At first sight nobody should be too surprised to hear that major Silicon Valley companies including Apple. Google, Intel and Adobe, have been engaged in no-hire agreements with the apparent objective of keeping salaries down for all parties. But the case leading to recent settlement of a class antitrust case from the employees whose salaries were checked as a result of the agreements has exposed a raft of documented internal rules over hiring and recruitment among a wide range of technology companies way beyond the big four, that have actually agreed to pay out. It exposes a range of dubious agreements that are presumably not confined to the high tech sector, but are particularly significant there because of the close…