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Erick scmidth agreed not to poach employees.
Then he went ahead and poached apples intellectual properties.
 
I assume they will just switch and start forcing employees to sign non-compete type agreements where the employee, by accepting the job, agrees not to accept a job for some specified number of years with any of those partner companies. Are non-complete clauses still considered valid?

Not valid unless the company plans to pay you to stay off the market.
It is seen as overly restrictive and hampers an individuals ability to earn a living.

You can use them for toilet paper.
 
One of the few clean people in this whole mess was the then CEO of Palm, who emailed back to Jobs and refused to take part in it:

“Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal.

The wording is interesting, since it appears that the agreement included not hiring even if the employee initiated it.
 
Am I the only one who feels like this is a good thing? Because it seems like it is.
If we have these companies snatching away these valuable assets, progress could be severely hindered. Just look at what impact Jony I've had on the look of iOS alone. Now forstal wasn't hired by another company, but imagine of now Ive got picked up by google somehow. Things would go bad really fast.
It has it's disadvantages of course, but I see things getting way worse it they didn't do this.

Clearly you don't work in the tech sector.
It's no good. It's an evil practice where execs make a fortune and stifle the wages of hardware engineers, software engineers and IT staff.

If you want to retain employees, treat them well and pay a competitive wage so that competitors can't poach.

They use surveys to make sure the wages are "in line" but the wages never rise because there is no competition.

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I think this is being painted in the wrong light. As a business owner, if secrecy in product development drives my success, I would greatly limit the level of collaboration between strategic partners like Apple has begun to do since this lawsuit. Giving a competitor who is also a partner access to someone who knows the ends and outs of the products you are working on with out some assurance the partner isn't going to gain full access and an unfair advantage by knowing what you are doing, or handicapping you by stealing the talent working on the product that you introduced them too.

Free market.
 
Emblematic of the corporate age we're living in. At the same time that people who have a hard time finding jobs are being told to "go back to school and get a skill that's in demand", the people that have those "in demand" skills are having their wages systematically suppressed by some of the world's largest and most profitable companies.

While "systematically" works to an extent in your sentence, given the context, you mean "systemically".
 
Clearly you don't work in the tech sector.
It's no good. It's an evil practice where execs make a fortune and stifle the wages of hardware engineers, software engineers and IT staff.

If you want to retain employees, treat them well and pay a competitive wage so that competitors can't poach.

They use surveys to make sure the wages are "in line" but the wages never rise because there is no competition.

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Free market.

How is it a free market if you get to dictate what an employer and a voluntary employee are allowed to agree on?
 
If the deals are of a secret, wink wink nudge nudge nature, how can you really be sure they are dissolved?
 
No excuse

A cheeseburger could have seen this was problematic, if not outright illegal. At the very least someone in Apple Legal (or the legal dept of one of the other companies) should have thrown a flag and stopped it. There' no real excuse for it ever having been implemented.

This is, IMO far far more serious than the iBookstore matter. It just should not have been allowed to go forward.
 
Suit was filed in 2011. 3 years. The U.S. Federal court system is VERY backed up, and cases like this also have a ton of discovery.

Right, but discovery was made in 2009.

What's the barrier to increasing the capacity of the court system?

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You can bet that the eventual increase in wages will be reflected in pricing, and not in lower margins...

Doubtful. Pricing is dictated primarily by what the market will bear.
 
Pay them competitively to start with.

So you say paying a SVP of Manufacturing $2M a month in compensation is a competitive salary or a Football Quaterback (Drew Brees) $40M per year. It all has to do with return on investment, does your employee or piece of equipment bring enough value to your company that a reasonable profit can be made in the final product. That's why sports has put caps on salaries so a well healed franchise cannot outbid any of their lesser endowed competitors.
 
You can bet that the eventual increase in wages will be reflected in pricing, and not in lower margins...

Or perhaps local wages WON'T be effected as long as we innovate here in the USA but manufacture those products in countries where the hourly wages of manufacturing workers and local management are pennies on the dollar compared to their USA counterparts.
 
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I guess now we know why Apple is hoarding billions. Well, at least the US economy will be stimulated when this is settled. The legal class-action suit fees alone will be astronomical.
 
Oh that will work!!

Time to Unionize IT workers?

Yeh that's right, raise the rates of incompetent minions and relegate the really innovative and creative to a salary cap. This sounds like a page out of the current administrations play book make everyone equal, bring the top down and the bottom up. So much for the free market and capitalism.
 
wonder how some will try to spin this. perhaps it worked out best for us consumers as prices were kept lower.

There, you just tried, and succeeded….

But seriously, not that this will make much difference in the upcoming class-action civil suit, but I don't believe wage fixing and lower payroll costs for these companies, was the prime objective of those agreements, but rather an unintended side effect.

