Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Pixar & Intuit Have to Call Each Other’s Employees, Says DoJ

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The Department of Justice has voiced its concern regarding the anticompetitive practices of six important companies, Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Pixar and Intuit, when it comes to making job offers to each other’s employees.

It seems that these companies have been involved in various agreements that would prevent them from hiring anyone from the other company. The companies above were not all involved in the same agreements, that would probably be impossible, but, as the story goes, each of the six important companies mentioned above were, at least once, involved in such arrangement that prevented the parties in question from cold calling employees from the rival they entered said agreement with in order to offer them a new job.

According to the DoJ investigation Apple had such agreements with Adobe, Google and Pixar while Google had similar agreements with Apple, Intel and Inuit. But it seems that such agreements only covered cold calling as these companies did recruit from their competitors. Here’s what Google said on the matter:

“In order to maintain a good, working relationship with these companies, in 2005 we decided not to ‘cold call’ employees at a few of our partner companies,” it said. “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. In fact, we hired hundreds of employees from the companies involved during this time period.”

Intuit has also commented on the matter:

“We have agreed to disagree with the DOJ on the issue of any wrongdoing in this matter. We do not intend to enter into the types of broad non-solicit agreements that are prohibited by the settlement. The terms of the settlement will not have a significant impact on our business, so we have decided to resolve this matter. We are in agreement with the DOJ in our shared desire to maintain an open, fair, competitive market for talent.”

And probably all the other companies would have similar statements to make on this DoJ investigation and settlement proposal. The DoJ has apparently filed a civil anitrust complaint and proposed a settlement that “if approved by the court would resolve the lawsuit.” In other words, feel free to cold call your competitors’ employees and offer them jobs. It’s what the DoJ wants you to do.