Emails from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, published below, are at the center of a lawsuit that that connects the tech industry's most powerful executives and companies.
Five tech workers are suing Apple, Google, and Intel.
They say that top executives at these companies agreed to not hire each other's employees.
According to the Telegraph, they are accusing the companies of an illegal conspiracy to eliminate competition for each other's employees and drive down wages."
To make their case, the suing tech workers have cited internal emails between these executives, including some from Steve Jobs to the heads of companies caught trying to hire Apple employees.
These emails have been made public, and The Verge published some of them.
They reveal Jobs to be a man comfortable making threats to rivals.
In this email, Jobs tells a Palm executive that he should stop recruiting Apple employees because "I'm sure you realize the asymmetry in the financial resources of our respective companies."
In this email thread, which starts at the bottom and moves up chronologically, Steve Jobs complains to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt about a Google recruiter contacting an Apple engineer. Schmidt forwards the email on to a Google HR executive, who reports back that the recruiter will be terminated. Schmidt asks the executive to make "a public example of this termination."
In this email thread, which again starts chronologically at the bottom of this image, a Pixar recruiter asks Jobs if it is OK to hire a non-engineer from Apple. Jobs says its OK, and then warns: "The key is to stay away from engineers."
Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
