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How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

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Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#21

Post by morgante »

pbreit wrote: post #13

Every time I read an article about this I fell like I'm at The Onion. Drive ++down++ engineer wages? Really? Does anyone on planet earth feel like engineer wages are/were artificially low?

> Does anyone on planet earth feel like engineer wages are/were artificially low?

Yes. Just because wages are high does not at all prevent them from being suppressed.

There's actually pretty strong evidence that wages are suppressed across the board in tech. In near-perfect labor market equilibrium, you'd expect employers to not have open headcount for extended periods because if they're unable to hire for a position they rationally increase its salary. Yet in tech you see many/most companies with near-permanent open headcount who still steadfastly refuse to increase salaries outside certain predefined bands.

Whether such behavior is consciously profit-driven or unconsciously motivated ("non-managers should never make more than $200k") I don't know but it's largely the reason for the longterm hiring crunch.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#22

Post by wouldprefernot2 »

sbisker wrote: post #2

Now that this is exposed and (presumably) not as present, has anyone done any work to see if salaries at Apple, Google, etc have since risen higher than salaries at companies who weren't involved with such activity? This sort of shenanigans went on 100 years ago, but we couldn't study the consequences so tightly back then...it seems that Glassdoor's data, H1B data, etc provides a unique opportunity to study the effec…

At least at Google, there was a 10% raise at the start of 2011.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#23

Post by nostrademons »

sbisker wrote: post #2

Now that this is exposed and (presumably) not as present, has anyone done any work to see if salaries at Apple, Google, etc have since risen higher than salaries at companies who weren't involved with such activity? This sort of shenanigans went on 100 years ago, but we couldn't study the consequences so tightly back then...it seems that Glassdoor's data, H1B data, etc provides a unique opportunity to study the effec…

Anecdotally salaries at the major tech companies just shot up in early 2011, which was soon after the DOJ started its investigation. It's hard to infer causation though, as this could have been because of rising competition from Facebook for employees, or it could have been because of the large amount of seed capital sloshing around in the startup world then, or it could have been because of the Fed's easy-money policies.

Connecting this to current events, this was also the start of SF's rent-and-eviction crisis. 2011 was when new grads started getting 6-figure salaries to work in tech, and experienced senior engineers started getting up to $250K/year in total comp. Turns out that when a large number of workers start getting big salaries in a region where the housing supply is basically fixed, much of that money goes into rent.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#24

Post by zaidf »

aspensmonster wrote: post #14

Jobs' comments: >OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly? >if you [Brin] hire a single one of these people that means war. Chizen's comment: >if I tell Steve [Jobs] it’s open season (other than senior managers), he will deliberately poach Adobe just to prove a point. Knowing Steve, he will go after some of ou…

This is where he crosses the asshole line over to scumbag and crook territory. I say this as someone who respects Jobs deeply for his product vision.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#25

Post by benihana »

fidotron wrote: post #11
dasil003 wrote: post #7

As a programmer sure this annoys me, but I find it a bit disingenuous to tie it to growing societal inequality. Tech workers are definitely on the beneficiary side of the inequality gap, so I don't see how these conspiracies to indirectly keep tech workers salaries down to 2x to 5x of median American household income is really germane.

So the money that would have gone to the programmers goes to the upper executive layers instead. This merely moves things around slightly, and if anything further squeezes wealth into the top 1% as opposed to top 10%. This whole story looks fairly damning, especially to Jobs and Schmidt, though that is probably the intent. Faced with a hiring war with 2005 era Jobs you'd have to have serious guts to refuse - like app…

>So the money that would have gone to the programmers goes to the upper executive layers instead. This merely moves things around slightly, and if anything further squeezes wealth into the top 1% as opposed to top 10%.

Citation needed. Where do you see that it went to the people at the top and wasn't invested back into the company?

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#26

Post by msoad »

Engineers should make more money than what they are making now. The largest number I heard lately is $240k for a data scientist from Apple. That's too low! That person can make Siri better and make millions for Apple.

Why aren't we getting paid like lawyers? If they win $20M they will get paid at least $2M. But if we make a product that generates $20M profit, at best we get $20K bonus. This has to change!

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#27

Post by bps4484 »

gress wrote: post #8

It may be that the consequences of the 'conspiracy' was to depress wages, and it should clearly be prosecuted if the legal case can be made. However does anyone think that this was the intention behind these agreements? Isn't it more likely that they wanted to stop an insane war on one another's businesses by buying off key employees to disrupt one another's operations? It would seem as though companies with a giant…

The solution here is the same as the solution when Zuckerberg complained about employees leaving their jobs too quickly[1]: Pay your employees more. Figure out what kind of value they bring, and the amount of cost if they were to leave, and adjust their wages accordingly. Make no mistake about it, the ultimate goal of stifling competition is to depress wages. While maybe described as "disrupting operation", it is really just allowing a company to not pay an employee what they are worth.

Analogously, if 2 companies sold widgets, one in state A and one in state B, and they each had a near monopoly in each state, if they each made a closed door agreement not to enter into each others' states so they could each maintain their near monopoly, I think people, and courts, would certainly cry foul. Certainly competing would disrupt each others' operations, but the competition would bring better products and better prices to both states, and that's the point.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/30/facebooks-zuckerberg-if-i-w...

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#28

Post by auctiontheory »

raganwald wrote: post #5
wouldprefernot wrote: post #3

I'm curious. Are the executives who make these illegal agreements to restrain trade ever personally held liable? It seems that would be more effective than fining the companies, or the usual "We don't admit to doing anything wrong, but here's some money anyways." Apologies for the green account, but I would prefer not to have my real name attached to such a discussion.

And therein lies the problem. Although these companies are being prosecuted, nobody wants to run afoul of them or anybody else. I'm not saying that any one individual or company is presently a bullying wrongdoer, but what I am saying is that there is an culture of fear around speaking out or rubbing people the wrong way. This atmosphere--along with the kind of proprietary shenanigans that make it difficult or impossi…

It's US culture - people are easily and often fired. Very different other places, even in tech, e.g. Israel, Germany.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#29

Post by talmand »

warble wrote: post #4

This seems like it takes some basic facts and then jumps to a lot of conclusions without any data (like sbisker mentions) - I'm not suggesting it's BS, but it's not clear their obvious conclusions are so obvious. I'd love to see actual wage data.

What could the wage data show you? That everyone in all these companies were being paid much the same for similar positions? Doesn't seem like that would prove much of anything.

You would have to somehow compare data from these companies with companies outside the group. But even then, I'm willing to bet it would show little because these companies were the big guns in the area. Very few companies would be able to outbid them in wages in the first place.

Wage data is probably not really needed here. From what I understand of the law, the mere fact that they had the agreement was illegal. Meaning they didn't even have to implement the agreement, just that they made it. That they seemed to have implemented it and attempted to hide it only adds to their problems.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#30

Post by primelens »

aspensmonster wrote: post #14

Jobs' comments: >OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly? >if you [Brin] hire a single one of these people that means war. Chizen's comment: >if I tell Steve [Jobs] it’s open season (other than senior managers), he will deliberately poach Adobe just to prove a point. Knowing Steve, he will go after some of ou…

All of this is so very Godfather ... we should be glad no one woke up next to horse's heads.
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