I think this is just shrewd business.
They did poach a huge chunk of the safari team. They then did launch a competing browser and aggressively pushed that browser globally. They forked the mainline project of WebKit and created blink - for reasons relating to Chrome product roadmap. It was a big deal when they did it.
But Jobs predicting this is what they were up to and calling google and complaining they are poaching a whole team from Apple. Is bullying?
Which CEO wouldn’t be upset at an entire core team being targeted by a competitor? It’s not price fixing, it’s not illegal (to be upset or to call another ceo and complain).
How would you feel if you were actively looking for another job and the CEO of your company repeatedly called one the the companies that was going to give you an offer to yell at them and try to intimidate them with threats of "war" into not hiring you?
That sure sounds a lot like bullying, even if you don't think it is bullying, it is certainly an illegal business practice. This isn't just my opinion, but that of the DOJ and the court.
While that case was settled without a trial, I'll note that the judge took the rare step of rejecting the first settlement agreement because Apple and Google didn't pay enough.
This want “an individual looking for a job”. This was a google going after an entire team.
Honestly everyone has the bullying round the wrong way here. Steve jobs was an ass in this instance, but his actions are likely 99.9% of other CEOs actions
Some places have made those illegal or greatly restricted them, hopefully that will spread.
> This want “an individual looking for a job”. This was a google going after an entire team.
It was google trying to hire ~3 internal recommendations. From the emails it sounds like for the main hiring prospect was potentially more interested if all 3 got offers and was also already looking at offer from other companies. I don't specifically see anything about it being an "entire team", so I'm curious where you got that from.
> Steve jobs was an ass in this instance, but his actions are likely 99.9% of other CEOs actions
I think the 99.9% number is a bit too high (and certainly hard to source). I do think you are correct that this (and other) illegal business practices are extremely common among CEOs, especially in companies of this size. Though I think CEOs of companies of this size are usually quite a bit more circumspect in how they go about it.
Again, the legal way to approach this is to make the developers an offer of better projects (which is sounds like Apple tried), money or other perks to make the job attractive. A volatile CEO who did what Jobs did here would probably count against that (if the employees knew what he did.)
I think Steve Jobs is motivated by money here.
Please don't consider that Sergei and Larry are not just as motivated by money as Steve, and trying to tap into leverage potential developed elsewhere, because it's a way to 'do more stuff that also makes more money'.
It's 'small scale hardball' between CEO's and that's mostly it.
Drama. The 'Young and Restless of the Valley', Tuesday afternoons @ 2pm.
If he called up a competitor and complained about them undercutting prices on competing products, and threatened "This means war", would you be explaining how tolerating competitive bidding is bad for the company? Everyone knows that, and knows, I thought, that the only legitimate response is "Tough shit."
That could wind up in a bidding war that could end up affecting many employees and salaries going up a lot. That's a lot of lost money for Apple, which makes Steve Jobs mad. Additionally, some employees would still be lost in the war, slowing down Apple development.
>Say he did get the offer canceled. How would this employee feel about working for a CEO that does this?
I think it's implied that the employee wouldn't find out. I think Steve Jobs would be more angry if Google revoked the offer and blamed it on Steve Jobs than if Google went forward with the offer.