A couple years back, just after the launch of the iPhone, Steve Jobs was looking for any way to keep his product development team from leaving for greener pastures, including some methods that may have been illegal.
According to Bloomberg, Jobs sent an email to then Palm CEO Ed Colligan, proposing a deal in which the two companies wouldn’t hire one another’s employees. At the time, Colligan claimed Jobs and Apple had already poached 2% of Palm’s workforce to get the iPhone off the ground. Colligan was, as you might imagine, none too happy to consider a deal between his company and Apple. In an email to Jobs regarding the proposal, Colligan had this to say: “Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal.”
This should definitely be of interest to the Department of Justice, which has been investigating hiring collusion among tech companies for some time. Unfortunately, this probably won’t turn into good things for consumers, just a bunch of behind the scenes wrist-slapping that won’t make much of a difference.
