leagues openly collude on this kind of stuff without most people caring at all or pointing fingers at those involved. Government can have strong interest in such matters in the interest of encouraging a healthier market - though political and career motivations of lawyers/prosecutors involved also play a large part - but to seeing this as a clear morality play is not wise. Edit: actually this covers the legal issues better: http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/258600/Antitrust+Competition/How+to+Legally+Keep+Competitors+from+Poaching+Your+Key+Employees+Antitrust+Law+and+NonPoachingNonSolicitation+Agreements http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/258600/Antitrust+Compet... Assuming the article is correct, having a general agreement without any specific, legitimate purpose is illegal, but on a limited basic it can be legal. Still it seems far-fetched to assume that the HR executive in question had to know that such an illegal agreement existed, because for all he knows, a much more limited, legal contract could have existed due to their partnership and Google may have had a broader policy to ensure easy compliance. We now know that that's not the case, but I don't know why we can assume that the HR executive necessarily was aware of all this.
angrydev 13y ago
Regardless of the overarching policy, this brief exchange is being brought down to tabloid level discussion by pando, it's really nothing that terrible.
bane 13y ago
I'll refer to my previous comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7463419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7463419 There are many other things that disturb me about this. - the HR professionals who participated in this illegal non-solicitation scheme. I mean really, nobody raised their hand and said, "FYI, this is illegal". I'm sure they say it all the time about other HR issues where companies try to eliminate expenses and maximize profit. - what's the story on how Steve came to know about the solicitation? Did the Apple employee raise the flag to their boss (who should have also known that this was illegal) or where their emails being read? smells like fish. - what's the word on the wrongful termination lawsuits that must be in the works?
EGreg 13y ago
I understand that this particular case happens to be considered illegal. However, I am not convinced that a law banning this practice will not make things worse for most people. A cartel involves an arrangement where members REFUSE TO OFFER a better deal than the others - a pricefixing arrangement. On the other hand, this is very clearly about not going blatantly on each other's turf to solicit / poach. Consider this ... how did Apple find out about this? Was the employee called during work hours? How come recruiters - internal HR or external agencies - can be instructed to not advertise job openings in venues like porn sites, but - it seems from all this outrage - cannot be instructed to not advertise on their competitors' websites? Why can't companies decide that the cost of reprisals for poaching key members is too high, independently and internally, before agreeing not to do it? To sum up - I do not see this as a cartel AS LONG AS neither company turns away candidates who applied on their own, based on a mutual agreement. To be fair, Google did have such a policy and to the extent that this policy existed, that WAS a cartel. But NOT if the agreement is limited to not advertising offers to each other's key employees. Those employees can easily find out job openings and average salaries just like everyone else can. If you are going to make the argument that recruiters calling certain key employees of the other company to lure them away will give the majority of employees a better sense of how much they are worth and everyone's salary if going to go up, you'll have to work pretty hard to show the connection. Poaching key members of a team (e.g. to sabotage a competitor's project) seems to mostly benefit those key members. It increases the cost for everyone else including the companies involved. And that cost is very likely to be passed on to the other employees. You would also have to show that the companies will always choose not to pass on the cost of poaching to their employees -- because otherwise, you will have to admit that LESS poaching might actually lead to LARGER salaries. And in fact, the data seems to show this. (Once again, by poaching I mean reaching out and specifically cold calling key people in rival companies to advertise positions that they could have found on their own.) UPDATE: In fact, in many states the poaching itself of key members can be illegal. Please consider this before you participate in the overblown outrage: http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2009/Oct/64552.html http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2009/Oct/64552.html Here is a court case of the exact opposite of what you are outraged about: http://blogs.findlaw.com/tarnished_twenty/2010/07/tennessee-titans-sue-uscs-lane-kiffin-for-malicious-interference.html http://blogs.findlaw.com/tarnished_twenty/2010/07/tennessee-... Here is another example of tortious interference http://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/interference-with-contractual-or-business-relations-the-business.html http://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/interference-wi...
neves 13y ago
We are in a new society where the Information Technology brings enormous increases of productivity. The gains go to a small group of people. The capitalistic way to share this new wealth is to increase the workers wages. The middle class societies of Europe and North America were created this way. Google and Apple are extremely lucrative companies, seeing them conspiring to decrease salaries is really sad. A sure path to a worse world. On the other side, to see the American judiciary system attacking this evil behavior shows us why the United became the greatest nation in the world.
