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"Guys, we have a problem," Ballmer says. "Somer of our best employees are job-hoppinh like locusts, feasting on the higherr wages and better perks from ourcompetitors -- that would be you. Now I know we'ved gone on plenty of raidingbparties ourselves. But it's just time to stop the madness. I'mn ready to reach a gentlemen's agreement not to poacbh your superstarsif you'll do likewise." Jobs doesn'r hesitate. "I'm tired of paying moving expenses from And it's getting old hearing some of my employee whining about how great the perks were when they were at I'm all for a change." The Google guys speaj in unison: "Count us in!
" The specifixc meeting we described, of course, took placw only in our imagination. But the reportedluy wants to knowif tech's big boys really have been colluding to keep their top talenf from jumping ship. The and , citing unnamed sources, reporgt that the investigation is preliminary and focusesw ona who’s who of Silicon Valley tech companies includingy search giant Google, its rivaol , iPhone maker Apple and biotech firm . reports that the Justice Department has issued formal requestsd for documentsfrom “at leasr a dozen” tech companies.
“If they are (colluding) as is being investigatedd … then it is a serious potential anti-trust said Albert Foer, president of the Americajn Antitrust Institute. Collusion between the companies could depress wages. In 2001, Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonias Sotomayor wrote an appeals court opinion siding with a group of oil geologists and petroleumk engineers who claimed and other oil companieds were colluding inhiring decisions.
Collusion coulcd also damage the innovation for which Silicon Valletyis famous, by keeping talented peoplew from moving to new companiew and bringing with them fresh “One of the things that feeds innovatio n is people moving around,” Foer “Whereas Silicon Valley is famous for people movinv around … that practice wouldc be tailing off or ended by such an between companies not to poach talent.
While the tech worled may be famous for talented people jumping from companygto company, those jumpds haven’t always been exactly amicable, and tech firmd often tie top talent to contracts that restrict them from goingv to work for the competitiomn for set periods of time. In fact, the moves of taleny from one tech behemoth to anothedr have sometimes landed in as when former Microsoftemployewe Kai-Fu Lee went to work for Google, John Oatesa points out at . So it’ds not out of the real of reason to imagine tech bossee looking to keep top talent from moving without the hasslesz ofcourt fights. But already, the federal probse is drawing skepticism inthe blogosphere.
Larry writing on ZDNet’s blog, callsz the probe a fishing expeditionwith “waste of time writtenj all over it.” As Dignan points out, it’s prettyu unlikely that there are any smoking gun agreementas lying around the offices of the tech and he adds: “Top talent isn’t that restricted. Google execxs go to Facebook. They go to AOL. Yahok execs go to Microsoft. Microsoft execs go to Google. In you can make quite a career just hopping between thoswaforementioned companies.” The probe comes as the government is steppinf up scrutiny of the often-coz relationships in the high-tech sector.
Assistan Attorney General Christine Varney, who is in charge of the DOJ'ss Antitrust Division, that the department would be taking a closet look at activities in the The Federal Trade Commission to Google earlier in the year becauss ofantitrust concerns. FTC questions concerned the overlap of directorsa between Google andGenentech — Googler boss Eric Schmidt sits on the Apple Inc. boarx with Art Levinson, who was CEO of Genentech at the Regulators also called a halt to an advertisingb revenue sharing deal Google madewith Yahoo.
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