‘One of us must change’: Apple–Adobe's hiring war; Steve Jobs writes angry email
In 2005, Steve Jobs confronted Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen over alleged poaching of Apple employees. Jobs believed in a non-recruiting agreement, while Chizen proposed a senior-level exception. The exchange ultimately led to an agreement to avoid actively soliciting employees from either company.
Adobe and Apple have been allies and rivals through the ages. Apple and Adobe have a long history of both agreement and opposition. They've been closely linked since the early days of desktop publishing, often with complementary product lines and common customers.
But the two have also fought publicly on numerous occasions. Apple and Adobe's fight over Flash technology after Apple kinda 'banned' Flash on iPhones. Another of this Apple vs Adobe tale is Steve Jobs’ email to Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen in 2005. Bruce Chizen was Adobe's CEO from 2000 to 2007. The story goes that Steve Jobs got information on Apple employees being poached by Adobe. Jobs reportedly believed that the two companies had a total non-poaching agreement in place.
So Jobs is said to have decided to cut out the middle man and went straight to the big boss with a scathing email.
Below are the email exchanges between the two CEOs that were made public in court documents following a 2010 antitrust lawsuit over tech companies' supposed agreements to 'Not Cold Call' each other's employees for hiring purposes. It is against the law in the US to collude with other companies about hiring. Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel had to pay $415 million to settle the suit.
Here's the email Steve Jobs sent to Adobe CEO
From: Steve JobsSent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 9:36 AMTo: Bruce ChizenSubject: RecruitingBruce,Adobe is recruiting from Apple. They have hired one person already and are calling lots more. I have a standing policy with our recruiters that we don't recruit from Adobe. It seems you have a different policy. One of us must change our policy. Please let me know who.Steve
Adobe CEO's reply to Steve Jobs
On May 26, 2005, at 4:15 PM, Bruce Chizen wrote:I thought we agreed not to recruit any senior level employees (at Adobe this is Sr. Director/VP and represents about 2% of the population). I am pretty sure your recruiters have approached ,more junior ones.I would propose we keep it this way. Open to discuss. It would be good to agree.