yonran 13y ago
In the counterfactual world in which Eric Schmidt were aware that the no-poach agreements might be violating antitrust laws, I doubt that the outcome between Apple and Google would have been any different. Google and Apple had a friendly business relationship at the time. Apple was using Google search as the default on Safari. They were collaborating to make Maps and YouTube apps on the iPhone. When a recruiter tried to poach the Safari team while the companies were collaborating, I think it was right for Jobs to be angry and tell Schmidt that it jeopardized the collaboration between them, and it was right for Schmidt to stop being rude to a partner.
coloncapitald 13y ago
There has been a recurring argument about whether Steve Jobs became successful because of his behavior or despite his behavior. Few days back, I came across a compilation of facts on imgur images[1] which will immediately make you hate Steve Jobs. I also read the tumblr post 'What I Learned Negotiating With Steve Jobs'[2] which is also on the same lines. And then I read NY Times article that Jobs family has been secretly donating money to charity for past 20 years anonymously[3]. One thing is clear. The world is fascinated by Steve Jobs. [1] http://imgur.com/gallery/neGNG http://imgur.com/gallery/neGNG (couldn't verify accuracy of facts) [2] http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/80368150370/what-i-learned-negotiating-with-steve-jobs http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/80368150370/what-i-learne... [3] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-jobs-and-anonymous-giving-in-silicon-valley/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-jobs...
outside1234 13y ago
Steve Jobs was a sociopath. there is nothing surprising about this at all.
BrandonMarc 13y ago
What hit me the most is how Google and Apple had this illegal, secret agreement in place (for some reason I've never heard of it 'til now; it ought to be publicized more, for all the good PR these companies enjoy it'd be nice for more people to see the full story) ... and how Jobs (Apple, a.k.a. "cool" incarnate) and especially Brin (Google, known for "don't be evil") are so arrogant about it.
blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
WOOO HOOOO GO GOOGLE YOU SHOW THOSE FUCKING PEOONS YOU NOT SO EVIL AT ALL SAVIOR OF ALL THINGS TECH.
outside1234 13y ago
I think Google should make a public example of Sharon by making her do the perp walk between the building and the cop car.
- a3n 13y ago
  Actually that's probably similar to what they'll eventually do, and the big three will fly off into the sunset.
BrandonMarc 13y ago
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." - Eric Schmidt, 2009 as CEO of Google, on concerns about privacy and Google's insatiable appetite for info https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... Yes, people bring up this quote all the time so it seems cliche to do so ... but I don't care. I say choke him on his own words for being so casual about it in the first place -- when it affected others, that is; he had a very public hissy-fit when someone publicized details about him, even blocked Cnet.com from Google for a time if I recall right.
gcb0 13y ago
How that lawyer can suck that much? He let someone who wrote an email get away in questioning by saying he was CCed and don't recall it. He wrote emails on the thread dammit.
mavdi 13y ago
SJ was such a lowlife. Seriously...
programminggeek 13y ago
What is most remarkable is a lot of software developers love Google because they are so open and against patents and all of that, yet Google, Apple, and others are all working together to screw software developers out of getting paid more. For as much flack as Microsoft took over the years for being evil, I can't say that Google or Apple have done much better, even for their own people.
pessimizer 13y ago
As with the Snowden leaks, I have to wonder if the number of fully aware collaborators in this crime would be more easily counted in tens, hundreds, or thousands. I previously thought in this specific case that it would be tens, but if entire departments were being lectured about the penalties for deviation - were hundreds of people aware?
codeonfire 13y ago
We can determine from this story that Apple's corporate email system in 2007 was wholly insecure. If one user can view and forward another users email, the system is broken.
ElComradio 13y ago
Can we ask Elon Musk to get rid of Arnnon for being involved in this? Or is Tesla too holy and doing too much good, so they get a pass?
chris_mahan 13y ago
So, now you know why I like neither Google not Apple. If these were foreign countries, we'd have invaded them and set up puppet democracies. Morons. Like they couldn't figure out the public would find out eventually...
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
Hmm... the cold and ruthless way Google deals with its own employees is more shocking than Jobs's "brutal" response to it. "make a public example of this termination" And they're calling Jobs's smiley brutal?
malandrew 13y ago
Do all the HR people in this email thread still have jobs? The only people who should still be employed is the original recruiter from google. Everyone else is complicit in these illegal actions.
general_failure 13y ago
I get all the hate. But seriously big companies are run by ruthless people. Benovalent dictators are very rare..

