Five ex-employees of Apple, Google, and Intel are suing those companies, accusing them of an illegal conspiracy to eliminate competition for each other’s employees and drive down wages.” according to the Telegraph.
To solidify their case, the plaintiffs have cited internal emails between these executives, including some from Steve Jobs to the heads of companies caught trying to hire Apple employees. Emails from Steve Jobs, obtained by The Verge (published below), are at the center of the lawsuit that that connects the tech industry’s most powerful executives and companies.
In this email thread, which starts at the bottom and moves up chronologically, Steve Jobs complains to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt about a Google recruiter contacting an Apple engineer. Schmidt forwards the email on to a Google HR executive, who reports back that the recruiter will be terminated. Schmidt asks the executive to make “a public example of this termination.”
In this email thread, which again starts chronologically at the bottom of this image, a Pixar recruiter asks Jobs if it is OK to hire a non-engineer from Apple. Jobs says its OK, and then warns: “The key is to stay away from engineers.”