poaching

Six 'poaching' stories August 2014 - May 2015

Tesla hires head Apple recruiter after losing own recruiter to Apple Car team

Mark Gurman May 13 2015 - 12:58 pm PT

Tesla has taken its recruiting of Apple employees to the next level: the electric car and energy company has hired away Apple’s Senior Director of Corporate Recruiting, Cindy Nicola, to become Tesla’s new Vice President of Global Recruiting. Nicola has already noted her new role and start month of May on her LinkedIn profile.

Notably, Apple actually hired away Tesla’s Lead Recruiter in 2014 for its own electric car project, as we noted in our extensive profile of Apple’s automotive related hires. Interestingly, that former Tesla recruiter Lauren Ciminera has already left Apple to work on a new “confidential” project, according to her own LinkedIn page and confirmation from a source…

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Apple and A123 Systems finalizing settlement over poaching battery tech experts

Zac Hall May 13 2015 - 8:21 am PT

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Just as rumors ramped up earlier this year that Apple has been developing its own electric vehicle under Project Titan, battery maker A123 Systems filed a lawsuit against Apple for poaching five of its engineers. The two companies appear to now be finalizing a settlement over the dispute, The Boston Globe reports, helping Apple avoid the case going to court.

The lawsuit cited unfair competition and non-compete contract violations after evidence revealed the employees were recruited to leave the battery firm. Apple previously requested an extension to respond to the lawsuit, however, suggesting a settlement was on the table…
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Report: Apple poaching Samsung engineers w/ chip & battery expertise

Zac Hall Feb 23 2015 - 7:41 am PT

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While Apple has notably been engaged in a back-and-forth poaching war with electric vehicle maker Tesla in recent months, a new report from The Korea Times claims that Apple has also been targeting “experts in next-generation technology” from Samsung Electronics. Citing an anonymous official from Samsung, the report highlights that the iPhone maker has a history of picking off chip experts from the Korean company using competitive compensation and “greater independence” as engineers.
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Apple & Google both appealing court ruling that anti-poaching settlement was too low

Ben Lovejoy Sep 5 2014 - 4:36 am PT

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The anti-poaching case rumbles on … After an antitrust class-action suit last year accused Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe of secretly agreeing not to poach staff from each other, the case appeared to be all over back in April when the parties reached a $324M settlement.

Settlements have to be signed-off by a court, however, to ensure that it is considered fair to all parties. Earlier this month, Judge Lucy Koh rejected the settlement, saying the amount should have been $380M.

Two days ago, the parties resumed settlement talks with the help of a retired judge, but it appears these are not going well: Reuters now reports that Apple and Google has asked an appeals court to overturn Judge Koh’s decision.

In a court filing late on Thursday, the companies asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule Koh’s decision.

Koh “committed clear legal error” and “impermissibly substituted the court’s assessment of the value of the case for that of the parties who have been litigating the case for more than three years,” they wrote.

Judge Koh had earlier said that Steve Jobs “was a, if not the, central figure in the alleged conspiracy.”

Apple shareholders file lawsuit over anti-poaching agreements, claim gross mismanagement and more

Mike Beasley Aug 14 2014 - 10:05 pm PT

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Photo: mashable.com

Apple shareholders are the latest to jump into the fray of a lawsuit against Apple over its anti-poaching agreements with a number of other tech companies. As we’ve previously reported, Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, and a laundry list of other companies allegedly created illegal pacts to avoid hiring each others’ engineers, allowing each employer to keep its wages low without running the risk of a competitor snatching up its competition with a better deal.

Now, a little over a week after a class action settlement was rejected by the court for being too low, Apple shareholder R. Andre Klein has filed a derivitive complaint on behalf of all Apple shareholders (embedded below) accusing the company of “breach of fiduciary duty, gross mismanagement, waste of corporate assets, and breach of the duty of honest services.”

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Court rejects earlier $324 million anti-poaching settlement between Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe

Mike Beasley Aug 8 2014 - 12:42 pm PT

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Image via <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-01/tech-hubris-the-silicon-valley-antitrust-hiring-conspiracy#p2" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>

A judge has rejected a settlement that was reached earlier this year between employees of Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe and their respective companies, CNBC reported today. According to reports from the courtroom, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that the settlement was not high enough and should actually be $380 million.

The lawsuit was brought against the tech giants in question by current and former employees who believed (correctly) that their employers had created agreements to avoid attempting to hire engineers from one another. The idea was that if no competitors were making offers, each company was free to pay its employees whatever it wanted without having to worry about them jumping ship for a better offer.

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