258 points by omegant 13y ago

pjmlp 13y ago

"Do no evil." When will geeks learn there are no good or bad corporations?

psbp 13y ago
When you learn the slogan.
- papasmrf 13y ago
  Glad to see Paul Graham's pending comments machine is working so well here.
  - nkurz 13y ago
    They didn't happen, although perhaps they are what is needed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7475834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7475834

boldpanda 13y ago

I don't think we should pile on these tech execs. It happens elsewhere. I'd speculate it's rather widespread. I worked for a Fortune 500 market research / consumer data company and I know for a fact that the Senior VP of our office would call Fortune 500 clients and kindly request they not "poach" our employees. Most of it is done casually and "innocently". I doubt most execs even thought they were breaking the law before this came to light.

davidw 13y ago
> It happens elsewhere. I'd speculate it's rather widespread. Does that make it ok?
Zigurd 13y ago
Add up the cost to salaried employees. It's a multi-billion dollar crime.

a2tech 13y ago

The smiley at the end is rough. However, I'd like to point out that Google took the action of firing the employee so quickly and strongly. Job's simply asked that Google's recruitment department please stop.

incision 13y ago
>"Job's simply asked that Google's recruitment department please stop." Hardly. When one executive contacts another directly the intent is implicit. If destroying this person was not the clear desire this communication would have taken place at another level.
- javert 13y ago
  What you said is just made-up nonsense. You can claim that when somebody says X they really mean Y, but without evidence for that, it is a bogus claim. Sipmle logic states that Steve Jobs actually cared about maintaining the scheme he had with Google and couldn't care less about one particular Google employee. Why would he? If he really were some kind of perverted power-luster he had plenty of his own employees to torture, but he just wasn't like that. He was always pursuing HIS GOALS ruthlessly, he wasn't out to get his rocks off by hurting people or exercising power. (None of this is from direct experience, but it's evident from public information.)
  - jroseattle 13y ago
    But alas, we don't live in a world of simple logic. It's important to remember that Schmidt was on Apple's Board of Directors at the time this occurred (he joined in the fall of 2006.) The Board was hand-picked in its entirety by Jobs. These are power guys, and if Schmidt doesn't do something strongly, he will be perceived as weak. The implicitness in this email was a basic alpha-male locker-room challenge for Schmidt to show if he had any balls. To me, this looks like a survivalist-move on the part of Schmidt to show Jobs he is "in charge" at Google. It's obvious Jobs knew how to push his buttons; otherwise, why would he (Schmidt) jump when the CEO of another company (Jobs) said "jump"?

yrochat 13y ago

Brin's reaction is hilarious... and scary at the same time. I never imagined that these people could have so much contempt toward their employees.

VeejayRampay 13y ago
Employees who endanger relations between tech giants by trying to poach employees even though they've been specifically asked not to by their superiors. I mean, I agree that the treatment is rough, but the employee really was at fault for going rogue.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  It's a stretch to assume the employee "went rogue" in the sense of crossing a well-defined boundary. I'd hazard a guess that the no-poach rule was phrased (or at least understood) more as a suggestion, since explaining the reasoning behind the policy would hand HR evidence of the illegal cartel. Perhaps they even gave the HR people a BS reason, like "poaching leads to salary asymmetries and conflict in teams," which the unknowing HR employee proved wrong under the assumption that she could successfully work around the stated issue. When the no-poach suggestion didn't work, they needed to resort to making an example of someone to get the subtext across using the time-honored strategy of creating a "obey me without question" atmosphere to avoid uncomfortable discussions.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  Tech giants, are they above human people? Because your comment makes them look so. 'Was at fault' for going rogue... I wonder what she will think once the current investigation ends. Sometimes the right thing to do is to go 'rogue' against tech giants who ask of you things they should not.
- pmorici 13y ago
  "the employee really was at fault for going rogue." None of the details surrounding the contact are included. For all we know that person didn't know they were contacting an Apple employee until after the fact.
- 13y ago

ctz 13y ago

Don't be evil.

newaccountfool 13y ago

This is something people would have thought happened at Wall Street company, just shows that tech is ruthless to.

rayiner 13y ago
Wall Street is, in general, much more employee-friendly than your typical F500. It's the result of most of the big investment banks having been partnerships rather than corporations until relatively recently.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

This has very little to do with Jobs. It sounds like the employee broke a known rule and Google reacted once they were informed (although I'd argue they acted too harshly).

lawncheer 13y ago
A known "rule", that was illegal to follow in the first place.
- peteretep 13y ago
  Why was it illegal to /follow/?
  - lawncheer 13y ago
    I am not an expert; and could be way off base, but I would assume, that knowingly following a corporate policy that is against the law, would be illegal, even if you aren't the one who implemented it. I am also making the assumption from what I read that everyone knew what this policy really was, from the way the emails between the two companies framed things. Again, this could be off base as well.
    - Zigurd 13y ago
      It's roughly the same as if these companies colluded to drive down the price on components.
davidw 13y ago
Little to do with Jobs? "That evening, Steve Jobs forwarded her email to Eric Schmidt with this note:" The whole thing would not have happened without him, and his illegal scheme to prevent companies from competing.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  I see you left out his note. All it said was: "I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this." All Google had to do was remind employees they aren't allowed to recruit Apple employees. Google took the drastic action of firing the employee.

JeremyMorgan 13y ago

Are people surprised when tech executives act like other power hungry execs? The worst part of it was "make a public example of this termination". This doesn't make it any more or less illegal but it shows how drunk on power on he is.

Wohui 13y ago
>it shows how drunk on power on he is. Read the article properly.
- JeremyMorgan 13y ago
  I did. This isn't about Jobs, it's about the reaction to his demand.
mikeash 13y ago
"Make a public example of this termination" was written by by Google's VP of HR, not Jobs.
- walshemj 13y ago
  VP of HR so the over-promoted clerical assistant who gets the coffee and biscuits at meetings then :-)
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I imagine you don't mean this and ended up doing this by accident because you didn't bother to research the person at all, but this comment ends up being unbelievably sexist. I would like to have an interesting and informed discussion, but that requires that the other participants do some basic reading before making snide remarks.
    - namdnay 13y ago
      I don't believe he made any reference to the sex of the VP of HR, either explicitly or grammatically...

csbrooks 13y ago

Are non-solicitation agreements between companies illegal? I'm guessing blacklisting people is illegal, but is not actively soliciting employees illegal? (I'm not commenting on morality here, just legality.) My last employer had a non-solicitation agreement in place with partner companies they were working with. Is that illegal, I wonder?

