Credit: Mashable
Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe Systems conspired in the biggest hiring antitrust case the U.S. legal system has ever seen. Please tell me you’ve heard the news. I’m still reeling from the true ramifications of what it means for our allegedly anti-monopolistic economy.
It feels like political parties ran roughshod over the electorate, or the monarchies of Great Britain and the Saudi Arabia launched a war. Alas, it’s merely four giant Fortune 10 publicly traded U.S. corporations named Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems that conspired against their very own employees as if they were chattel.
The four leadership teams agreed behind closed doors the contents of which stayed hidden from 2005 to 2009 to a series of no-recruit agreements. Neither of them could recruit programmers from the other’s company. If they did, it was going to be war as stated by Steve Jobs to Sergey Brin, “If you hire a single one of these people, that means war,” extracted from Bloomberg Businessweek cover story May 5, 2014. [Read more…]
