Google Had Secret Pact With Other Tech Companies

Six major tech companies including Google and Apple have admitted to creating secret agreements that they would not try to hire employees from each other, a move often referred to as poaching.

Poaching workers from other rival companies could give the new employer the leg up when it came to trade secrets of the former employer, thus the six companies agreed to play fair and not do so.

Google and Apple, Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Walt Disney Co’s Pixar animation unit and Intuit Inc are the six companies who have made a deal amongst themselves to not hire former employees of said companies.

“The agreements challenged here restrained competition for affected employees without any procompetitive justification and distorted the competitive process,” Molly S. Boast, deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, said in a statement released Friday afternoon. “The proposed settlement resolves the department’s antitrust concerns with regard to these no solicitation agreements.”

“Our policy only impacted cold calling, and we continued to recruit from these companies through LinkedIn, job fairs, employee referrals, or when candidates approached Google directly,” said the statement from Amy Lambert, Google’s associate general counsel for employment. “In fact, we hired hundreds of employees from the companies involved during this time period.

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