What do you mean "get a pass"? This story has been on and off HN's front page for months and the companies involved, including Apple and Google, have received nothing but strong criticism every time.
> all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me
I'm no "occupy wall street" fan, but I think taking millions of dollars from the pockets of a lot of workers is very much something to be outraged about.
He's specifically talking about outrage over the attitudes, as in how the execs handled this one incident. His entire point is that the attitudes displayed in this e-mail chain are unrelated to the larger wage-fixing scheme.
Of all the discussion forums on the internet, I'd expect HN to be one where it's possible to discuss things rationally and discuss individual aspects of an issue separate from the whole in a reasonable manner, without being called out for failing to express the proper quantity of outrage at every step. Of course, this is completely naive of me as it ends up being proven wrong over and over.
I get where you are coming from and appreciate the desire to keep things rational. But sometimes there is a time and place to get angry about things that are wrong. Everyone has their own issues, and I can see that this particular one wouldn't get everyone fired up, but it certainly flips my bits: they summarily fired and "made a public example" of a person for not following an illegal policy.
I can understand getting upset about this. I personally see it as a sort of "double dipping" on outrage in this case, but that's just a difference of opinion.
My main point here is simply that not getting outraged at the attitudes displayed here is far from giving these companies a pass on what they've done.
I agree with Mike here. Bear in mind that we're talking about the attitude of the execs, not the substantive issue at hand. Imagine if the issue at hand had been a Google employee deliberately breaking Google Maps for iPhone (back in the day when Google and Apple got on fine). Would anyone be surprised / outraged by Google firing the employee, and Steve Jobs forwarding the email informing him to Scott Forestall with a smiley face? I would think not.
Now, just to be extra clear, I agree with most people on HN that the substantive issue of non-poaching agreements is not acceptable. I expect all companies that were involved to be justifiably raked over the coals for it. But Steve Jobs responding with a smiley when he receives confirmation that the agreed-upon policy has been enforced? Total non-issue.
Even the attitude irks me. You need to fire someone, you fire them, you don't "make a public example" of them as a sign of obeisance to the head of a competing company. I want to know my boss has got my back, rather than thinking they're willing to throw me under the bus without so much as asking me about it if they get a harshly worded email from someone else.
Just for your information, I've been on three separate management courses which say the contrary - when you're trying to set a cultural norm in your company, making a public example of infringers is practically considered the textbook response. The example given usually concerns sexual harassment. You make the punishment of the harasser public as a way of reinforcing that you're serious about the issue.
That said, most management courses will also tell you to privilege process over people - if something goes wrong it's because the process failed, not the person, and as such most of the time a public correction of someone making a mistake is not appropriate, unless it is felt that the person acted knowingly and deliberately against the rules... So unless the recruiter in question had already been corrected on this error, not only should they not have been fired, but they should not even have been reprimanded in public.
I've been on three separate management courses which say the contrary - when you're trying to set a cultural norm in your company, making a public example of infringers is practically considered the textbook response.
Then the textbook is wrong and should be thrown out. These are people we're talking about, real, actual, flesh-and-blood people... with feelings, family, friends, lives, hopes, dreams, etc. Not fucking "resources" or some fungible asset that can be treated as nothing more than a cell in a spreadsheet, and certainly not something that is a valid target for public shaming.