kasey_junk 13y ago
Was the agreement between the employers or between the employees? In some jurisdictions it is completely fine to have non-compete agreements and they very often are used to prevent vendor/customer poaching.
- csbrooks 13y ago
  It was between the employers, who were also working together on business projects. They asked us to help enforce it, by telling them if a recruiter reached out to us from one of our partners. Felt questionable to me.
  - talmand 13y ago
    It probably varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in many cases a non-compete agreement is between the employer and the employee. Meaning that you can't quit one company to go work for a competitor. Most of the time the reasoning is because you may know trade secrets that you then may share with the company's competitor, which may be why they hired you away. Sometimes these agreements hold up in court and sometimes not. A non-compete agreement between your employer and another company without your consent or input will likely not hold up in court and could be illegal depending on local laws.
tehwalrus 13y ago
Conspiring to keep wages down is. Non-solicitation agreements are an action that, while not illegal in themselves, in some circumstances would constitute the larger offence.
13y ago

melling 13y ago

It's strange that Google was so worried about placating Steve on this issue, yet they went on to redesign Android to be more like the iPhone, after it was announced. http://mashable.com/2013/12/20/android-iphone-start-over/ http://mashable.com/2013/12/20/android-iphone-start-over/

ngcazz 13y ago
For an earlier example, does anyone remember Google expressing actual outward praise (better yet, free marketing posing as ass-kissing) to Apple? http://i54.tinypic.com/rw6np3.jpg http://i54.tinypic.com/rw6np3.jpg
- BrandonMarc 13y ago
  Thanks for that ... triggered some nostalgia to see a screenshot of Google.com circa 2005. I kinda miss those little icons letting you choose which "engine" you wanted to use (i.e. web / images / maps / video / etc)
fafner 13y ago
Google was probably more worried about the potential consequences of breaking the non-solicitation agreement than about Jobs. Breaking it would have meant Apple starting to hire Google engineers as well. And even if they didn't care about this then why start a fight over such a trivial thing?
erikpukinskis 13y ago
This kind of policing of UI bothers me for same reason patens on things like "One-Click Shopping" bother me. Many properties of the iPhone are things motivated design students would've independently arrived at. I know this because I was in design school a few years before the iPhone and we did come up with many of iPhone's interface choices during phone design exercises. Samsung precisely copying the visual styling of the iPhone is a different matter. But policing supposed copying of basic UI design choices rubs me the wrong way.

davidw 13y ago

This kind of thing is the reason I like working at smaller companies. People do stupid stuff at those too, but there seems to be less of this "just following orders" herd mentality.

yardie 13y ago
I enjoy working at smaller companies because I actually feel like I make a difference. How little do you actually contribute to your company if you can be fired within the hour.

pyrrhotech 13y ago

Getting fired from your cushy silicon valley recruiting job is far from the end of the world. He probably had another one in a week. Who gives a shit? :) was a fine response.

beshrkayali 13y ago
I assume this wouldn't be your reaction if you were at the receiving end of this reaction for an "illegal" deal in the first place.
- lsaferite 13y ago
  Well, I'd say that if you violate company policy about who you can and cannot contact you should expect consequences. The fact that the policy itself may be illegal is secondary.
dTal 13y ago
The employee was female, as established in the first line of the article.
- lsaferite 13y ago
  Does the gender pronoun really change the persons post at all?

boiler_up800 13y ago

None of the language in the emails seems that shocking or "brutal" (as the article says) to me. I guess the smiley face is a little strange, but I don't think it was particularly malicious.

raverbashing 13y ago
Exactly To me it means, "I am pleased with the response" One thing I've learned from email communication is that you can't grok the emotional response from text alone (even with emoticons) This could be either a thankful smile, a loathful grin or anything in between.
3minus1 13y ago
Yeah, a lot of editorializing going on in that article. Better if you just read the emails.
thinkpad20 13y ago
Yeah I agree. A smiley face just means "thanks" or "good", not "MUAHAHAHAAA". It doesn't mean this is all OK, but the article really goes over the top trying to drum up emotions (warning: the next email you're going to read will scar you for life and possibly kill you). It's almost cartoonish.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  Steve Jobs's reply was almost cartoonish.
talmand 13y ago
It's not shocking to me because I'm not surprised at the behavior. I would imagine that the person who was fired might disagree with you on the brutal part since Google's reaction was overblown. They could have simply told the person not to do it again. But they went with the instant firing without any second thought in an effort to keep Jobs happy. The smiley face at the end is indicative of how happy Jobs was over how much power he had over them in that someone was fired over something he simply asked them to stop doing.
13y ago

victorhooi 13y ago

I previously had a lot of respect for the Google founders, and figured they were decent human beings. That behaviour from Steve Jobs I can kind of expect - he's fairly consistently shown that he's basically just a bad seed. However, the behaviour from Brin also sounds like pretty a*sehole behaviour. Curious is anybody can confirm if they're actually like this? Or was this all taken out of context? Surely he's actually nicer than this in person?

