Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

whenrulesdontapply.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 289 posts

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#11

Post by turc1656 »

Notice the difference: "Top executives of leading tech companies secretly agreed among themselves not to hire each other’s employees"

"...brought charges against the companies"

They should have been indicting both, or just the executives for their explicit role in this criminal behavior. I really detest the lack of individual accountability in all these cases when we deal with large companies. If this was a couple of small, local competitors who were the only two [whatever] in the area and they did this, I guarantee you the owners would be individually indicted.

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#13

Post by deogeo »

keepper wrote: post #2

So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. The other side of the coin is that these companies pay WAY ABOVE average salaries. I'm intimately familiar with this having FAANG companies average of 50% more compensation than average. Especially outside of the bay area. Typical range TC Sr. SDE in nyc: 150-250k + Bonus. Typical range TC for Sr. SDE in nyc: for Google/Facebook/Amazon 300-400k ( and goes h…

Now compare the wages against CEO and shareholder compensation.

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#14

Post by dropit_sphere »

keepper wrote: post #2

So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. The other side of the coin is that these companies pay WAY ABOVE average salaries. I'm intimately familiar with this having FAANG companies average of 50% more compensation than average. Especially outside of the bay area. Typical range TC Sr. SDE in nyc: 150-250k + Bonus. Typical range TC for Sr. SDE in nyc: for Google/Facebook/Amazon 300-400k ( and goes h…

"Remember kids, profit is for capital, never labor. Know the difference!"

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#15

Post by [deleted] »

turc1656 wrote: post #11

Notice the difference: " Top executives of leading tech companies secretly agreed among themselves not to hire each other’s employees" "...brought charges against the companies " They should have been indicting both, or just the executives for their explicit role in this criminal behavior. I really detest the lack of individual accountability in all these cases when we deal with large companies. If this was a couple…

[deleted]

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#16

Post by munk-a »

turc1656 wrote: post #11

Notice the difference: " Top executives of leading tech companies secretly agreed among themselves not to hire each other’s employees" "...brought charges against the companies " They should have been indicting both, or just the executives for their explicit role in this criminal behavior. I really detest the lack of individual accountability in all these cases when we deal with large companies. If this was a couple…

I agree, there is far too much ability to transfer liability in the modern world which lets this sort of stuff get abstract and easier to dismiss. Companies should be held accountable to the extent their growth has encouraged bad behavior, but individuals at that company committed the behavior and, if they were instructed to do so and blindly followed then...

1. "Just following orders" isn't now and has never been a valid excuse

2. Go after the coercers or modify our understanding of liability to allow those targeted to make the argument that their superiors deserve to repay them every bit of penalty they owed.

Really, in the modern world, just sue someone and tell them they're on the hook but they'll be allowed to sue whoever is responsible for their portion of the responsibility and watch this all work itself out quickly.

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#17

Post by cobookman »

keepper wrote: post #2

So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. The other side of the coin is that these companies pay WAY ABOVE average salaries. I'm intimately familiar with this having FAANG companies average of 50% more compensation than average. Especially outside of the bay area. Typical range TC Sr. SDE in nyc: 150-250k + Bonus. Typical range TC for Sr. SDE in nyc: for Google/Facebook/Amazon 300-400k ( and goes h…

There is a lot of ageism in this industry. I'd be curious if SWE at FAANG is equivalent to football players in the NFL.

Aka, Sure you might make more but what's the earnings over total career?

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#18

Post by munk-a »

inlined wrote: post #4

One of the things that made my mind explode was that this was blatantly recommended in The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Horowitz argues that your relationship with your business partner is worth more than the employee and you shouldn’t entertain solicitations for employment.

This is why, as an employee, I am not willing to put my neck out for my employer - modern society and goings on are a pretty clear lesson that employees that take risks for a company end up eating them and nobody higher up cares (unless it's essentially free to care, which is more easily explained by self-interested behavior than any sort of altruism).

Re: How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers

#19

Post by munk-a »

izzydata wrote: post #3
keepper wrote: post #2

So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. The other side of the coin is that these companies pay WAY ABOVE average salaries. I'm intimately familiar with this having FAANG companies average of 50% more compensation than average. Especially outside of the bay area. Typical range TC Sr. SDE in nyc: 150-250k + Bonus. Typical range TC for Sr. SDE in nyc: for Google/Facebook/Amazon 300-400k ( and goes h…

Who gets to judge how much an engineer is worth to a company making billion upon billions of dollars a year? If some of these engineers are what is enabling these companies and their executives to make millions then maybe they really are worth a 1 million dollar salary.

I think the fair thing to realize, as a society, is that corporate profit taxes just make sense. If a company is operating in a high profit margin line of business it has more than enough money to invest in future growth, fairly compensate employers and owners _and_ provide a societal benefit for all those other community members that work in less high profit margin societies. Sure, you've got good healthcare and what not, why not make sure your barista has the same access before buying that third house.

I applaud anyone who decides to do this of their own volition, but I think we can agree this makes sense societally and it'd just be easier if a third party was responsible for shifting the money around as needed and made sure everyone was paying proportionate to their ability.

Post reply on HN