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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

#221

Post by nerfhammer »

accountoftheday wrote: post #216
peterb wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wage-theft stuff lowers the curve for everyone, not just the top tier. It lowers the entire wage curve.

The article does not support this claim. My reading is that GOOG's HR department kept/keeps the salary curve artificially flat (over-rewarding low performers) to manage pay within a narrow band and thereby prevent having to negotiate with top performers.

This is also an effect of the "flat" org structure. Few annoying managers! and also almost no chance of becoming one of those managers.

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

#222

Post by argonaut »

nerfhammer wrote: post #210
debt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. It's probably the best place in the world right now to be a software developer. This wage-theft stuff is for very experienced echelons of engineers.

> If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. My advice would be to make sure you could find a place to live there first

Are you from SV? There are plenty of affordable places to live in SV. Just because everyone is talking about how SF is sooo expensive, does not mean you can't live in Berkeley/Oakland/East Palo Alto/other areas.

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

#223

Post by pg »

cs702 wrote: post #196
pg wrote: post #148

It seems like we should be able to measure whatever effect there was. There must be sources of data about salaries in the Bay Area. Has anyone tried looking to see if there is a depression in tech workers' salaries, relative to people in other fields, during the time this agreement was in force?

I doubt we will ever be able to "measure" the effect. We can only guess and debate it with hypothetical scenarios -- "what if all these CEOs had had to compete for talented employees, instead of fixing the market for them?" Regardless of the effect, it is a shame to see that these leading CEOs, who for years have vociferously complained about media & telecom oligopolies for preventing competition, were for years simu…

This comment thread is like a micro version of the origins of the hard sciences.

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

#224

Post by nerfhammer »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #138
sjg007 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They way you change it is by starting your own company.

Unfortunately, starting your own company is a high-risk path to change it & no guarantee that you will make more money. A lawyer, doctor, trader, or investment banker does not have to take the risk of starting his own firm in order to make significantly more than the highest level engineers.

and yet the practice of acqui-hiring can actually get you a 7 figure return on failing. Instead of unions, we have that, strange as it is. though mostly disproportionately good for the acqui-hired managers and not so much normal employees.

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

#225

Post by auctiontheory »

pille wrote: post #41
auctiontheory wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And in Germany I'd be hard-pressed to find you a non-management tech job that makes north of 90k USD/year. It would be great if someone could prove me wrong.

And in Germany I'd be hard-pressed to find you a non-management tech job that makes north of 90k USD/year.

How is that relevant? (And) Once you factor in healthcare, education (for kids) and housing, I suspect that 90K USD in Berlin goes just as far as 200K USD in Silicon Valley, probably a lot further.

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

#226

Post by dredmorbius »

lmg643 wrote: post #147
zaidf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This whole episode is pretty depressing. But, it's far better for people to live without illusions about the nature of their bosses, etc. At the risk of a hundred downvotes, I wonder how many people can see the parallels in the current silicon valley push for "immigration reform." Having watched H1B farms style companies up close and personal, I can say there is very little to recommend about this model of employment…

The H1B issue is absolutely about providing cheap, endentured labour: visa holders are tied to their sponsoring employer and must appeal to be allowed to seek other employment.

Norm Matloff of UC Davis has literally been trying to expose this for decades, with little luck:

http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b.html

http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b10min.html

Moreover: this is entirely consistent with behavior of employer first observed in the 18th century:

[I]n every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent, and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another.

What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.

It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.

Marx, you ask? No. Engles? No.

That's Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...

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

#227

Post by Patrick_Devine »

pg wrote: post #148

It seems like we should be able to measure whatever effect there was. There must be sources of data about salaries in the Bay Area. Has anyone tried looking to see if there is a depression in tech workers' salaries, relative to people in other fields, during the time this agreement was in force?

I remembered having commented on this about half a year ago on a post which at the time didn't get a lot of up-votes. I just dredged it up:

"Clearly the tech talent shortage can't be that bad, otherwise salaries would be going through the roof. I realize they may seem high relative to many other professions, however if we really are in dire straights, one would expect them to have spiked dramatically. That just hasn't happened. Either collectively the valley is colluding to not inflate wages, or, more likely, the problem isn't as big as many companies are making it out to be and those companies want to bring in foreign workers to help put deflationary pressure on wages."

I guess it turns out that was a false dichotomy and both things were happening. It looks like there was a conspiracy, and the tech companies still complained about not being able to find workers while pressuring congress for more H1-B visas.

My point is I don't think you'll be able to really get an accurate picture of how much wages were depressed because many companies are trying their hardest to decrease workforce mobility any way possible (legal or otherwise). I've personally seen some pretty crazy shenanigans at a very large tech company with workers being steered through insane hurdles to get a green card.

And I guess why not? If you can get someone to stick around for 5 or 6 years at a reduced wage, why wouldn't you do that?

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

#228

Post by judk »

akbar501 wrote: post #183
lmg643 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny that there would be reason to complain, given that this statistic would probably show that tech is a profitable place to work relative to other industries. But we're talking about the tech employee's relative share of the company's own profits, right? which means cross-industry comparisons aren't relevant. i'm sure this is the line the defense would take. I guess - we would be asked to believe that even t…

> But we're talking about the tech employee's relative share of the company's own profits, right? Not exactly. The key issue is not whether anyone made more or less money. What is at issue is violation of US law. As of today, conspiracy is illegal.

Collusion to manipulate the market is illegal. Conspiracy means something else.

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

#229

Post by adventured »

hashmap wrote: post #212
cs702 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt we will ever be able to "measure" the effect. We can only guess and debate it with hypothetical scenarios -- "what if all these CEOs had had to compete for talented employees, instead of fixing the market for them?" Regardless of the effect, it is a shame to see that these leading CEOs, who for years have vociferously complained about media & telecom oligopolies for preventing competition, were for years simu…

What are you talking about? A "free market" encourages exactly this behavior! If it weren't illegal it would go on indefinitely.

A free market neither encourages nor discourages this type of behavior. What it does, is not regulate whether a company can poach other talent by paying higher wages, or whether a company can collude with other companies to pay the same wages and stagnate. If a company believes it has the upper hand against a competitor - and some company always acquires the upper hand sooner than later - then it would be in its best interests to poach, pay higher wages for superior talent, and bleed the competition to death.

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

#230

Post by Iftheshoefits »

dnautics wrote: post #156
dfraser992 wrote: post #135

All of the excuses and rationalizations I see posted here make me ill. It's like very few "peons" understand the mentality of those who are "in charge" - e.g. the Clueless, Loser, Sociopath hierarchy of how businesses are structured. There has been a recent spate of stories across the web about how wealth affects people's mentality and behavior - I am reminded now of a story about India and how the stark class differ…

Do you want to know what marxism is like in america? Try academic research science. Pay lines for postdocs are effectively set by a centalized agency - NIH guidelines. There's limited market and a captive, oversupplied labor pool, zero ownership of the means of production ("it all goes for the collective effort"). Advancement is not meritocratic, but rather a combination of being in the right place when a position op…

All I gathered from your comment is that you are a PhD holder who doesn't know what "marxism" is.
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