The agreement was reached between such companies of Silicon Valley as Adobe Systems, Google, Pixar, Intuit, Intel and Apple. All of them agreed not to invite the employees of rival companies mentioned above to work.

In connection with this the antitrust complaint was filed by the Justice Department. The assertion that the secret agreement poses threat to healthy competition is by no means reasonable enough.

The veterans of Silicon Valley are not surprised by the collusion and HR consultant said that such things happened before. Sometimes such arrangement was unspoken. When you collaborate you just do not want to spoil the relationship with the partner. In case you lure away valuable employees, you may lose your business with the partner, so such things were avoided.

Antitrust attorney expressed her view on the subject and compared the agreement with price fixing of materials, but the material is the staff of the company in this case and no less valuable. Employees can be called an intellectual property of some sort. The manipulation with workforce brings in the ultimate run to the influence on the price. The opinion was expressed as well that this is unfair for employees, who are going to miss out money because of it and their career will suffer too.

Other questions arise as well hinting us that there are also agreements on the prices the companies charge if they solve problems with the personnel this way.

In 2005 the companies violated the anti-trust law already when they decided not to cold-call workers from certain companies. This removed the competition between the companies. But the companies did not acknowledge the violation.

The risk of wider collusion is possible too since elite of the valley representatives know each other well and have good relationship.