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

whenrulesdontapply.com

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

#131

Post by goobynight »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #106
kjar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serfdom

Serfdom doesn't pay that well. Note well: I'm not saying that this is OK, either legally or morally. I'm just saying that the parent is way overhyping the problem.

Naw. You're underhyping it.

Creating this artificial ceiling in the low 6 figures is awful, regardless of how badly people making less than that are getting screwed. As far as I'm concerned, they're as hopeless as a bucket of crabs and we shouldn't use them as a bar or relative bar for anything.

Do I-bankers look at they're comp and say "yeah that's pretty good. I'm ok getting screwed out of any more"?

I think we should always be advocating for our group as hard as we can.

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

#132

Post by gcbw2 »

nostrademons wrote: post #122

So I was at one of these companies when the scandal broke. I didn't get screwed quite so much as my coworkers, since I'd only been working there for a year or so. The settlement was a joke - I got about $1100, but my compensation increased by roughly $100K/year the year after the cartel broke, and kept rising. Can't say I'm terribly pleased about either the wage-fixing or the settlement, but... My wife works in phila…

You are widely assuming that because a pie was split to 10 people instead of one, there are more money buying houses. That's plain wrong. There is still a single pie. Houses were bought just the same, but by one person instead of 10. I don't know how much more first home purchases facilitate this when there are 10 people instead of one, but I doubt it had any impact since those folks are buying more than one house themselves anyway.

In the end, the only thing that prevents housing prices/bubbles, is denser desirable residential areas.

There might be other factors, but one is definitely NOT money distribution schemes from the top 1% to the top 10%.

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

#133

Post by nostrademons »

gcbw2 wrote: post #132
nostrademons wrote: post #122

So I was at one of these companies when the scandal broke. I didn't get screwed quite so much as my coworkers, since I'd only been working there for a year or so. The settlement was a joke - I got about $1100, but my compensation increased by roughly $100K/year the year after the cartel broke, and kept rising. Can't say I'm terribly pleased about either the wage-fixing or the settlement, but... My wife works in phila…

You are widely assuming that because a pie was split to 10 people instead of one, there are more money buying houses. That's plain wrong. There is still a single pie. Houses were bought just the same, but by one person instead of 10. I don't know how much more first home purchases facilitate this when there are 10 people instead of one, but I doubt it had any impact since those folks are buying more than one house th…

One person doesn't need 10 houses.

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

#134

Post by keepper »

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.

you're right. But there's MANY other companies making similar profits.. yet not of them pay anything similar?

I think you guys can't separate your dislike for these companies, with an actual, thoughtful analysis.

Most oil companies make similar profits.. yet the average oil engineer makes 80-100k. With a lot more risk, and in similar high demand as a software engineer.

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

#136

Post by tbarbugli »

> estimated $3 billion in lost wages. Before the case went to trial, the companies settled for a total of $435 million

So you get busted doing something illegal and walk away with a 2.5Billion in your pocket and 0 jail time. How do you expect execs to not do this all the time?

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

#137

Post by ChuckMcM »

nostrademons wrote: post #122

So I was at one of these companies when the scandal broke. I didn't get screwed quite so much as my coworkers, since I'd only been working there for a year or so. The settlement was a joke - I got about $1100, but my compensation increased by roughly $100K/year the year after the cartel broke, and kept rising. Can't say I'm terribly pleased about either the wage-fixing or the settlement, but... My wife works in phila…

Another (minor) nit, in my experience you have always needed to be a dual tech income to afford a house in the cities near the bay. My wife and I bought our first house in 1984 for $153,000 and it required us to both be working well paid tech jobs. You can also buy a house usually if you have a lucky equity break and can use that to pay big chunk down so the mortgage is affordable on a single income but as far as I can tell buying a house on a single engineer's income, that is near the center of activity, hasn't been true since the early 70's or so.

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

#138

Post by keepper »

deogeo wrote: post #13
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.

How about we compare to engineering wages in other companies with similar profits? Pretty much any other large engineering company. Or how about the oil industry? where profits are higher, the risk to life way higher, yet engineers make 80-100k?

What you have in these companies are single large shareholders vs institutional or family shareholders. That's what you're ultimately uncomfortable with. One person having so much net work.

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

#139

Post by keepper »

kjar wrote: post #6
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…

This argument is very weak IMO. Paraphrased “I got paid happily, industry collusion to suppress wages is therefore OK”

Have you actually look at wages in other industries?

Why are we focusing on the companies that actually do PAY ABOVE. how about we focus on the industries that UNDER pay. Someone getting compensated many times the average income is not the person we should trying to advocate for. The market can decide that.

That industrial or service worker not getting paid a living wage. THATs who we should be fighting for.

I love how i'm getting downvoted for my parent comment, but no one has taken the time to compare to other industries and companies with similar profits, who pay their engineering talent SUBSTANTIALLY less. Oil industry has similar profits, yet pays engineers 80-100k.

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

#140

Post by rtkwe »

GeekyBear wrote: post #127
crowdpleaser wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just following orders" was a valid excuse until the Nuremberg trials.

"Just following orders" has been used as recently as the Obama administration as an excuse not to prosecute CIA operatives for torture, despite American law on the books that explicitly forbids using it as an excuse for torture.

Isn't the main part that they were given legal guidance that what they were doing was not legally torture though? There's a bit in another article that got posted today [0] about that.

> Guantánamo leadership wanted to understand the legal gymnastics that would be required to implement a program of their own. “Torture has been prohibited by international law, but the language of the statutes is written vaguely,”

and

> Bush Administration lawyers had taken the position that “enemy combatants” could be held indefinitely, without trials, and that in order for something to qualify as “torture” it “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-da...

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