Totally agree with zedshaw here. When a long-running, highly-secret conspiracy with demonstrable follow-through (HR staff being fired) is uncovered, the onus is clearly on the conspirators to prove that their conspiracy was harmless, rather than on the uncoverers to quantify its harm. I understand why a venture capitalist would be nervous about the implications of this conspiracy's discovery (higher programmer salaries = shorter runway for investments), but trying to downplay (with no evidence) the impact of the no-poach on developers is disappointing to see on a site called Hacker News.