Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
The Silicon Valley no-poach conspiracy is the most important cartel no one has heard of. It is rarely discussed in the cartel literature and is lost to public memory. More than forty tech firms, including Apple and Google, agreed not to poach employees from one another over three decades, causing an estimated $3.1 billion in lost wages. The Justice Department discovered and broke apart the cartel in 2010, but did not punish the cartel members, who quickly settled with employees and never admitted guilt. However, the case foreshadowed, and perhaps helped spur, two major developments in antitrust law a decade later: the rise of labor antitrust and the erosion of the tech companies’ aura of antitrust invincibility.
“We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters [employers]; though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.” – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
“I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?” – Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, in email to Google executive Shona Brown, October 6, 2005
Number
25-18
Recommended Citation
Posner, Eric A. and Zheng, Ruth, "The Silicon Valley No-Poach Conspiracy" (2025). Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics. 25-18.
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/1033
