Newly unsealed documents show Steve Jobs’ brutal response after getting a Google employee fired

[Newsjock]

Source: PandoDaily

In early March, 2007, as Google was expanding fast and furiously, one of its recruiters from the “Google.com Engineering” group made a career-ending mistake: She cold-contacted an Apple engineer by email, violating the secret and illegal non-solicitation compact that her boss, Eric Schmidt, had agreed with Apple’s Steve Jobs.

What happened next is just one of many specific examples of how people’s lives were impacted by the Techtopus wage-theft cartel that was taken down by the Department of Justice antitrust division, and is currently being litigated in a landmark class action lawsuit.

... Google’s Senior Staffing Strategist Arnnon Geshuri (now at Tesla) replied almost immediately, assuring Schmidt that the recruiter would be fired, and that Google HR did all it could to make sure that its recruiters were aware of the illegal non-solicitation agreements. The language is brutal, and as you’ll see, there’s an almost sadistic, military glee on all sides with the way in which the Google recruiter is “terminated.”

... An hour later, Jobs forwarded Eric Schmidt’s email to Apple’s head of HR, Danielle Lambert, with a simple, but brutal, two character response to news that a Google employee had been summarily fired. A smiley face.

Read more: http://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-steve-jobs-brutally-callous-response-after-getting-a-google-employee-fired/

[yeoman6987]

1. As a competitor

I don't think I would want to have my employees contacting another company. I don't think anyone would on this site either. Ok let's say you work at Meryl Lynch…..do you think they would be happy if you did you taxes at another company. I guarantee that would get anybody fired. A professor from Harvard comes in with a sweatshirt from Brown or Yale….might not turn out well.

[Ikonoklast]

3. You completely miss the point. This is about collusion to keep wages low.

They had a secret anti-employee poaching agreement which allowed them to keep their employees working at lower wages.

[cui bono]

9. The OP certainly doesn't make that the point. I didn't get that out of it at all

but then I didn't follow the link.

The OP gives the impression that it was about Jobs being happy someone got fired for attempting to poach. I think the collusion to keep wages low is far more important and interesting. Perhaps an OP should be made that states that part of this.

[JanMichael]

16. The OP is an article

if you are going to comment on it, you should read it first. The person who posted it made no personal comment.

[bobduca]

4. call up your competitors and make a deal like google and apple did!

seems legit!

[bluestate10]

6. You're not close.

The recruiter called an Apple engineer about possibly switching jobs. That action happens in many industries. The call could have been done another way, like using a recruiter to do the call.

What Apple and Google did was collusion to suppress wages for some classes of employees, namely skilled engineers. By design, all employees are free agents, that don't sign contracts that offer certain future earnings beyond their status of employees at will.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. Interesting article! Thanks! Here's another interesting one...

Yet for all his casual cruelty Chrisann tried, and tries to this day, to understand the man. She depicts a deeply damaged man given to 'Tourettes-like outbursts of anger.' She describes him as ‘a dark vortex,’ desperately seeking stability and fulfillment through a variety of crackpot therapies and belief systems and riven with insecurities borne of the fact he was adopted as a baby.

Casual cruelty: Jobs told Brennan that he would never help her and did everything in his power to suggest that her daughter was not his. She struggled on welfare while his wealth grew

Even then he publicly denigrated the mother of his child, telling an interviewer for Time magazine in 1983 that, ’28 per cent of the male population in America could be the father.’ At the time he was paying a paltry $500 a month in child support, while Chrisann struggled to raise Lisa on welfare.

Years later she bumped into a former Apple employee who told her that, when Jobs had finally been compelled to pay some sort of maintenance to his child, he and his attorneys, ‘all celebrated because he’d gotten off by paying…so little.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478339/Steve-Jobs-ex-lovers-book-reveals-Apple-founder.html

[Brigid]

5. Some people . . .

Are simply incapable of even the simplest acts of human decency -- like taking care of their kids. Apparently Jobs was one of them.

[whathehell]

31. Yes, I know some here wax lyrical about his "genius", but, from all accounts, he was

a complete zero as a human being.

[Jake Stern]

7. Steve Jobs' admirers tried to portray him as some prophet like visionary

who was on an epic quest to make life better for everyone.

Turns out he was just another rich corporate dick.

[wickerwoman]

10. And he's dead now

so honestly, who gives a crap?

