Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is probing into the hiring practices of several large Silicon Valley tech companies.
The companies, which include Google, Intel, Apple and IBM, are alleged to have set up agreements with each other in which they promise not to hire each others' staff. According to the Wall Street Journal, the DOJ wants to determine whether these types of agreements might stand in the way of career progression for IT workers.
If these agreements do exist, and if they are forcing skilled tech employees to keep the jobs they have and earn lower salaries than they'd otherwise receive if employers were competing to hire them, some experts claim this activity could be tantamount to price-fixing (or "salary-fixing," if you will), which could be considered a violation of anti-trust laws.
I can understand how companies might not want to poach each others' employees when they're business partners, in order to remain on friendly terms. I can also see how they'd want to avoid losing top talent to the competition in the middle of a major project, especially if the two firms in question are working on similar products.
But having a company's needs stand that much in the way of an individual's right to move onto something bigger or better? That's going way too far.
What do you think?
Image Copyright: Stephen Stacey