I’ve been following this case for a while and I keep wondering why no one is in jail, even though I know the answer. There’s little doubt that major figures in tech were engaged in illegal activity. It is also clear, by the way, that their lust for H1B1 visas is just an attempt to suppress wages. This is the sort of thing they make movies about, with the hot shot lawyer and the whistle blower finally beating the bad guys.
There is “ample evidence” that Silicon Valley was engaged in “an overarching conspiracy” against its own employees, a federal judge said on Friday, and it should either pay dearly or have its secrets exposed at trial.
Judge Lucy H. Koh of the United States District Court in San Jose rejected as insufficient a proposed $324 million settlement in a class-action antitrust case that accused leading tech companies of agreeing not to poach one another’s engineers.
In addition, her decision immediately resuscitated a public relations nightmare for Google, Apple and other top tech companies while vindicating a range of observers — including one of the plaintiffs in the suit — who said Silicon Valley was escaping justice.
With the case once again heading to trial, it threatens to expose to further scrutiny the business practices of Steve Jobs of Apple. The blunt emails of Mr. Jobs, an unquestioned genius, could prove to be his company’s undoing.
Steve Jobs was a horrible human being. If the Christians are right, Steve Jobs is being sodomized by Hitler and Stalin in Hell right now. He screwed his employees, treated everyone including his family like garbage and he was a pathological liar and confidence man. Maybe that finally gets a full airing in a courtroom. Too bad the cocksucker is dead.
There’s really no problem “assessing monetary loss”. The problem is that that number is large enough to scare most courts.
Nobody changes jobs for less than a 10% (typically 12-18%) raise and high-tech companies expect a 10% turnover rate. Penalty: 1.5% of design group payroll per year this went on (X7=10.5%). Triple damages for antitrust violation (31.5%). Without even getting into punative damage, the $ are huge, much bigger than $324M.
The problem is proving damages and assessing monetary loss, and upon cursory inspection I don’t think the prosecution’s case is that strong. I’m surprised the judge would throwout the settlement , but that’s liberalism infecting the courts
When you have the defendants admitting their guilt and offering to settle, the case is about as strong as it gets. No one denies what was going on here. The dispute is over how much harm they caused. My preferences would be for all of them to be publicly flogged.
Re: “Steve Jobs is being sodomized by Hitler and Stalin in Hell right now.”
They may very well all be together, but I think you got it wrong about who is zooming who.
@ZMAN: You’ve found your life’s true calling: writing the script for a movie about Steve Jobs! What are you waiting for?
I’d be surprised if anything Jobs has done will undo Apple. Apple worship is like Obama worship, and often from the same people.
I call it the MacCult. Way back when Apple was on its knees, barely hanging on, I chatted up a girl at a bar, who informed me she was a MacSnob. She only used Apple products. Jobs had one great idea and that was figuring how to lever the cult following of this otherwise mediocre product.
This is presented as a news story, not an editorial, and one of the “facts” reported therein is that Jobs was “an unquestioned genius”.