One of the worst fears of high-tech companies is not only losing their top talent, but additionally, competitors acquiring their most talented workers who, despite NDAs, take with them an intimate knowledge of the workings, product development, and intended roadmap of their --by now previous --employer, and who by extension, could be giving these new employers a serious advantage.
 
I was telling a previous poster that market should be free and not constrained by artificial agreements to keep wages down.

I mostly agree with you, but if the company makes such an agreement, and the wages are lowered, no one is forcing an employee to work at that job at that rate. Employment is voluntary. The only "artificial" agreements involved are those imposed by force from the government which really aren't much of an agreement at all.
 
There, you just tried, and succeeded….

But seriously, not that this will make much difference in the upcoming class-action civil suit, but I don't believe wage fixing and lower payroll costs for these companies, was the prime objective of those agreements, but rather an unintended side effect.

One of the worst fears of high-tech companies is not only losing their top talent, but additionally, competitors acquiring their most talented workers who, despite NDAs, take with them an intimate knowledge of the workings, product development, and intended roadmap of their --by now previous --employer, and who by extension, could be giving these new employers a serious advantage.

actually im quite happy that not that many used that tried and trusted mantra.

Yeh that's right, raise the rates of incompetent minions and relegate the really innovative and creative to a salary cap. This sounds like a page out of the current administrations play book make everyone equal, bring the top down and the bottom up. So much for the free market and capitalism.

isnt this a bit ironic considering the topic at hand and that these companies operate in a very much free market capitalist way?
 
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Mischaracterization

Yeh that's right, raise the rates of incompetent minions and relegate the really innovative and creative to a salary cap. This sounds like a page out of the current administrations play book make everyone equal, bring the top down and the bottom up. So much for the free market and capitalism.

No. Salary caps also include stock equity and generous benefits.
Unions may protect incompetent minions but any better alternatives?
 
I mostly agree with you, but if the company makes such an agreement, and the wages are lowered, no one is forcing an employee to work at that job at that rate. Employment is voluntary. The only "artificial" agreements involved are those imposed by force from the government which really aren't much of an agreement at all.

Except that by having all the top high tech companies collude there's nowhere else for high skilled highly trained IT people to go. It becomes a choice between Apple et.al. At an artificially low wage or Geek Squad etc. where you are not using your skills and compete with high school grads with an A+ cert and no experience.

I've been there. That's why I left IT. I can get paid the same with less stress, no midnight calls, no 24 hour shifts, no emergency calls while I'm on vacation. Top end IT people, both support, and design and engineering are worth a high salary. Unfortunately far too many companies see Techs as a cost to be cut. The effect can be seen in bad web sites, poor business processes, help desk staff from who knows where that don't speak your language, and stupid security lapses.
 
Clearly you don't work in the tech sector.
It's no good. It's an evil practice where execs make a fortune and stifle the wages of hardware engineers, software engineers and IT staff.

If you want to retain employees, treat them well and pay a competitive wage so that competitors can't poach.

They use surveys to make sure the wages are "in line" but the wages never rise because there is no competition.

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Free market.

This is such a naive way of thinking, it's like me telling you that you started a business with someone, that person goes off to another company and completely rips off your idea. "Free market"

This is a fair concern to have imo, and has nothing to with with execs making a fortune and stifle wages. There's not enough talent hire, so these companies are forced to be as generous and loving with their talent as possible. These agreements seem to prevent other companies from hiring each others employees away rather than someone actually just quitting their job, and and applying somewhere else.
 
I assume they will just switch and start forcing employees to sign non-compete type agreements where the employee, by accepting the job, agrees not to accept a job for some specified number of years with any of those partner companies. Are non-complete clauses still considered valid?

Such agreements are illegal for line employees. You can't force someone to sign an agreement that would prevent them from making a living. Non-competes can be valid at executive levels because at such levels the agreements include giant stock bonuses, etc. No such offers are being made to low level employees or midlevel engineers.

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So much for the free market...

That's not the free market. That's crony capitalism which results in an uneven playing field for everyone except the richest. Now, what would be the free market is if companies HAD TO COMPETE for good employees by offering better pay, rather than colluding to suppress wages through anti-poaching tactics.
 
Such agreements are illegal for line employees. You can't force someone to sign an agreement that would prevent them from making a living. Non-competes can be valid at executive levels because at such levels the agreements include giant stock bonuses, etc. No such offers are being made to low level employees or midlevel engineers.

It depends on the State. For example, non-competes are 100% illegal in the state of CA but in IN they are legal but they have to be 'reasonable' in scope.

That's not the free market. That's crony capitalism which results in an uneven playing field for everyone except the richest. Now, what would be the free market is if companies HAD TO COMPETE for good employees by offering better pay, rather than colluding to suppress wages through anti-poaching tactics.
The problem is you can't force companies to compete against each other for customers nor for employees. Hence we have things like minimum wage laws, OSHA and the Sherman Anti-trust Act. If more power and profit can be created via collusion than competition then that's what will happen in a true free market system.
 
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