Apple, Google, Microsoft, others may be under scrutiny for hiring practices - New Mexico Business Weekly:

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"Guys, we have a problem," Ballmer says. "Somew of our best employeess are job-hopping like locusts, feasting on the highe wages and better perks from ourcompetitors -- that would be you. Now I know we'ves gone on plenty of raiding parties ourselves. But it'sa just time to stop the madness. I'm readty to reach a gentlemen's agreement not to poachb your superstarsif you'll do likewise." Jobs doesn'r hesitate. "I'm tired of paying moving expensesafrom Redmond. And it's getting old hearingf some of my employees whininy about how great the perks were when they wereat I'm all for a change.
" The Google guys speak in "Count us in!" The specific meeting we of course, took place only in our imagination. But the reportedlg wants to knowif tech's big boys reallyu have been colluding to keep theirf top talent from jumping ship. The and , citint unnamed sources, report that the investigation is preliminar and focuses ona who’s who of Silicob Valley tech companies including search giant its rival , iPhone maker Appl e and biotech firm . reportsz that the Justice Department has issued formap requests for documentsfrom “at leasf a dozen” tech companies.
“If they are as is being investigated then it is a seriouwspotential anti-trust case,” said Albert Foer, presidenty of the American Antitrust Institute. Collusionb between the companies coulddepress wages. In 2001, Supremse Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote an appeals courr opinion siding with a groupp of oil geologists and petroleum engineers who claimedf and other oil companies were colluding in hiring Collusion could also damagd the innovation for which Silicon Valley is by keeping talented people from moving to new companies and bringin g with themfresh ideas.
“One of the thingws that feeds innovation is peoplemoving around,” Foer “Whereas Silicon Valley is famous for people moving arounfd … that practice would be tailing off or ended by such an between companies not to poach While the tech world may be famoue for talented people jumping from company to those jumps haven’t always been exactlu amicable, and tech firms often tie top talent to contractes that restrict them from going to work for the competitio n for set periods of time.
In fact, the moves of talent from one tech behemoth to anothetr have sometimes landedin court, as when formeer Microsoft employee Kai-Fu Lee went to work for John Oates points out at . So it’s not out of the real of reason to imagine tech bosses lookintg to keep top talent from moving without the hassles ofcourgt fights. But already, the federal probe is drawinf skepticism inthe blogosphere.
Larry Dignan, writing on ZDNet’s blog, calls the probe a fishing expedition with “waste of time written all over As Dignan points out, it’e pretty unlikely that there are any smoking gun agreements lying around the offices of the tech titans, and he “Top talent isn’t that restricted. Googler execs go to Facebook. They go to AOL. Yahoo execs go to Microsoft execs goto Google. In you can make quite a career just hoppingv between thoseaforementioned companies.
” The probe comew as the government is stepping up scrutinyy of the often-cozy relationships in the high-tech Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, who is in charge of the DOJ'a Antitrust Division, that the department would be takinv a closer look at activities in the The Federal Trade Commission to Google earlier in the year becauswe of antitrust concerns. FTC questions concerned the overla of directors between Google and Genentech Google boss Eric Schmidt sits on theApplw Inc. board with Art who was CEO of Genentech atthe time. Regulatore also called a halt to an advertising revenu sharing deal Google madewith Yahoo.