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Comment by josephlord | Hacker News Reader

You can treat people equally without treating them well. Yes they may have been harmed by the no poaching agreements but if gay, straight, black, brown and white were otherwise treated well and equally that is something that I could easily imagine someone could feel proud of.

The crimes in the listed article don't seem that terrible, the exceptional thing about them compared to other companies seems to be the direct CEO involvement and brazen lack of subtlety and subterfuge with which they were done. I'm not saying that these actions were right or that they shouldn't be punished but if you feel that way about Apple I wonder what your thoughts are about Samsung.

Out of interest what tech companies do meet your ethical requirements?

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The no poaching agreement went all the way up to the top at Google as well. In fact Google even fired a recruiter for trying to hire someone from Apple, yet they seem to get a free pass in these discussions for some reason.

It's the same effect as the Chinese factory workers conditions all over again. Forget that workers at the Microsoft and Samsung factories have worse conditions and lower pay, the story is all about Apple, as always.

I mean didn't the no poaching agreement come from Apple?

It came from multiple companies collaborating to create it.

By definition, you need more than one entity to agree.

You need more than one entity to agree. You need one entity to suggest it.

I'm sure you must have a really good reason for so heavily implying that it was apple. Go on. Enlighten us. What makes you so certain?

Apple paints itself in a different light than Microsoft or Samsung, which is one of the reasons that people focus on their flaws more than those of MS or Samsung...

Oh, of course. It's okay to kill migrant workers, as long as I don't create pretty products. Apple is like any other company, it doesn't matter how they paint themselves. What matters is the peoples lives that are being ruined.

> Oh, of course. It's okay to kill migrant workers, as long as I don't create pretty products.

Comments like this are not conducive to anything other than trolling or ranting. It might leave you feeling better/good about yourself, but it doesn't help to change the world around you in any meaningful or at least positive way.

I in no way claimed that it was 'ok to kill migrant workers.' I offered an explanation for why people focus on Apple more than other companies. When someone (Apple) paints themselves as 'hip' and 'progressive' (via marketing), people will fall over themselves to point out hypocrisy when they find it. It's just the way that people work.

I don't believe Apple has any migrant workers. Do you mean Foxcon?

What light is that?

In fact Google even fired a recruiter for trying to hire someone from Apple

Get your facts straight: that particular recruiter went to a top VP at Apple, offered them the COO position at Google which didn't exist. Once Google CEO learned of that, yes, they fired that super-pro-active recruiter. This is an instance of a mad recruiter who'll promise the moon to get someone interested in a bogus position. Firing sounds like a reasonable answer to such behavior.

EDIT: I got Apple and eBay confused, as pointed out by comments below. The Apple firing did happen as well, in the now infamous "smiley email".

Where did you get that information?

The original report on that story says “a Recruiter for the ‘Google.com Engineering’ team formerly known as the ‘Site Reliability Engineering’ team” nothing about COO or any other exec position, just engineering. — http://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-st...

1) the incident you are referring to was between Google and Ebay. Apple wasn't involved at all. http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-...

2) The incident involving Google and Apple was between a recruiter and an engineer at Apple. Not some VP, executive, etc. http://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-st...

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