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Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

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Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#111

Post by asdfologist »

ma2rten wrote: post #72
suprgeek wrote: post #8

I have personally witnessed the frustrating side of this "no poaching" pact. A close friend was tired of the "Manager Arrogance" at one of these colluding companies. He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly. Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S. The wag…

Why not name the company? These companies deserve to be called out.

I'm guessing "Arrogant" = Apple and "Top Payer" = Google.

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#113

Post by pyrrhotech »

Engineers are so highly underpaid for the value they contribute to these companies. What's the average salary, $140k? It should be $300k, half a million total comp conservatively. Even at that amount, employers would still be getting a 50-75% margin on you. It's insane how much we are ripped off. Good eningeers can literally make or save companies 10s of millions a year, but are never compensated for it.

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#114

Post by pron »

smsm42 wrote: post #95
pron wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bureaucracy is annoying, slow, and unjust. But the situation now is much better than when the market was unregulated and robber barons did as they pleased. The American people suffered under the tyranny of the free market, they called on the government to save them, and it did. Nothing is perfect, and everything requires constant work and improvement, but we can use a gentle reminder now and then of how things used t…

>>> I think that regulation sometimes swings this way, but it is sometimes gradually, slowly, fixed The first sometimes is more like "almost always" and the second one is more like "almost never". Government regulation is a ratchet - easy to move one way, almost impossible to move the opposite way. >>> Lastly, where does the money come from? That, as I said, the question that is never asked. Because everybody feels e…

Do you think that without regulation there will be less barriers for the small players? Because I can assure you that the Robber Barons made sure there were no small players left. They either bought them out or forcefully drove them out of business. As much as regulation places a burden on the small guys, if you let the big guys alone at it, they will make it much harder. This isn't theoretical; that's how it actually happened (and if the US 100 years ago is too far back for you, look at Russia in the past 20 years).

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#115

Post by crazy1van »

usefulcat wrote: post #106
crazy1van wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market " I don't see any evidence that regulation stopped the behavior in this case. Perhaps the law will be used after the fact to sue or jail some people, but it doesn't seem to be what actually stopped the problem. As another poster said, the class action date ranges end in 2009 because Facebook (a private company) wouldn't play ball. Cap…

> Capitalism is a messy system, but it does tend to self correct in the long run. That's quite a generalization; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You are right. My statement is a huge generalization and I will never be able to find hard supporting evidence in the true sense.

However, my general sentiment stems from looking at the well being of the average person across human history. As humans shifted towards a system where people earned for themselves and kept what they earned, the typical human life improved at an astounding rate. On a much smaller scale, I've never seen people work harder than when they had stake in the outcome.

Anecdotes and generalizations, I fully admit. However, I bet many others with a much wider variety of life experiences than I have reach the same conclusion.

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#116

Post by mindslight »

pron wrote: post #42

This case is a beautiful demonstration of the dynamics of both "free market" and regulation. Free market dynamics demand (in this case as in all cases) that large players must never compete on prices or wages (as your competitors have the resources to fight back, so competition on price just makes everyone worse off). On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market (antitrust), as we…

> Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power ... after many years of cries ... Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government ... People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about

I'm confused - which side used the time machine?

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#117

Post by sliverstorm »

smsm42 wrote: post #110
sliverstorm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where that 40 thing comes from? My observation of discussions on HN about age discrimination. (I'm not a software engineer, so I have no personal touch with that job market) If you want to improve your personal situation, you don't have to wait for that. When the top employers are actively colluding against you, maybe yes, you do. You have no power against a company worth $400B, unless you band together with your pee…

You don't have to work in a company that is worth $400B. Of course, this company may pay the best, far over what other companies do - but then your complaints about your wage being artificially suppressed sound a lot like pure greed.

The problem isn't when one company pays better than everybody else. The problem is when the top ten different companies, all of which you would like to work for and all of which pay the best, agree with eachother that none of them will pay you what you are worth.

Now, I think you already understand that, and your counter was "well then someone will hop in and pay you what you are worth and they will suffer for colluding". But clearly that hasn't happened.

Seriously, the fact that the word "collude" can even be used here is a bad sign. If you pay attention to business history, that word is never good.

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#118

Post by wildpeaks »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #113

Engineers are so highly underpaid for the value they contribute to these companies. What's the average salary, $140k? It should be $300k, half a million total comp conservatively. Even at that amount, employers would still be getting a 50-75% margin on you. It's insane how much we are ripped off. Good eningeers can literally make or save companies 10s of millions a year, but are never compensated for it.

Make your own company if it's that easy to literally make or save 10s of millions a year, that way you can set the amount of own compensation.

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#119

Post by mpyne »

mindslight wrote: post #116
pron wrote: post #42

This case is a beautiful demonstration of the dynamics of both "free market" and regulation. Free market dynamics demand (in this case as in all cases) that large players must never compete on prices or wages (as your competitors have the resources to fight back, so competition on price just makes everyone worse off). On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market (antitrust), as we…

> Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power ... after many years of cries ... Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government ... People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about I'm confused - which side used the time machine?

I know this is HN, but maybe you should try to comprehend the message as it was obviously meant instead of choosing a possible interpretation that is illogical and then beating up on the interpretation you chose.

Re: Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

#120

Post by discardorama »

denzil_correa wrote: post #92
discardorama wrote: post #84

The sad part is that even though this behavior is illegal, no one will actually go to jail for this. Companies will pay a token fine (like Pixar and Lucasfilm did), and it'll be business as usual, but this time no emails and no documentation. Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change.

> Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change. That's pretty much it. Does the govt come down on corporations for such acts? One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents. More often than not, it is a fine and then things move on to find and execute a different loophole.

> One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents.

... except when the corporate honcho refuses to do the government's bidding; in that case, his ass thrown into prison. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...

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