Touche 13y ago
He knowingly participated in a scheme that suppressed the wages of every engineer in the Valley. That should tell you enough.
- xauronx 13y ago
  I'm bouncing back and forth between "ah shit, and I thought they were cool..." and... Well, engineers are finicky and will bounce back and forth between companies each time they're offered a few grand more... Why don't we just avoid that?
  - Touche 13y ago
    That's because wages are too low. Eventually an industry hits an equilibrium and people stop changing jobs unless it's too move up the ladder.
  - talmand 13y ago
    It seems easy to avoid to me. You either pay the wages required to keep important people in the building or you illegally collude with your competitors to keep them in the building. Bonus that the second option lowers your payroll costs as well.
  - Morgawr 13y ago
    Is a man not entitled to his own worth and value? I see nothing wrong with that, if your engineer can easily be sniped by a competing company willing to offer enough salary increase to convince somebody to move out of his job and jump to a new platform/environment/learning process, maybe you should be paying him more. You're not willing to? Well maybe that single engineer wasn't that vital to your company after all.

rockshassa 13y ago

If you're trying to make us feel sorry for a tech recruiter, you may have come to the wrong place.

ericb 13y ago
I hear you, but do you know how many people would kill to have people stalking them with job offers.

zhaphod 13y ago

I was indifferent towards all the hate/worship Jobs got. But seeing that smiley in response to some one getting fired makes me think he was a douche. He could simply have said that Google handled it the way he wanted. No need to take such pleasure in this matter.

simon_ 13y ago

Although I get that these sorts of agreements may well have been illegal and unethical, all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me. Try putting yourself in Eric Schmidt's shoes: from his perspective, the greed of an individual employee to generate recruiting commissions by violating a strict policy endangered a key strategic relationship. This could obviously not be tolerated and the lack of a strong response would make enforcing the whole landscape of mission critical policies harder. These guys HAVE TO think of the system before the individual or the system will not work. And in general, in any industry and any role, if you start a fire that the senior management team 10 levels up has to put out... you will expect harsh treatment.

sremani 13y ago
The behavior is not acceptable. This is a cartel to "fix" the wages of workers - esp. when these tech companies claim their workers are the most important resource. Now, I am not surprised the book price fixing Apple did with the publishers. But both Apple and Google get a pass - think if it is done by Oracle or MSFT, well we would be talking about Evil Empire and Death-star
- Piskvorrr 13y ago
  Yup. "It was St.Steve of Cupertino, and the Do-No-Evil Company Inc., so that makes it quite all right."
- mikeash 13y ago
  What do you mean "get a pass"? This story has been on and off HN's front page for months and the companies involved, including Apple and Google, have received nothing but strong criticism every time.
  - davidw 13y ago
    > What do you mean "get a pass"? This is what he's referring to: > all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me I'm no "occupy wall street" fan, but I think taking millions of dollars from the pockets of a lot of workers is very much something to be outraged about.

retube 13y ago

Wildly successful people exposed as utterly ruthless shock </sarcasm>

c0nsumer 13y ago

I can't help but wonder who the recruiter was. I was going through Google's interview process right around this time, knew the recruiter that I was working with had connections to folks at Apple, and one day she was mysteriously no longer with Google. It makes me wonder if it was the same person...

CoolGuySteve 13y ago
Apple layed off a bunch of HR people around 2009-2010 as well. I knew one of them. Why would a company with so much cash layoff part of a single division? It's incredibly suspicious.

dmethvin 13y ago

In plenty of companies I've seen people get off with warnings for at least their first few offenses of sexual harassment, being drunk or stoned on the job, and abusive language towards others. Yet here is something the execs should have known is clearly illegal and they're firing employees on the first offense. Supposedly recruiters were given a briefing about it but you have to wonder how much it was emphasized or written down, especially if their supervisors realized it was illegal.

criswell 13y ago

I admire and despise Jobs completely.

klepra 13y ago
I despise Jobs completely. FIXED.

coreymgilmore 13y ago

These companies are run by cutthroat persons. I'm not too surprised this stuff happens. They all want to compete and dominate their market, and that requires working together at times (even though its still competition...so maybe oligopoly). But Steve's response is great :)

erokar 13y ago

There is mounting evidence Steve Jobs was a sociopath. Corporations select for these traits in their CEOs and Google is no expection. Not surprising, not shocking, but sad.

clef 13y ago
Well who would be naive enough to think you can make it to the top and play with the big boys by being Mr NiceGuy? Being acquired by Facebook/google/Microsoft/apple is probably what saves a lot of "founders" from becoming the next "charismatic" sociopaths...

wil421 13y ago

Could the fired employee seek damages for wrongful termination? I dont recall what brought about this whole non poaching case.

voidlogic 13y ago

Does this employee now have recourse to sue for wrongful termination since she was fired due to failure to comply with an illegal policy?

sjg007 13y ago
She should contact a labor attorney and probably has a strong case.

bernardom 13y ago

This article is so sensationalist. They could have just reported the facts without the histrionics and it would have been so much better. This, especially: "The language is brutal, and as you’ll see, there’s an almost sadistic, military glee on all sides with the way in which the Google recruiter is 'terminated'" The email following that description was exactly what I would have expected. "Yes, this person screwed up. We have a clear policy that they failed to follow. We're checking to see if they did this more than once. We've fired that person. Please apologize on our behalf, it won't happen again." Making the story about "brutal" this and "sadistic" that is senseless, naive, and detracts from the real story, which is that they had these (illegal!) policies in the first place. Stop buzzfeedifying the news.

