[HN Gopher] Steve Jobs emails Eric Schmidt (2007)
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Steve Jobs emails Eric Schmidt (2007)
Author : ent101
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-09-29 21:00 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| edge17 wrote:
| I think there is a lot of context being left out here, and people
| who were not in the industry during this time period will wonder
| whether this is legal or whatever. The answer is, no it is not
| legal and there was a class action lawsuit.
|
| Also, to be clear, the lawsuit was not defending any company's
| right to hire from anyone they want. The class action lawsuit
| represented the _employees_ of the companies involved in the
| anti-competitive behavior.
| type_Ben_struct wrote:
| Seems like a gross overreaction to fire the recruiter in
| question.
| suyash wrote:
| No sympathy for recruiters, most of them are the worst of the
| worst in tech.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| There was a secret (illegal) anti-poaching deal. The firing was
| in line with that. If you didn't then there's no deal.
| type_Ben_struct wrote:
| Asking the recruiter not to do this again would be a more
| reasonable approach
| [deleted]
| corobo wrote:
| Reading the full email they were briefed before starting in
| fairness
|
| I still hate America's at-will thing, but they were told
| not to do this in advance
| igetspam wrote:
| Not having a coordinated effort to effectively avoid wage
| inflation due to competition would be a more reasonable
| approach too. Then again, the law says this wasn't a
| reasonable course.
| type_Ben_struct wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with you, but my point still stands.
| rusteh1 wrote:
| As a non-American I'm always surprised at how quickly people are
| fired there. I cannot imagine such a severe action been taking in
| any country I've worked in, thanks to robust workers rights.
| bagacrap wrote:
| if after ~2 years of failing to respond to performance
| improvement plans is "quickly" then I don't want to know what's
| slow.
| refurb wrote:
| Meh, I've worked in countries where it's hard to fire and that
| brings its own problems.
| fsckboy wrote:
| there might be a correlation to how quickly companies form,
| projects start, and innovation progresses in America
| (entrepreneurship) compared to Europe, and how the robust
| workers' rights might figure into making companies reluctant to
| hire a batch of workers that they can't easily terminate.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Any such correlation wouldn't be down to causation. I'd wager
| the American attitude of "Do first, ask forgiveness later" is
| more likely.
|
| It's also worth noting that there's plenty of innovation
| happening in Europe too.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| It's the at-will employment where employer or employee can
| cancel the relationship without cause. In ENG you have crazy
| lengths of time to give notice like 2-3 months. Not a very
| pleasant experience for the employee. You also see attempts by
| European employers to AVOID taking on permanent workers. E.g.
| in ENG it used to be 2 years of contracting required a FTE
| contract but they'd cancel the contract three months shy. You
| also have terrible zero hours contracts in ENG.
| philovivero wrote:
| Notice how the USA is the top country in the world for getting
| ahead. If you want to work hard and become rich, that's your
| spot. Places with "robust workers rights"? Not-so-much.
| hyakosm wrote:
| Sources?
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Switzerland and Luxembourg are way WAY richer per capita than
| the US, and have much robust employee rights.
| themdonuts wrote:
| Honestly I could see this happening in Europe, mainly when such
| high profiles are involved. Even with robust workers rights
| this still happens a lot. If the company wants you out they'll
| get their way. Employees can always dispute at the employment
| court, but it's overwhelming so few do so and companies
| leverage that.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I never understood it either. It's usually the wrong, honest,
| helpful employees that get fired first.
|
| I'm not a loyal employee. I do most jobs just good enough to
| get by, and alway looking for a angle to extract more money out
| of an organization. (It was easier before being surveiled with
| cams). I always like a few coworkers, and we become friends,
| but despised the corporation, and everyone in charge.
|
| But I'm never fired.
|
| I'm usually shocked over the person they fire.
| richev wrote:
| It's facilitated by "at will" employment contracts. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
| willhinsa wrote:
| ...and how _not_ quickly higher-ups are fired+ for malfeasance!
|
| + Or never fired, like Eric Schmidt!
| durnygbur wrote:
| You know what gives an enormous satisfaction? Responding to
| Glogle recruiters "I can afford false negatives in my current job
| search, thanks no thanks". Screw you all Glaplle, Schmarmazon and
| others... and you folks stop being so desperate.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| Wow this twitter account is amazing. I was unfamiliar with it.
