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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

#251
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As if one person has any chance negotiating against a Fortune 500 company's HR department, legal department etc. Of course, you do. Just vote with your feet.

The point that I think your comment is missing is that if the vast majority of employers are colluding to drive down prices your feet will invariably lead you to a less profitable place overall. Also this response seems to indicate that an individual's actions will hold any meaning against the concerted and united effort of employers. Unless a multitude of others act in concert we, the developers, will be at a disadv…

Exactly. I can't think of a more inane comment to an article on how companies are colluding together to prevent their workers from getting better opportunities than "vote with your feet". How exactly do you "vote with your feet" when company management's are colluding together to prevent just that?

Management and ownership has not only been organizing to protect their interests, they've even crossed the line into breaking the law, as they did here. They seem to have done well for themselves by organizing together for their collective interests, I think it would be a good idea for tech workers to take a page from their play book and do the same.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Commuting from Berkeley/Oakland to SV is not fun.

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

#253
post #139

As a new grad about to enter the workforce, I find this more than a little disconcerting. Do any experienced engineers have any advice on how to avoid this kind of mistreatment?

Know your market value. You can find this out by doing occasional job interviews and receiving offers. Don't view this as wasting your time or theirs, if a truly exceptional offer is made you would take it, and you often don't know if they are exceptional until late in the process. (e.g. my second job out of school nearly didn't happen because after the second interview I thought the role wasn't interesting, fortunately the hiring manager persisted and found a role in the company that I enjoyed, I stayed at that company for 5 successful years)

Learn how to negotiate, use those job offers from above to practice countering on an offer. Realize that raises are negotiations too, and in negotiations before the raise comes you need to prepare your boss properly. E.g. Weeks/months before raise season remind your boss about your accomplishments. Remind your boss about your accomplishments, it's not bragging if you do it right.

Finally, just as you manage your career by learning technical skills you need to manage your career by learning soft skills, and other career advancing techniques. I wish I had books to recommend, but my lessons were all learned through mistakes.

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

>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 This is plain wrong. You can very easily shift and people do shift. You just interview with a different company, just like a citizen would.

No, its not that simple. The new company still has to file a petition for H1B, its just not subject to quota like a first time H1B.

its not hard but no way is it as simple as being a citizen.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programmers only interact with other programmers or managers This is the problem half the time. Nerds in childish t-shirts want to sit around pecking out code in isolation instead of taking full responsibility for their work by putting on a jacket and working the organization. This is why IT projects are consistently such disasters and why executives have the idea to get cheap grunts to do this stuff under a layer…

I think you have a certain narrative about how the world works that you'd like the facts to fit into, but the facts - at least in Silicon Valley - don't actually fit into them. I doubt I'll be able to change your mind, but for bystanders' benefit: The reason that programmers don't dress to impress is that their work product - the value that they add to other people - has nothing to do with their appearance. A program…

> Certainly in the one metric shared across all professions - money - engineers at top tech companies are not being taken advantage of by management, nor are they "cheap grunts". A senior Google engineer makes more than all than about 2 of the salaries listed on the first page of a GlassDoor CEO search

That's completely irrelevant. The point is not whether Google engineers make enough money to be comfortable, or an amount that other people would consider "a lot", or anything like that. The point is that "all" the relevant big tech companies in SV colluded, prisoner's dilemma style, to pay them less than they would have if there were no collusion.

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

#256
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?

Look at a typical software developer salary in SF vs a typical software developer salary in Chicago, adjust for cost of living, the difference between SF salary and adjusted Chicago salary is the depression For example, demand in SF is much higher than Chicago so SF salary should be >> Chicago * cost of living adjustment. My guess is it's lower

I looked at this calculation for Minneapolis versus SF a while back, and salaries were definitely lower in SF than Minneapolis * cost of living.

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

#257
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.

Is this the first negative thing you've read about him? None of them are flattering at all, and most of them are at the scumbag/crook level.

And yet he is celebrated in books, media, and movies. That's setting the right example for the kids!

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

#258
post #139

As a new grad about to enter the workforce, I find this more than a little disconcerting. Do any experienced engineers have any advice on how to avoid this kind of mistreatment?

There are five courses of action:

⚫ Be ownership. Start your own company. You'll rapidly find that the same numerical collusion advantages which apply to large employers are even more applicable to VC and funders, and that the game they play is for control. Even Jobs got screwed out of his own company.

⚫ Opt out of the game. Welcome to the world of post-growth economics and the impact that has for wages everywhere.

⚫ Move to where hiring is growing. I've quoted Smith above on collusion. He also has advice for where to find rising wages: "It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest." (Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VII, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...) So, if you can emigrate somewhere with rising employment, you'll do better. The problem of course is the same as for the 3rd option: growth is flattening everywhere.

⚫ Unionize. Good luck with that, as Silicon Valley has been hugely resistant to union organization, in no small part due to the contrary-to-their-own interests brainwashing of Libertarian indoctrination. Even if you don't believe it, I can all but guarantee that the suggestion of forming a union will bring the denouncers out of the woodwork. If you do want to proceed, find ways of removing them from the conversation. There are publications from civil rights, unionization, and nonviolent revolutionary movements detailing derailing tactics and how to respond to them. The Albert Einstein Institution's book list is a good start: http://www.aeinstein.org/english/ . In particular, From Dictatorship to Democracy. Studying how opposition movements are disrupted is also helpful. For these, go to the source. FBI's COINTELPRO and HOODWINK documents (the YELLCASING is their thing), the Lewis Powell memo: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/ http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms...

⚫ Suck it up and accept it. You'll be making better bank than most salaried workers, at least while you're working. The rare superstar may do significantly better. Odds are good you'll work in startup serfdom for 10-20 years, then find yourself on the aged side of hip, or whatever the cool kids are calling it then. Assuming there is a Silicon Valley in another 10-20 years. There are a few bigger epochal changes on the horizon. At least having read this you'll begin to understand where you stand and how the game works.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

east palo alto ? are. you. serious ?

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

#260
Does anyone know more about how the institutions which these men and women are perched at the top of, affect there attitudes about workers and their labor? I just can't understand what their motivations are, is it really just about maximizing the bottom line? Do they look at workers as just machines, which are fungible; instead of as human beings that are indispensable from their individuality? Is the institution the sole cause of this, or are these powerful positions in a electric field, only attracting particular forms of matter (and repelling others), or a combination thereof?
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