joshvm 13y ago
If a contract is breached, you terminate it, as in "We terminated your employment contract". It's not sadistic, it's professional language. Firing and sacking are very much colloquial; fairly rare for anyone to actually say "You're fired" notwithstanding how difficult it is to simply get rid of someone.
- danieldk 13y ago
  If a contract is breached, you terminate it, Programmers accidentally introduce bugs, a recruiter can be mistaken about someone's current employer. Even if the no-poaching agreements were legal, this is completely unwarranted for. What about starting with a warning first? Maybe it's not sadistic, but their behaviour was certainly emotionless and inhumane.
Tomis02 13y ago
Well it is brutal and sadistic because such a policy is neither moral nor legal, as you pointed out, even though the email masks it with "professional" language. Here comes another example of Godwin's law.. the quick termination of Jews in WW2 was done very professionally by the day's standards. Sometime readers (especially the young ones) need to be spoon-fed for a while before they start understanding and interpreting facts on their own, qualifiers that you mention are most likely meant for them. And, had we had a completely objective article we wouldn't have had little gems like this - "apologizing and grovelling to Steve Jobs is a recurring theme" - which I find very accurate. Also - "Please make a public example of this termination within the group". I guess when you go work for Google you need to leave your moral compass at the entrance.

jroseattle 13y ago

October 7, 2009: Eric Schmidt, responding to a question about why Google would not go the same way as Microsoft now that it is so large and powerful. “There are many, many reasons why we are not going to be like Microsoft. The first has to do with the culture of the founders, the culture of the company, the value systems. The second has to do with the majority of the users, and usage is one click away from moving to a competitor, which is not true of more embedded platforms in high tech. It is very difficult to move out your database system, it is very difficult to move out of Windows, for technological reasons whereas it is quite easy to move out of these online services. “The third is that, having taken such a strong position as a company, if somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and somehow evil came all over us and we exited that room and we announced an evil strategy, we would be destroyed. We would be destroyed in reputation, we would be destroyed in consumer behaviour, consumers would mass against us, and so forth. There is a fundamental trust relationship between Google and its users. “And the fourth is that none of us would ever want to go through the kind of legal proceedings that would then follow in enough countries to make it painful. So there are positive reasons and there are good negative reasons, plus I do not think any of us are going anywhere and we have not yet found the evil room on our campus.” For those keeping score on the timeline, this quote is two years after the incident mentioned in the pando.com article. Reference: http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2009/10/eric-schmidt-thinks-that-microsoft-has-an-evil-room/ http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2009/10/eric-schmidt-thinks...

cjf4 13y ago

I'll avoid the legality of the suit, but I think the smiley face is being spun a bit by the article. Jobs wasn't sending the smiley face as some sort of grave dancing gesture, he was sending it as a "here, I took care of this problem for you" gesture to the team member that more than likely brought the issue to his attention. HR had a problem with something Google's HR did, so to cross borders they needed the boss to make the comment. It's still sort of callous, but I don't think the author's framing this the right way.

afhsfsfdsss88 13y ago

The sociopathic CEO stereotype is affirmed once again. I look forward to the coming Apple/Google/XXXX apologists vs. Lucid observer comment war.

papasmrf 13y ago

"Don't be evil." Should have been read as "Don't be evil, unless it helps Google get ahead." This all brings up the age old question..... how much money is enough?

victorhooi 13y ago

I previously thought the Google heads were pretty cool guys. However, if you can believe the tabloids, it seem Sergey Brin is engaged in some messy affair with another Google employee: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579067/Google-CEO-Larry-Page-stopped-talking-founder-Sergey-Brin-affair-younger-employee.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579067/Google-CEO-L... http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-rosenberg-affair http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda... If you combine that with his pretty callous behaviour in those emails, maybe he really is a bad character.

jtbigwoo 13y ago
We're getting off-topic, but... I suspect a decade living like the normal rules don't apply to you will make you think that the rules don't apply to you. Brin, like most executives, probably has an group of people around him invisibly smoothing out his problems and shuttling him past all sorts of obstacles. I'm basing this on a couple conversations with a retired telecom CEO (Charles) I used to know. Here's what he had: -If he mentions that someone is bothering him, that person is removed from his presence. (Charles wasn't even aware that this was happening for the first five years of his tenure as CEO--his wife pointed it out to him.) -There are people who prepare him and make him look good in every conversation. If he doesn't know the answer to a question, he says, "I'll get back to you." Someone else writes the question down and a thoughtful, well-formulated answer appears on his desk the next morning. -A medical plan that includes a 24/7 on-call doctor. The doctors in his plan specifically take very few patients so Charles and his family can get appointments almost immediately. -If there's a line or waiting list, he is ushered around the line or someone waits in line on his behalf. Charles literally never waited in line for anything for 15 years. Charles was thoughtful and empathetic and was lucky to have a wife who kept him grounded. (She would say some variation of, "Don't screw it all up today," as he left the house each morning.) I suspect that most people wouldn't be able to keep a healthy perspective. Edit: removed an extra word
- yuhong 13y ago
  In this case, I wonder if Schmidt being responsible for handling the legal stuff didn't help here.

techhackblob 13y ago

Colluding to keep down wages, which would attract more people into programming, and then always complaining that there are not enough software developers while, also illegally, discriminating against expensive older programmers. Shows money is the main factor with respect to programmers ability.

papasmrf 13y ago
The real complaint is that there are not enough programmers that they can pay cheaply. The idea that there are not enough programmers is just bs.

pskocik 13y ago

I think English dictionaries should redefine "don't recall" as an idiom meaning "find it convenient to pretend not to remember" :)

talmand 13y ago
In Congressional hearings it's a common method to avoid invoking the fifth amendment which could be cause for further investigation. If they don't recall, maybe there's nothing to it; if they invoke the fifth, there's likely something there and you just have to find it elsewhere.

adsr 13y ago

What an odd spin on this story. Job's response is just a detail, the policy is agreed upon between both companies which is clear from the correspondence and Google's actions here.

willaa 13y ago

I just wonder how did Steve find out this email? Did the employee hand it in? Did Apple have a scanner on their email server?

