I have personally witnessed the frustrating side of this "no poaching" pact. A close friend was tired of the "Manager Arrogance" at one of these colluding companies. He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly. Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S. The wag…
The CIPD and other HR regulating bodies need to permanently disbar any member found guilty of this. and for HR directors the the Judge should name them as "not fit and proper persons to be a director" and probably the CEO on Chairman for good measure.
Of course if the Hr director turned states evidence they might be let off with a slap on the wrist.
I have personally witnessed the frustrating side of this "no poaching" pact. A close friend was tired of the "Manager Arrogance" at one of these colluding companies. He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly. Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S. The wag…
Why not name the company? These companies deserve to be called out.
You mean everyone quit together? That's called a strike.
A strike involves work stoppage, it's a very different tactic than mass resignation. In 1999, Major League Umpires Association (MLUA) were not able to legally go strike so they opted to use mass resignation as their negotiation strategy. It backfired, cost 22 umpires their careers and led to decertification of the union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Major_League_Umpires_Assoc...
Better is suddenly all get sick on the same day - sorry boss must have been that dodgy curry i had last night ;-)
There's no disputing that. I'm just voicing the sentiment of main street hoping that we techies take it to heart.
Yeah definitely its a 1st-world problem. But in context, there's more money and value being squandered in Silicon Valley due to this crime, than if it occurred in many other areas.
Collusion amongst employers against employees happens in the third world often with far worse consequences look at south america
Can Software Engineers in California that weren't working at one of these companies get in on this class action? I mean even if you weren't at one of those companies its easy to see how suppressing wages at the largest companies would suppress wages for the entire industry.
Doubtful. Out of curiosity, why do you want to?
for the $$$$
Though this action by major company's would depress wages across the board so its not a totally worthless suit.
A strike involves work stoppage, it's a very different tactic than mass resignation. In 1999, Major League Umpires Association (MLUA) were not able to legally go strike so they opted to use mass resignation as their negotiation strategy. It backfired, cost 22 umpires their careers and led to decertification of the union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Major_League_Umpires_Assoc...
Better is suddenly all get sick on the same day - sorry boss must have been that dodgy curry i had last night ;-) BA Cabin staff I believe did this in the UK
Sickouts are commonly illegal. Though it is usually impossible to punish the individuals for calling in sick, an organization that promotes it - such as union - may suffer consequences, and organizing such thing may be a firing offense.
I'm really glad to see that this issue is getting more coverage in the mainstream press. There was an article/editorial a while back (discussed on HN) from the guardian, but unfortunately, the writer used the incident (the collusion) to go on a rant about how valley leaders are hypocritical libertarians. That (reasonably enough) lead to a long debate about whether the leaders are libertarians even if they are mainly…
Is there indeed a shortage of app developers because of the low wages? I was always thinking of software as a segment where entry barriers are relatively low - compared to, say, medicine - and pay is exceptionally good. Of course, everybody wants to be paid better, but it doesn't look like software engineers are suffering especially badly from low pay.
I have personally witnessed the frustrating side of this "no poaching" pact. A close friend was tired of the "Manager Arrogance" at one of these colluding companies. He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly. Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S. The wag…
The CIPD and other HR regulating bodies need to permanently disbar any member found guilty of this. and for HR directors the the Judge should name them as "not fit and proper persons to be a director" and probably the CEO on Chairman for good measure. Of course if the Hr director turned states evidence they might be let off with a slap on the wrist.
Wait, HR has the bar that you can be disbarred from? Thanks for expanding my horizons, I had no idea.
This case is a beautiful demonstration of the dynamics of both "free market" and regulation. Free market dynamics demand (in this case as in all cases) that large players must never compete on prices or wages (as your competitors have the resources to fight back, so competition on price just makes everyone worse off). On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market (antitrust), as we…
If large players routinely pay top specialists low wages, they will cease to be large pretty soon, since their talent will be leaving for players paying better money and making those players large instead. Some people, of course, are impatient and want their enormous wage to be even more enormous - and now! And they want it while carrying no risk at all. That's where politicians come in - delivering other people's money while moving risk to somebody else is their specialty. Of course, their primary clientele is the same large players, but minor politicians are not above serving smaller audiences and endorsing extensive and complex regulations that would cost large players a tiny bit of their profits while making compliance so hard that smaller players would find it very expensive to compete. Which is all for good, so politicians can proceed with their good work. At the end, everybody wins - impatient people get a tiny bit of cash from large players, lawyers get a huge pile of cash from large players for managing the lawsuits, large players get higher barriers to entry, politicians get votes for restoring the order and everything is great because nobody ever asks where the money comes from.