Apple, Google and Intel to face angry ex-IT workers in court A US judge has ruled that Apple, Google, Intel and other firms have to face their former employees in court in an antitrust lawsuit that alleges the firms conspired to keep wages down by stifling competition. The three companies – along with Adobe, Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm – are accused in the class action suit of working …
Typically equals corporate monoliths paying a settlement while admitting no wrongdoing which means nothing will change for current or future employees. I expect corporate monoliths will do a better job of hiding this collusion as a result of this class action. Naturally plaintiffs' will lawyers get majority of settlement while plaintiffs themselves get tiny fraction. And as AC 10:39 GMT pointed out suing your ex-company is always good to have on your CV.
Incidentally some of my past gigs required me to sign a non-compete agreement valid for 6 months after my last day.
I had one ex-employer ask for a non-complete that went something like "not work for our competitors, suppliers or customers". I pointed out that would mean I couldn't work at any company I had ever worked for, including the one I was leaving to join them from.
They took it out. If they didn't, they'd have been told in uncertain terms what I think. Come to think of it they had a bit in there about getting fired if I got arrested, regardless of guilt etc. They took that out too. I guess they had a new HR person...
As far as I can see from the article, it's not suggested that these employers ever agreed *not to hire* an employee from one of the others, only that they would not go cold-calling for them.
In other words, if the employees were in demand and could be bothered to go look for another job, they could find one. So they'd have to be sufficiently career-motivated to get off their butts and go look for a better job instead of just being offered one on a plate.
This is a problem how exactly?
Well, it is different to the normal practice of calling up suitable candidates thus influencing the market. The firm could not approach the candidate who might be the best/preferred/know luminary becuase of the existence ofd said agreement.
Perhaps rather than getting accused of 'poaching' the HR people rejected CVs of people from competitors (who they have signed the agreements with) - just to be seen to be toeing the line. Perhaps these CVs came from some headhunter, friend of friend who knows? but the existence of an agreement changes everything.
Consider if you sell widgets and you agree with your competitors that you won't approach each others customers unless the potential customer comes to you. That would be big anti-trust clink time... that is totally anti competitive.
Competitors (in this case the IT firms) should never be agreeing anything about anything that they are in competition for - whether its customers, staff, or suppliers. That is just a big no-no.
Having a no poaching agreement is not the same as not hiring employees from those companies. All it means is that your otherwise happy employees do not have 15 agents ringing up every week trying to entice them away to other jobs. If an employee is unhappy in their work and wants to look elsewhere then there is nothing stopping them.
What annoys me as a manager is that when one person in the company leaves they give the entire phone book to an agency or the company who they are going to, and then the rest of the team have weeks of phone calls from agencies trying to tempt them away too.
If people want to look around for other jobs and leave, then I have no problem with that, I'll want to do that one day too, but I do have a problem with the continual cold calling from agents.
You're missing the psychology of the thing. There's a world of difference between looking for a job and being offered (unsolicited) a job. IT is an incestuous industry and it's difficult to avoid having your current employer find out that you've been 'making inquiries'. In practice that means there's a fairly significant hurdle to seeking alternatives .. you have to pretty unhappy. Being called and offered a job is different. You might take it not because you're unhappy at the moment but because the new offer will make you much happier.
There are other ways of avoiding poaching. A pvt company I worked for in California reduced IT staff turnover ensuring that the non-IT staff were almost exclusively attractive girls. ... and yes, all the IT staff were geeky guys. Cliche, but it worked.
Paris, for the obvious reason.
Years ago I had a number of technical recruiters call me up about a job with a semiconductor OEM. They started out very exited about my resume and references and then quickly switched to a "don't call us we will call you" mode. I found out later what happened.
It turns out the non-poaching agreement didn't extend just to the customer, but the OEM suppliers too. This easily cost me $100k.
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