Wohui 13y ago

This reads like a UK tabloid article. (the internet should never feel that way) As in, you're told what to think in advance of all info.

poofyleek 13y ago

candybar 13y ago

I think people are overreacting in the sense that non-solicitation agreements are not illegal per se and exist almost everywhere - tons of corporate partnership/vendor/contractor/etc agreements include such language because sometimes it's difficult for companies to work together closely in good faith without such agreement in place. The main reason that the agreement is deemed illegal here is that they were made with a specific intent to manipulate the market at large and because they are deemed to have kind of market power, being a cartel of large employers. Also, the nature of the agreement is far too broad and the companies involved is far too numerous for them to argue in good faith that their intent was much more narrow. I completely agree that they overstepped and should be held liable, but some of the outrage seems misguided. The HR executive involved, for instance, may or may not be in position to know that the policy is part of an illegal scheme and the fired employee certainly was not. Also, unless you're one of the star programmers who were highly in demand, it's quite unlikely that your salary was all that depressed over this. If anything, the impact may have been slightly positive for average employees - at a lot of places, superstars aren't necessarily substitutes for average employees, but rather complements and lowering prices of superstars can boost rather than depress wages of average employees: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html On the whole, this is kind of the replay of the Microsoft anti-trust trials. Bundling web browsers with operating systems is not illegal - the illegal part was the context in which such action occurred. It was seen as an abuse of market power. Sports leagues openly collude on this kind of stuff without most people caring at all or pointing fingers at those involved. Government can have strong interest in such matters in the interest of encouraging a healthier market - though political and career motivations of lawyers/prosecutors involved also play a large part - but to seeing this as a clear morality play is not wise. Edit: actually this covers the legal issues better: http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/258600/Antitrust+Competition/How+to+Legally+Keep+Competitors+from+Poaching+Your+Key+Employees+Antitrust+Law+and+NonPoachingNonSolicitation+Agreements http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/258600/Antitrust+Compet... Assuming the article is correct, having a general agreement without any specific, legitimate purpose is illegal, but on a limited basic it can be legal. Still it seems far-fetched to assume that the HR executive in question had to know that such an illegal agreement existed, because for all he knows, a much more limited, legal contract could have existed due to their partnership and Google may have had a broader policy to ensure easy compliance. We now know that that's not the case, but I don't know why we can assume that the HR executive necessarily was aware of all this.

angrydev 13y ago

Regardless of the overarching policy, this brief exchange is being brought down to tabloid level discussion by pando, it's really nothing that terrible.

bane 13y ago

I'll refer to my previous comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7463419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7463419 There are many other things that disturb me about this. - the HR professionals who participated in this illegal non-solicitation scheme. I mean really, nobody raised their hand and said, "FYI, this is illegal". I'm sure they say it all the time about other HR issues where companies try to eliminate expenses and maximize profit. - what's the story on how Steve came to know about the solicitation? Did the Apple employee raise the flag to their boss (who should have also known that this was illegal) or where their emails being read? smells like fish. - what's the word on the wrongful termination lawsuits that must be in the works?

EGreg 13y ago

I understand that this particular case happens to be considered illegal. However, I am not convinced that a law banning this practice will not make things worse for most people. A cartel involves an arrangement where members REFUSE TO OFFER a better deal than the others - a pricefixing arrangement. On the other hand, this is very clearly about not going blatantly on each other's turf to solicit / poach. Consider this ... how did Apple find out about this? Was the employee called during work hours? How come recruiters - internal HR or external agencies - can be instructed to not advertise job openings in venues like porn sites, but - it seems from all this outrage - cannot be instructed to not advertise on their competitors' websites? Why can't companies decide that the cost of reprisals for poaching key members is too high, independently and internally, before agreeing not to do it? To sum up - I do not see this as a cartel AS LONG AS neither company turns away candidates who applied on their own, based on a mutual agreement. To be fair, Google did have such a policy and to the extent that this policy existed, that WAS a cartel. But NOT if the agreement is limited to not advertising offers to each other's key employees. Those employees can easily find out job openings and average salaries just like everyone else can. If you are going to make the argument that recruiters calling certain key employees of the other company to lure them away will give the majority of employees a better sense of how much they are worth and everyone's salary if going to go up, you'll have to work pretty hard to show the connection. Poaching key members of a team (e.g. to sabotage a competitor's project) seems to mostly benefit those key members. It increases the cost for everyone else including the companies involved. And that cost is very likely to be passed on to the other employees. You would also have to show that the companies will always choose not to pass on the cost of poaching to their employees -- because otherwise, you will have to admit that LESS poaching might actually lead to LARGER salaries. And in fact, the data seems to show this. (Once again, by poaching I mean reaching out and specifically cold calling key people in rival companies to advertise positions that they could have found on their own.) UPDATE: In fact, in many states the poaching itself of key members can be illegal. Please consider this before you participate in the overblown outrage: http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2009/Oct/64552.html http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2009/Oct/64552.html Here is a court case of the exact opposite of what you are outraged about: http://blogs.findlaw.com/tarnished_twenty/2010/07/tennessee-titans-sue-uscs-lane-kiffin-for-malicious-interference.html http://blogs.findlaw.com/tarnished_twenty/2010/07/tennessee-... Here is another example of tortious interference http://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/interference-with-contractual-or-business-relations-the-business.html http://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/interference-wi...

