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New York, 4:05 PM
Thu Dec 3
48 posts in the last 24 hours
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06/04/09
06/04/09
06/04/09
06/04/09
That's the problem with a 'gentleman's agreement'. Since you already know you're doing something shady, you have no way of knowing that your counterparty isn't being even more shady by 'only' hiring people who they 'say' approached them.
In fact, the only way an agreement like this will stick is if there's no (or virtually no) movement between the companies.
Unfortunately for the companies, this stuff is matter of very accessible record (as in tax records) so it shouldn't be too hard for the Feds to see if there was not only an unusually low amount of cross-hiring, but also the date at which that phenomena started, how quickly it became the norm, and if there have been any significant lapses along the way.
For companies that are all about search, tech, and data, these seems like extraordinarily dumb moves.
Reminder: being aggressively stupid counts as evil. Sorry, but it's true.
06/03/09
Once again, the Obama campaign did a lot of tough talk during the campaign and now find themselves hard pressed to turn those words into (substantive) action.
Might there be some collusion in this area? Sure. Is there likely to be a paper (or e-mail) trail no. Is it likely that some third, smaller, upcoming company is harmed by this in any way? No. In fact I'd say the smaller companies are blessed by the fact that these has-beens are doing all their job-hopping among the majors, dragging them down with their big salaries and small, re-cycled ideas.
There are so many ways that big business present a barrier to competition from smaller ones it could fill and encyclopedia. Instead they go after something nobody cares much about. In fact, any DOJ action in this area is sure to be a benefit to the Googles and Microsofts of this world.
We DO know that the DoJ and other agencies can't account for millions of dollars they spend each year. How about a scaled back accounting, just for IT expenditures:
(1) Every IT dollar spent on major vendors: IBM, Microsoft, Google, and the major Beltway bandits (they don't call them that for nothin').
(2) Publish the minutes (or best approximation) of every meeting DoJ purchasing people had with these vendors on pricing issues, delivery problems, etc., so that we can see exactly how you negotiate with these monopolies on purchases that taxpayers bear the brunt of.
I guarantee you if you can put enough information out there you won't have to pay anyone to track down problems with your own budget. And pairing back monopoly companies abuse of government spending will go a long way toward pairing back the monopoly power these companies have.
I dare ya.
06/03/09
PS: The Department of Homeland security will not disclose H visa information, such as how many applications were approved, nor will it provide the public copies of the forms businesses submit to apply for foreign temps. These are public information, and I am waiting to see if Obama will release this information. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been trying to get the DHS to divulge more of these public docs for years.
You can go to FLCDataCenter.com: [www.flcdatacenter.com]
And find out who in your city has applied for foreign temps in nice big downloadable XLS files, but the DHS (which actually issues these visas) has the data of how many of these approved applications resulted in visas issued.
06/03/09
06/03/09
06/03/09