Steve Jobs sent brutal email to rival CEO after finding out they were recruiting from Apple

It's no secret that the corporate world can be pretty cutthroat and that applies to all levels of the food chain.

So, when Steve Jobs caught wind that another tech firm was trying to poach his employees, his response was completely savage.

Forget the infamous 'beer test,' this easily stands as one of the late Apple CEO's most iconic moments.

After hearing that rival company Adobe was reportedly trying to recruit a number of Apple employees back in 2005, Jobs decided to cut out the middle man and went straight to the big boss with a rather scathing email.

The poor unfortunate soul at the other end of it was American businessman Bruce Chizen, who served as the firm's CEO from 2000 to 2007.

Steve Jobs wasn't too impressed when he found out Adobe was recruiting Apple employees and his response was pretty savage (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

At just after 9.30am on 26 May 2005, Jobs sent the no-nonsense email with a subject line simply reading: "Recruiting."

The body of the email is reported to have read: "Bruce, 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."

What a mic-drop moment!

According to reports, it took Chizen until almost the end of the working day to come up with a response - but he definitely gave as good as he got.

He said: "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."

It took Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen most of the working day to figure out a response to Jobs' brutal email (THOMAS LOHNES/DDP/AFP via Getty Images)

Jobs wasn't impressed and sniped back that if that's the case, he would inform his recruiters that they're 'free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP.'

Chizen then tried to settle the stalemate by suggesting they both agree 'NOT to actively solicit any employee from either company.'

"If employee proactively approaches then it's acceptable," he added. "If you are in agreement I will let my folks know."

Neither CEO ever commented on the beef publicly but their emails 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 recruitment purposes.

It is against the law in the US to collude with other companies about hiring and Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel ended up paying out a whopping $415 million to settle the suit.