They're not poaching each other's workers, so let's say that Tom works for Apple and makes $90,000 per year. Google could attempt to recruit Tom and offer him $

They're not poaching each other's workers, so let's say that Tom works for Apple and makes $90,000 per year. Google could attempt to recruit Tom and offer him $100,000 per year, but they don't. So Tom loses $10,000 per year. This is probably the worst-case scenario for an individual engineer. Of course, Tom is still earning a very nice salary over that time, and who knows, maybe he actually ends up making more, but let's envision a worst-case scenario in which an engineer loses $100 grand over ten years, because of this policy. In order for the dollar value to be similar to what Madoff stole from people, that scenario, or a higher wage loss, would have had to happen to five hundred thousand engineers. All working at a handful of companies. Does that still sound plausible to you?