Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#71

Post by eyelidlessness » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:07 AM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #65

pm90 wrote: post #57

I don’t understand Jobs’ logic here. Is he just a bully? If Google makes such a great offer that his employee will leave him, shouldn’t he try to make a better offer, or meet with the employee instead of calling Sergey? Say he did get the offer canceled. How would this employee feel about working for a CEO that does this?

> Is he just a bully? LMAO. Yes. And a bad person.

I think it’s simpler than that. He was an average person. Had a lot of business acumen, particularly well timed vision (after a bunch of poor timing), then he was a really successful guy who was just as flawed as the rest of us.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#72

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:08 AM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #63

JKCalhoun wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't make that bet. Jobs played favorites and I believe he was known to amply reward his favorites.

this email's aim is to suppress market wages. you're mythologizing and neglecting the market-wide knock-on effects of rampant illegal wage theft collusion like this.

It doesn't appear to be. The email's intention appears to be accusing Google of poaching browser developers to build a competing browser to Safari. It's less about price and more about Apple changing their strategy if they conclude that a company they think is a partner has designs on competing directly with one of their key application offerings.

Which, of course, they eventually did.

If anything, I take this email to be indicative of how companies can lose sight of the effect on their actual employees of market strategization. Jobs isn't worried about having to pay his team more here; he's worried that he's about to see the world's largest online advertiser launch a browser that could cut Apple's control of their users' online experience out from under them. If anything, I don't think they're really thinking about how much people need to get paid (which is, indeed, a problem).

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#73

Post by wahnfrieden » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:09 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #72

wahnfrieden wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this email's aim is to suppress market wages. you're mythologizing and neglecting the market-wide knock-on effects of rampant illegal wage theft collusion like this.

It doesn't appear to be. The email's intention appears to be accusing Google of poaching browser developers to build a competing browser to Safari. It's less about price and more about Apple changing their strategy if they conclude that a company they think is a partner has designs on competing directly with one of their key application offerings. Which, of course, they eventually did. If anything, I take this email…

they were convicted of illegal wage suppression as a result of this.

fighting poaching through collusion is functionally equivalent to wage suppression. you're mythologizing. these are billionaire businessmen, they fully grasp the intent and result of their actions. wage suppression is the whole game whether legal or illegally played. that's their profit.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#74

Post by paxys » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:12 AM UTC

I have links to this entire saga bookmarked and send them out whenever someone complains about software engineers being overpaid and entitled. At the end of the day they are still the labor class, and just like in any other industry it's the executives/investors/shareholders at these large companies who are enjoying most of the benefits of their work. Even after the poaching lawsuit and settlement practices like non-competes (without garden leave), non-solicitation clauses, salary exempt status, unpaid overtime and unlimited unpaid on-call are all still way too common in software.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#75

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:13 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #56

jjulius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it can be both cool that I'm talented enough to have those two people fight over me, and also suck that my wages might get impacted. Ain't nuance neat? :)

Here’s some nuance: anyone so talented they warrant legal action over a fight to employ them already knows they’re very talented. Being their stakes in a war over strategic business goals isn’t more affirming, it’s almost certainly less. It’s (almost invariably) not cool to be someone else’s meat. Even if you know you’re very highly valued meat, and even if they affirm that your value as meat is very high indeed.

I'm sure they can comfort themselves on the quarter to half a million annual they were being paid instead of the half a million to three quarters of a million a zero collusion market would have offered them. ;)

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#76

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:14 AM UTC

i2shar wrote: post #54

swyx wrote: post #25

> Basically, [Steve] said "if you hire a single one of these people that means war". what realistically could steve jobs have done here? its not like he had any legal power to prevent his guys going over, and if he wanted to poach from google just to spite google it’d just be a stupidly expensive affair

If you scroll down on the original post, there's another techemail from Palm CEO Ed Colligan to Steve Jobs [0] in which he says: "Threatening Palm with a patent lawsuit in response to a decision by one employee to leave Apple is just out of line." So, don't know what Jobs could have done with Google specifically, but safe to assume that it would be something else equally out of line. [0]: https://twitter.com/TechEmai…

At the time, Google was the default search engine in Safari, was it not?

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#77

Post by AlbertCory » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:16 AM UTC

"Carrie" - anyone know who that is?

There was a Carrie Grimes, but she was a statistician, not an executive.

This was February 2005, and Chrome wasn't released until 2008. The more you know.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#78

Post by gzer0 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:17 AM UTC

The tech giants ultimately reached a settlement in the amount of $400 million in a lawsuit involving allegations of these dishonest backdoor dealings.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33292364

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/24/306592297...

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#79

Post by milemi » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:17 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #72

wahnfrieden wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this email's aim is to suppress market wages. you're mythologizing and neglecting the market-wide knock-on effects of rampant illegal wage theft collusion like this.

It doesn't appear to be. The email's intention appears to be accusing Google of poaching browser developers to build a competing browser to Safari. It's less about price and more about Apple changing their strategy if they conclude that a company they think is a partner has designs on competing directly with one of their key application offerings. Which, of course, they eventually did. If anything, I take this email…

What war other than the bidding war for talent was Jobs threatening?

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#80

Post by no_wizard » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:17 AM UTC

tapeworm47 wrote: post #36

> Basically, he said "if you hire a single one of these people that means war" I feel all the Google bosses wanted was for Steve Jobs to stop yelling. What would Zuckerberg have done? What would Musk have done? Heck, what if Jobs was on the other side of the equation here?

I know Zuckerberg gets a lot of flak nowadays but under his watch Facebook never played the wage suppression game despite ample attempts by others to get him (and thereby FB) to do so.