[crazygringo]

When you're talking about individuals, sure.

But when you're talking about a whole team, it's a little different. Original employer A went to a lot of expensive effort to find a very particular set of qualified engineers that could work together at the same time -- where the sum is much more than the parts.

If employer B hires the team already put together perfectly qualified for a similar task roughly all at once... they're not just taking advantage of employees' freedom (which is fine) but literally essentially "stealing" the massive work employer A did to assemble the team piece by piece.

I'm not saying it should be illegal, because I don't see how you'd write any effective law against it. But when you take a whole team at once, I think the word "poaching" is apt.

[andrewljohnson]

Yeah, seems fitting, "Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaching

The "land use rights" part. The analogy works because on some level the company is "your land."

[e_y_]

The other scenario where I would find "poaching" somewhat unethical is when the primary purpose is depriving a competing company of talent.

In that scenario, in order to entice them you might offer bonuses and salary that are disproportionate to the value those employees would contribute to your company, but the loss of those employees would cripple the competitor (loss of institutional knowledge, schedule delays and cost of finding replacements, morale, etc).

The company can counter-offer but that costs them money they wouldn't otherwise have to spend, to protect their "investment" -- the sum of the parts as you mentioned. Ideally a company would be resilient against the loss of employees (e.g. getting hit by a bus) but smaller companies like startups don't often have that luxury, which makes them more vulnerable to poaching and other shenanigans instigated by large companies.