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A court filing has just been made public which sheds light on the “no-hire” gentleman’s agreements that have pervaded the tech industry — and reveals how Steve Jobs threatened litigation to prevent companies from stealing his staff.
Notably, former Palm CEO Edward Colligan has made a statement which points out that the company was threatened with patent litigation if it didn’t stop poaching staff from Apple. In the legal filing, Colligan explains how Jobs suggested that “if Palm did not agree to such an agreement, Palm could face lawsuits alleging infringement of Apple’s many patents.” An email, which made up part of the discussions is pictured below, in which Jobs points out the asymmetry of the situation, writing: “I’m sure you realise the asymmetry in the financial resources of our respective companies when you say: ‘We will both just end up paying a lot of lawyers a lot of money.’” Nice.
Of course, it’s not just Apple and Palm that are being investigated: this publicly available court filing is in fact part of civil lawsuit investigating “gentleman’s agreements” between the likes of Apple, Google, Intel and plenty more. Indeed, part of the filing brings to light documents showing do-not-hire lists from the likes of Apple, Adobe, and others. Who knows what other juicy morsels are yet to be made public. [Reuters via Verge]
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Nothing new here, we all know Jobs was a paranoid scumbag control freak.
I was wondering about this. If you have a lot of money you get called “Eccentric” rather than “Mad”. In the same vein is a “paranoid scumbag control freak” who does well just called “a successful businessman”.
Yeah, the terms are interchangeable depending on how highly you regard the guy
I think everyone here knows how highly I regard the late Mr Jobs.
I’m in the same camp as someone else, mainly because when ever I read or hear the words of Steve, I can’t help but find him inspiring which I understand happened to lots of others caught in his Reality distortion field.
Swish new Avatar
Thanks, I finally had to admit Christmas was over.
Yes, I am of the opinion that most people who are driven to great success are broken individuals, especially in a business sense. Primarily because that amount of drive usually requires some kind of ridiculously high expectations of self that an ordinary person doesn’t have.
“Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those that prosper truly judge what’s sane.”
T-Shirt I had in my Teens.
Wise words indeed. I like the picture too. I wonder, do you collect good quotations as a job?
no, but I now wish I did. Is there a position somewhere for a professional quote curator, other than in the dole queue.
By the sounds of it, it wasn’t really ‘no hire’. It was more don’t cold call people from these companies, but if they contact you they can be hired?
Yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad to me. I mean, it’s pretty dickish if you leave a company then help your new company constantly try and recruit from the old one.
However the ‘do not hire from this company’ one next to Bell Canada – ain’t nobody got time for that.
And now that YouTube clip is stuck in my head..
I’m clearly in a pedantic mood. The lack of apostrophe in the first screenshot (as in “Google’s new cell phone…”) is really bothering me.
This isn’t quite the same as a No-Hire agreement though is it. I understood that to be when a group of companies combined to freeze workers out of the jobs market altogether (like the talk of the governments actions with regards to certain trade unionists in building the olympics).
Isn’t the Bell Canada agreement a no hire policy?
I suppose that one is from one company but out of context it’s difficult to know if it’s simply because they think the staff are rubbish or not. I was referring to what I would consider a misleading headline. No headhunting isn’t the same as no hire.
Have you read the Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs biography? In that, it’s admitted that there were no hire agreements, and there have been agreements come out in the press a couple of years ago.
Incidentally, I think it’s one of those secrets that isn’t a secret – Google, Facebook, Apple aren’t meant to hire from each other, but recently that’s changed.
I would have liked some more context too, none of the above can be ascertained from the screenshots, really. Agreed
(Sorry GizUK) I recommend the Verge’s article on this, if you’re curious.