neves 13y ago

We are in a new society where the Information Technology brings enormous increases of productivity. The gains go to a small group of people. The capitalistic way to share this new wealth is to increase the workers wages. The middle class societies of Europe and North America were created this way. Google and Apple are extremely lucrative companies, seeing them conspiring to decrease salaries is really sad. A sure path to a worse world. On the other side, to see the American judiciary system attacking this evil behavior shows us why the United became the greatest nation in the world.

yonran 13y ago

In the counterfactual world in which Eric Schmidt were aware that the no-poach agreements might be violating antitrust laws, I doubt that the outcome between Apple and Google would have been any different. Google and Apple had a friendly business relationship at the time. Apple was using Google search as the default on Safari. They were collaborating to make Maps and YouTube apps on the iPhone. When a recruiter tried to poach the Safari team while the companies were collaborating, I think it was right for Jobs to be angry and tell Schmidt that it jeopardized the collaboration between them, and it was right for Schmidt to stop being rude to a partner.

coloncapitald 13y ago

There has been a recurring argument about whether Steve Jobs became successful because of his behavior or despite his behavior. Few days back, I came across a compilation of facts on imgur images[1] which will immediately make you hate Steve Jobs. I also read the tumblr post 'What I Learned Negotiating With Steve Jobs'[2] which is also on the same lines. And then I read NY Times article that Jobs family has been secretly donating money to charity for past 20 years anonymously[3]. One thing is clear. The world is fascinated by Steve Jobs. [1] http://imgur.com/gallery/neGNG http://imgur.com/gallery/neGNG (couldn't verify accuracy of facts) [2] http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/80368150370/what-i-learned-negotiating-with-steve-jobs http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/80368150370/what-i-learne... [3] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-jobs-and-anonymous-giving-in-silicon-valley/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-jobs...

outside1234 13y ago

Steve Jobs was a sociopath. there is nothing surprising about this at all.

BrandonMarc 13y ago

What hit me the most is how Google and Apple had this illegal, secret agreement in place (for some reason I've never heard of it 'til now; it ought to be publicized more, for all the good PR these companies enjoy it'd be nice for more people to see the full story) ... and how Jobs (Apple, a.k.a. "cool" incarnate) and especially Brin (Google, known for "don't be evil") are so arrogant about it.

blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago

WOOO HOOOO GO GOOGLE YOU SHOW THOSE FUCKING PEOONS YOU NOT SO EVIL AT ALL SAVIOR OF ALL THINGS TECH.

outside1234 13y ago

I think Google should make a public example of Sharon by making her do the perp walk between the building and the cop car.

a3n 13y ago
Actually that's probably similar to what they'll eventually do, and the big three will fly off into the sunset.

BrandonMarc 13y ago

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." - Eric Schmidt, 2009 as CEO of Google, on concerns about privacy and Google's insatiable appetite for info https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... Yes, people bring up this quote all the time so it seems cliche to do so ... but I don't care. I say choke him on his own words for being so casual about it in the first place -- when it affected others, that is; he had a very public hissy-fit when someone publicized details about him, even blocked Cnet.com from Google for a time if I recall right.

gcb0 13y ago

How that lawyer can suck that much? He let someone who wrote an email get away in questioning by saying he was CCed and don't recall it. He wrote emails on the thread dammit.

mavdi 13y ago

SJ was such a lowlife. Seriously...

programminggeek 13y ago

What is most remarkable is a lot of software developers love Google because they are so open and against patents and all of that, yet Google, Apple, and others are all working together to screw software developers out of getting paid more. For as much flack as Microsoft took over the years for being evil, I can't say that Google or Apple have done much better, even for their own people.

pessimizer 13y ago

As with the Snowden leaks, I have to wonder if the number of fully aware collaborators in this crime would be more easily counted in tens, hundreds, or thousands. I previously thought in this specific case that it would be tens, but if entire departments were being lectured about the penalties for deviation - were hundreds of people aware?

codeonfire 13y ago

We can determine from this story that Apple's corporate email system in 2007 was wholly insecure. If one user can view and forward another users email, the system is broken.

ElComradio 13y ago

Can we ask Elon Musk to get rid of Arnnon for being involved in this? Or is Tesla too holy and doing too much good, so they get a pass?

chris_mahan 13y ago

So, now you know why I like neither Google not Apple. If these were foreign countries, we'd have invaded them and set up puppet democracies. Morons. Like they couldn't figure out the public would find out eventually...

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

Hmm... the cold and ruthless way Google deals with its own employees is more shocking than Jobs's "brutal" response to it. "make a public example of this termination" And they're calling Jobs's smiley brutal?

malandrew 13y ago

Do all the HR people in this email thread still have jobs? The only people who should still be employed is the original recruiter from google. Everyone else is complicit in these illegal actions.

general_failure 13y ago

I get all the hate. But seriously big companies are run by ruthless people. Benovalent dictators are very rare..