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Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

Disgusting behavior from Apple.

“How dare you lure away our livestock. These employees are our property.”

Please don't do denunciatory rants on HN. You may not owe Apple better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's a valid remark on how companies do tend to treat their workers as little more than livestock. While it is denunciatory, the subject deserves denunciation.

Many things deserve denunciation—so many that if HN is to host denunciatory rhetoric about all of them, that will soon become the theme of the site. We don't want that, because this site already has a theme: intellectual curiosity, which can't coexist with denunciation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I disagree both with the premise that denuncing realities of the industry that go unnoticed in a relevant context prevents intellectual curiosity (I believe that as long as it isn't a bandwagon, it actually triggers interesting discussion), and I disagree with the slippery slope argument you present, as it seems quite unfounded.

This is pretty standard in employment agreements. I don't know of a company in the Valley without a 1yr no-poaching clause.

Not enforceable though in 2019.

Is that true? I was definitely under strict orders from my employer to not solicit anyone from my prior employer throughout 2019. I would be surprised if they didn't realize it's not enforceable...

Silicon Valley companies do many things that aren't legal...and with respect to labor law, many things that are explicitly illegal, like anti-poaching arrangements, union-busting, ignoring health and safety rules, ignoring overtime rules...

Apple specifically was one of the parties to the anti-poaching arrangements.

Sure, but that's not what we're talking about here. There was even a case where we hired someone directly from my prior employer to be on my team but it was very clear that I wouldn't be involved to prevent any kind of non-solicit issues. We were also, as an organization, sued by another company, where our CRO was prior, for non-solicit issues when a large number of their sales staff joined ours. So I'm not sure this is relevant. Everything I've read suggests non-solicits are enforceable, including in CA.

Non-solicits are not enforceable in CA as a matter of law.

In 2019, CA courts ruled that this also applied even while the soliciting employee is still employed at their old job.

Of course, a competitor can and will sue if they feel like it financially benefits them to do so, such as by interfering in your company's business procedures or discouraging other employees from leaving. This doesn't mean that what they're doing is lawful or that they won't face legal penalties for their actions.

Seems you're right: https://www.law.com/therecorder/2019/06/11/employee-nonsolic...

Google got rid of theirs this year.

You're right! Seems like it may have in some part been in connection to litigation surrounding the company level no-poaching pact they were in prior.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/google-ends...

A periodic reminder that Apple was one of the founding partners in the conspiracy (with Google and others) to cheat employees out of billions of dollars of wages due to illegal anti-poaching agreements.

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