The End of Apple-Google No-Poaching Pacts Could Bring Even More Talent to Silicon Valley

For those living outside Silicon Valley, the most shocking thing about the no-poaching agreements among some of the world's largest tech companies is that engineering salaries could be even higher than they are now.

Thanks to court records from the recently settled antitrust case over hiring in the Valley, we now know that the late Steve Jobs, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and others from Intel and Adobe Systems made a secret pact not to recruit from one another. EBay settled a U.S. lawsuit last week accusing it of agreeing not to hire employees from Intuit, which makes Mint and TurboTax. Lucasfilm and Jobs's Pixar, now both owned by Walt Disney, settled claims with the U.S. in 2010.