Do you realize that there was a class-action lawsuit where the "competitors" Google, Apple, Adobe etc were working together to not poach each other's employees? You're acting like I'm a conspiracy nutjob when there were emails from Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs where they admitted they were illegally colluding.
Do you realize that many "competing" startups have the same VC firms investing in them who don't want bidding wars between their engineers?
They want new talent but they don't want their current talent bouncing around for more money.
> They want new talent but they don't want their current talent bouncing around for more money.
Of course everyone wants to retain employees, and I'm sure that many will stoop to less-than-ethical means to do so. I never suggested that the possibility of a conspiracy between companies was crazy, just pointed out why it's ineffectual. Google and Apple can maybe make it work, because there's no substitute for those names on a resume. But once you start going down the brand name ladder a bit, it is (a) infeasible for the large number of companies to conspire together effectively and (b) far more likely that some companies will refuse to conspire, and those companies will get the upper hand in the hiring market.
You missed the point of the comment, yes they colluded to not steal each other engineers, but they didn't change their interview process to facilitate it. If they had done that, like the previous commenter said, anyone not colluding with them would have been getting all their good engineers at most likely a discount from their true value because of the other failed interviews. Not exactly the best business strategy.
Do you realize that many "competing" startups have the same VC firms investing in them who don't want bidding wars between their engineers?
They want new talent but they don't want their current talent bouncing around for more money.