| orf wrote:
| :)
| [deleted]
| nostromo wrote:
| Yet again Jobs comes off as a sociopath.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Below, there's an email from Sergey Brin to google's exec team
| about another call from Steve Jobs on the same kind of topic. But
| there's a kind of funny line at the end:
|
| > on another note, it seems silly to have both firefox and
| safari. perhaps there is some unification stretegy that we can
| get these two to pursue.
|
| Which of course brings to mind the ol' "Standards" xkcd:
|
| https://xkcd.com/927/
| judge2020 wrote:
| Standards are great until they get too complex, making the
| price for interoperability steep and forcing every
| implementation to pay for it (in actual money/time). There's a
| reason there are very few browsers.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I find the ":) Steve" just disgusting. Someone got terminated and
| everybody gets a pat on their back. Well done everybody.
| [deleted]
| walrus01 wrote:
| I'm immediately skeptical of anyone I meet in the tech industry
| who _doesn 't_ think Steve Jobs was an absolute raging asshole.
| Yes, he accomplished some interesting product shipments. But
| the number of direct first person anecdotes of him being a
| complete dick to people is too great to ignore.
|
| I'm writing this from a Macbook Air. One of the reasons why I
| use MacOS is because it's based on the NeXT heritage. There was
| some amazing stuff there. But Steve was just _not a nice
| person_.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Why are you disgusted?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I am disgusted because someone made an inconsequential
| mistake, got fired for it and a CEO is happy about it.
| chrononaut wrote:
| Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| MisterPea wrote:
| Wow, I was unaware of this and was really confused why the
| sourcer got fired.
|
| DOJ helped software engineer salaries tremendously
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Not in any way that shows up in the actual statistics.
| MisterPea wrote:
| Oh really? That's surprising as well, I would've expected
| top talent to be paid more by jumping around.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Can't really get raises by jumping around if all the best
| options collude to keep wages own
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > DOJ helped software engineer salaries tremendously
|
| No, Facebook did, by just refusing to take part in the
| cartel. You only need one company to start bidding up
| salaries for the category of employee they want to move the
| market if they have a big enough budget. The DOJ didn't even
| push for a reasonable fine, one measured in years of revenue,
| or reasonable punishment, like jailtime for executives and HR
| staff who were in on the conspiracy.
| lupire wrote:
| That only works if you get a job offer from FB though.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Source on Facebook refusing to participate? It's one of the
| few bits of info that makes me like Facebook as a company.
| lupire wrote:
| FB has always been good to employees. Much like Microsoft
| (comparatively).
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted? I didn't know it either, and
| it also improves my perception of FB as a company.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| It is well known and was in the same pile of court
| discovery leaks
| paxys wrote:
| I know that their was a (laughable) settlement for the employees
| whose wages were depressed because of this, but I wonder if the
| fired recruiters had a case as well.
| igetspam wrote:
| Yeah... It was rather unimpressive. I think it ended up being
| about a week or two of pay. So inconsequential that I don't
| recall.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Probably yes, given recruiters are supposed to recruit and need
| to actually find people lest they get a bad performance review.
| It might have been policy to not cold call/cold email people,
| but culture could have dictated otherwise to meet quotas.
|
| > their was a (laughable) settlement for the employees whose
| wages were depressed because of this
|
| There also used to be tens of millions in wages paid out to
| people employed by cigarette companies. The conduct of the
| industry, and the individual employees themselves, will
| generally impact how people see them and thus how employable
| they are over time.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Isn't this anticompetitive? Doesn't Google have the right to
| poach whomever they want?
| edge17 wrote:
| They do, but the lawsuit was brought by the class of affected
| employees, not by the companies. The companies were all in on
| the anti-competitive behaviors
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Yes, it was illegal. But the harm is to employees, not Google.
| Google was cooperating along with the others so that Apple
| would not make competing offers to their employees, either.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar
| were all conspiring to keep wages down. Big lawsuit. US$425
| million settlement. See link above.
| davidw wrote:
| It is anticompetitive. I have always liked this patio11 bit
| about "poaching":
| https://twitter.com/patio11/status/606711798352338944
| abraae wrote:
| I wonder if Steve had the lawyers in mind he he wrote it.
|
| "I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop
| doing this".
|
| The phrase "very pleased" implies to me that there is no pressure
| whatsoever, but nonetheless it would be great if it happened.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Lol. This type of phrasing has never inoculated the speaker
| from guilt, or deniability of an order.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
| hammock wrote:
| Or maybe he knows Eric Schmidt doesn't take orders from him and
| therefore it's politically inaccurate to make a demand? Many
| leaders with people skills will say "i prefer if you did x" or
| similar when appropriate because they know they can't control
| everyone, it gives the person they are talking to an out and
| preserves everyone's ego, etc.
