Employees who endanger relations between tech giants by trying to poach employees even though they've been specifically asked not to by their superiors.
I mean, I agree that the treatment is rough, but the employee really was at fault for going rogue.
It's a stretch to assume the employee "went rogue" in the sense of crossing a well-defined boundary. I'd hazard a guess that the no-poach rule was phrased (or at least understood) more as a suggestion, since explaining the reasoning behind the policy would hand HR evidence of the illegal cartel. Perhaps they even gave the HR people a BS reason, like "poaching leads to salary asymmetries and conflict in teams," which the unknowing HR employee proved wrong under the assumption that she could successfully work around the stated issue. When the no-poach suggestion didn't work, they needed to resort to making an example of someone to get the subtext across using the time-honored strategy of creating a "obey me without question" atmosphere to avoid uncomfortable discussions.
> "In general, we have a very clear ‘do not call’ policy (attached) that is given to every staffing professional" ... "Unfortunately, every six months or so someone makes an error in judgment, and for this type of violation we terminate their relationship with Google."
The recruiter knew from the how the Google HR to Eric Schmidt email reads. The 'secret' part of this agreement is being over emphasized, if you're going to have a non-poaching agreement your staffing employees need to know or it's utterly pointless.
"the employee really was at fault for going rogue."
None of the details surrounding the contact are included. For all we know that person didn't know they were contacting an Apple employee until after the fact.