He's been dead for three years. Can we turn the page?

Someone can be a visionary and an asshole. It's more common that not, I'd say.

Martin Luther King Jr cheated on his wife. Mother Theresa admired Papa Doc Duvalier. It doesn't mean they didn't do positive things as well.

[Sanity Claws]

11. but his actions are still having effect

People are discussing him personally because these are new revelations. We are still trying to figure out all the effects of this illegal collusion.

[Ikonoklast]

21. The bad things people do live on after they are gone.

Jobs was a miserable prick who delighted in treating those under him like chattel, and not any different from any Goldman Sachs sociopath.

[ZombieHorde]

28. He wasn't a visionary.

He took credit for other people's work and he exploited the poor.

[Javaman]

22. I like his computers, but anyone with a clue knew the guy was a colossal jerk (to be polite).

Now let's let this thread devolve into an apple vs pc war.

[MinneapolisMatt]

32. They always do!

[roguevalley]

8. he enjoyed slamming people. he was on an elevator with employees and talked to a woman

on the way down. at the bottom he told her she was fired because he wasn't impressed. Prick. he was a giant prick.

[whathehell]

27. I agree...He really was not a nice person.

"Gigantic prick" is probably apt.

[aikoaiko]

12. Worker broke rule and was fired. These things happen.

As a lay person I would thing no poaching agreements would be legal but I know these laws are complicated.

[mythology]

13. Given that the rule was illegal, and obviously so

Jobs' happiness at the result illustrates what an awful human being he was.

[aikoaiko]

18. I really don't understand how not recruiting from each other is a bad thing

But so be it.

[pnwest]

20. Because if there is someone else

willing to recruit and hire you, you can demand higher wages. The agreement is illegal because it artificially suppresses wages.

[aikoaiko]

23. its not clear to me that not recruiting is the same as not hiring

[hatrack]

14. An illegal rule, illegal collusion

Read the article, please.

[aikoaiko]

19. I did read the article.

And panda and the justice dept made the claim it was illegal and the companies settled so I would imagine there was liability, but I really don't understand how agreements to not recruit from each other, in and of itself, is a bad thing.

[Ikonoklast]

24. Think price-fixing among members of a cartel.

Now use the same concept against your employees.

You can artificially depress wages through suppression of competition by limiting their chances of being employed by any other cartel member.


Libertarians like Jobs are rampant in Silicon Valley, they hate competition and do anything they can to stifle it.

[aikoaiko]

29. Sure, but no one prevented someone from applying for a job, did they?

Not recruiting is not the same thing as not hiring in my mind.

[Ikonoklast]

33. They would not hire you even if you applied on your own, coming from another cartel member.

It wasn't just an agreement against recruiting.

If you were and Apple engineer applying to Google or eBay or Intuit or Dell, the illegal agreement turned you into a "Do Not Hire".


The agreements ended up covering more than a million employees employed by dozens of tech companies.

[Jesus Malverde]

15. The "free" market only applies to the 1%...nt

[dawg]

17. I think people tend to over-rate Steve Jobs.

He didn't invent or design those products on his own. He had a knack for picking good people, and he relentlessly demanded perfection from them. The iPhone was such a big hit, that it has transformed the company into something that has now grown too huge to be run the way Jobs was accustomed to running it. I think the company is better served today with a CEO like Tim Cook. It takes one set of skills to conquer the world, but it takes another skill set entirely to manage it once it has already been conquered.

[Atman]

25. I LIKE WINDOWS 8!

Not really...never used it. But these "I hate Apple" threads are tiresome. Yeah...I'll think I'll go out and by a Samsung phone now because something a dead guy years ago is relevant to my life.

[Blue_Tires]

26. I don't think this is any big shock

and there's probably much uglier stuff than that in Jobs' e-mail archive if someone wanted to look...

Even Jobs' most ardent admirers would readily admit that despite being a genius and visionary, he was also a world-class dick...

[dilby]

30. Having an agreement to not headhunt to keep wages low is wrong.

In the tech industry the line between competitor and customer is very blurry. I work in tech and my company competes against other tech companies that are also our customers so generally there is an agreement to not headhunt due to the nature of our vendor/customer relationship. If an employee from one of these companies applies with us usually we will check with the company if it would be ok. This is not to keep wages low but to keep intact our vendor/customer relationships.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

34. .