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| They had an agreement pre-established. I think he was just
| being polite. Versus "yo we agreed not to do this".
| notjesse wrote:
| This is called speech mitigation, btw (Coined by pop-
| psychologist Malcolm Gladwell).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitigated_speech
| igetspam wrote:
| If memory serves, Erik personally had a business relationship
| with Apple at the time. He may have been a board member or
| advisor... So he actually did take _some_ orders from Steve.
|
| This also isn't the only threatening email from Steve to
| Erik. There was a Google labs project that had been approved
| by apple legal that got an angry email from Steve too. The
| lawyers signed off, so Google was protected but it didn't
| prevent swift action. (The lab project was taken down but the
| dev was not in trouble.)
| suyash wrote:
| Yes, Eric was on the board so he would be in the position
| to order, board member don't take order from CEO, they
| give. In this case, I think it was a friendly communication
| between two tech leaders.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _board member don 't take order from CEO, they give_
|
| Theoretically. In practice, Steve Jobs wasn't taking
| orders from Apple's Board in 2007.
| nostromo wrote:
| Yes, Erick served on Apple's board at the time.
| jldugger wrote:
| This is also the guy who basically wrote a letter to the public
| / app developers that said 'you can't use flash' so blatently
| the DoJ, SEC and FTC were roshambo'ing each other to see who
| got to sue him first.
| fsckboy wrote:
| i have no idea why you are downvoted, and surely it's not
| this, but figured I'd mention, it's "Rochambeau", a name.
| ac42 wrote:
| > it's "Rochambeau", a name.
|
| "Connections to the French surname Rochambeau are a folk
| etymology"
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rochambeau
| dogorman wrote:
| It's both, either, or neither. The spelling he used is
| common and widely accepted. According to legend Rochambeau
| played it, but there is no evidence for that. The earliest
| written reference to the word doesn't spell it like the
| French general's name, though similar enough to plausibly
| be a corruption of it. However it may also be a corruption
| of the japanese name for the game.
|
| Anyway, I'd guess he was downvoted because a lot of people
| here have an old justified hate of flash and thought his
| comment signaled tribal allegiance to the opposite camp.
| paulpauper wrote:
| gee..I wodner what steve jobs' email is? Or eric's . It goes to
| show how redacted info can actually reveal it.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| think it was sjobs@apple.com - not sure he's doing much
| emailing these days. Eric Schmidt's was eschmidt@google.com
| paulpauper wrote:
| >As of October 31, 2013, Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm have reached
| a tentative settlement agreement. Pixar and Lucasfilm agreed to
| pay $9 million in damages, and Intuit agreed to pay $11 million
| in damages.[9] In May 2014, Judge Lucy Koh approved the $20
| million settlement between Lucasfilm, Pixar, and Intuit and their
| employees. Class members in this settlement, which involved fewer
| than 8% of the 65,000 employees affected, will receive around
| $3,840 each.[14]
|
| That's it. Seems so small. That is like a week's worth of pay. It
| goes to show how class action suits only enrich lawyers, in the
| end.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I opted out of my check in the settlement. Part of why it was
| so small is the law firm representing the plaintiffs apparently
| were more interested in a quick settlement than reasonable
| compensation. The settlement you quote there wasn't the final
| one; that was the one rejected as being embarrassingly too
| small. The final settlement in 2015 was larger, but still very
| small.
|
| For me it was the personal abuse of trust that really stuck
| with me. Folks I worked with and respected colluded to keep my
| wages and the wages of my colleagues low. Illegally. I don't
| think they ever apologized for it either.
| inostia wrote:
| Sadly, that seems way more than most. It's usually no more than
| a few dollars, if that.
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(page generated 2021-09-29 23:00 UTC)