Most of the web developer world cared about an alternative, just ask any older FE developer after screaming iiiieeeee (6) when their pages failed to render to published standards in it.
For what it's worth, the moment I read the letter I also pretty much assumed it had to be Dave Hyatt. (Source: worked at Mozilla from 2009 to 2020; Silicon Valley browser dev is a fairly small world.)
Hyatt never worked for Google—he's still at Apple as far as I know. Might be that Google ultimately retracted their offer, but knowing Steve, Hyatt would probably not have remained at Apple no matter what happened.
I don't have any inside info here, but I'd be willing to bet Darin Adler was one of those other REDACTEDs. He was an early Safari guy, as well as tech lead for Mac OS 7 and worked at General Magic, so Google would probably have been pretty happy to get their hands on him.
I still think the main one was Dave Hyatt. Ben Goodger (referenced in those emails) worked on V0.6 of Firefox that Dave started. Ben was founding team at chrome just before these emails (see his LinkedIn for dates). Dave was instrumental on WebKit for Safiri. Chrome picked WebKit too. Dave was also that good and was well known to Steve.
I also think parakey was the startup referenced as his other option (Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt)
Hyatt was honestly the first name that came to my mind, and in fact I had to look him up to be certain that he didn't move to Google. I guess I assumed that if it was Hyatt, he'd no longer be at Apple, since it sounded like the person in question wanted to leave, but who knows—maybe Apple got him to stay?
Steve Jobs was obsessed with loyalty, so I figured that anyone applying for a job at Google would be dead to Apple as long as Jobs was there. Hyatt was one of these guys who even Jobs would probably have hesitated to blacklist, though, so maybe it really is him they're referring to here, and he ultimately remained with Apple.
Steve probably needed this team for iPhone Safari. That could explain why he was so pissed. Perhaps just showing them the iOS plans and a some extra stock was enough. Perhaps Google pulled the offer. Perhaps both.
Here’s some nuance: anyone so talented they warrant legal action over a fight to employ them already knows they’re very talented. Being their stakes in a war over strategic business goals isn’t more affirming, it’s almost certainly less. It’s (almost invariably) not cool to be someone else’s meat. Even if you know you’re very highly valued meat, and even if they affirm that your value as meat is very high indeed.
I'm sure they can comfort themselves on the quarter to half a million annual they were being paid instead of the half a million to three quarters of a million a zero collusion market would have offered them. ;)
“Got table scraps; good table scraps, could’ve been better mind you, not especially great; enriched a few.” There, I think I know what to put in my will as how I will wish to be remembered.
>“Got table scraps; good table scraps, could’ve been better mind you, not especially great; enriched a few.” There, I think I know what to put in my will as how I will wish to be remembered.
I realize we are on a forum/platform that is home to a disproportionately high number of wealthier individuals, but are you actually suggesting that $250 million annually is "table scraps"?
... which still isn't table scraps. median income in the US is $30k.
I am a software engineer, but even I have a hard time finding deep sympathy for people complaining that they are making 10x the median salary but they should have made 20x.
Call me old-fashioned, but at the end of the day in our industry, what's "fair" is what you agreed to. None of the people in the cold-calling scandal were forbidden from making overtures to the competing companies or being hired by them. And it's real hard for me to dredge up feelings of injustice for the embarrassed sub-millionaire when so many are forced to figure out how to live on 1/10th of that money.
If you don't like your Google salary, just put your resume in at Apple. That's my advice.
Ah crap, that's what I get for posting in the middle of the night while wide awake and sick. Thanks for the correction, and agreed - the difference between $250 million and $250k doesn't change my point.
I’m sure that redacted employee made bank but I doubt they truly got compensated for the value they created for these obscene companies , in part due to these bs negotiations.
It’s an honor to be suppressed by C-levels in two giant corporations! It isn’t fawning over the people who systematically deny me seeking value for my talent, I’m privileged to have both of them fuck me simultaneously!
You’re still missing the forest for the trees. It’s unrealistic for execs in companies that size to even take a cursory review of why each individual person left the company (and they would be incompetently wasting their time if they did).
Anything that involves the attention enough to warrant actual emails makes that employee extraordinary. This is the same whether the outcome is negative or positive.
