The employees' lives are made better by consistent and stable employment, which can't be achieved if the company has turnover so disruptive that it can't successfully release a product. Even if companies were be able to thrive by constantly outbidding each other and taking one anothers' employees, the employees would be unhappy (most people desire a reasonable degree of continuity in their employment).
My understanding is that the no-poach agreements forbade only unsolicited pursual of employed individuals. Dissatisfied employees were still free to seek employment at the other competitors. All these agreements did was keep others from fomenting discontent by dangling carrots in front of potential employees (which would've been unlikely to be fulfilled). It was a voluntary arrangement entered into by the industry's recruiters. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
> My understanding is that the no-poach agreements forbade only unsolicited pursual of employed individuals. Dissatisfied employees were still free to seek employment at the other competitors.
> The documents also demonstrate that Defendants did not extend an offer to an employee of another Defendant without prior approval from the candidate's current employer, regardless of whether the candidate applied without being solicited first.
It's also obvious from now public emails that many of the employers knew that these agreements were probably illegal, with Google explicitly saying internally that they didn't want to create a paper trail that they could be sued over, and Palm flat out telling Jobs that his suggestion was probably illegal.
My understanding is that the no-poach agreements forbade only unsolicited pursual of employed individuals. Dissatisfied employees were still free to seek employment at the other competitors. All these agreements did was keep others from fomenting discontent by dangling carrots in front of potential employees (which would've been unlikely to be fulfilled). It was a voluntary arrangement entered into by the industry's recruiters. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.