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

161–170 of 289 posts

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

#161

Post by TimTheTinker »

pertymcpert wrote: post #141
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…

It's just exposed and accelerated an underlying issue in housing policy. When demand goes up supply is also supposed to go up to meet demand in a healthy market, but because of artificial supply restrictions this is what happened. The government is to blame.

New housing development plans in the Valley, especially plans for higher-density developments, suffer from zoning restrictions arising out of “NIMBY” attitudes at the local level.

However, I don’t think that’s the state or federal government’s responsibility to change. If American government is truly to be “of the people, by the people”, then the people’s decisions at the local government level ought to be respected, including letting them suffer the consequences of bad choices.

If anything, the local zoning issues should be fought via campaigns to persuade local voters of better approaches. Fight a bad idea with a better idea. Not every local policy problem should be fixed with a new law from the state or federal legislation, or with federal/state funding incentives.

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

#162

Post by QuercusMax »

fjp wrote: post #41
munk-a wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wha…

I can't understand how people don't realize that putting some of our massive, massive wealth towards building a better society would not benefit them. Can you imagine how many more inventions and advancements there would be if everyone had access to good education? Didn't have to worry about going bankrupt or dying because they can't meet medical expenses? If we put money into things that don't necessarily directly d…

I think you probably meant to say: "I can't understand how people don't realize that putting some of our massive, massive wealth towards building a better society would benefit them." (removing the extra 'not')

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

#163

Post by nostrademons »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #152
nostrademons wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno - my in-laws bought their house in 1986 on a single engineer's salary (then renovated it into a bigger one when my mother-in-law went back to work). I also had a number of coworkers at Google who bought houses in 2009/2010 as single tech workers. Heck, I could've done so myself (2BR condos in MTV were going for $400K at the time), and am kicking myself for not doing it. Perhaps 09-10 was a bit of an aberratio…

Fair enough, but where? Back in the 80's when we bought our house in Sunnyvale, we could have bought one for much less either Livermore, Fremont/Milpitas, or South San Jose for much less but the commute would be high. Pretty consistently the outlying areas are about half the cost of the cities actually by the bay. Would love to hear more data points.

Cupertino, Cambrian Park, Sunnyvale, downtown San Jose, and Los Altos.

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

#164

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

munk-a wrote: post #16
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…

In a frictionless system, sure. When lawyers cost so much, this kind of chain-of-lawsuits system would be a huge payout to lawyers.

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

#165

Post by joshuamorton »

pathseeker wrote: post #155
ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

The critical thing here is that if pay was uncontrolled, then skilled employees could market themselves to the highest payer, and that would put more of the profits of the work of those employees into employee pay instead of into company margin (aka profit). It is pretty clear when you look at the revenue per employee numbers at some of these 'digital product' companies (specifically Google and Facebook), that rank a…

>equally with management in the returns. Managers at Google don't make much more and in some cases don't make more than the SWEs they manage. Did you mean to say shareholders?

I expect he means rank and file employees including middle management vs. Execs, which is probably limited to the set of people who are VP or above. (maybe Director, but I think the data would disagree).

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

#166

Post by john_jr_smith »

This was replaced by all big tech companies matching market rates. Google pays 90-95 percentile of the market. Apple pays 90-95 percentile of market. They reevaluate each year. But since they are the biggest, highest paying ones, the increase in salaries is minimal.

Consider: From 2013 to 2018, Google's revenue rose 2.5x. Google's employee count rose 1.8x. Google's salaries did not rise 33%. You might argue that there is more supply, but that's extremely unlikely. CS degree graduations rose single digit percent (if at all), and graduates make a small portion of the total working force. The same calculation I'd expect to hold for any of the big five companies.

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

#167

Post by e40 »

pathseeker wrote: post #155
ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

The critical thing here is that if pay was uncontrolled, then skilled employees could market themselves to the highest payer, and that would put more of the profits of the work of those employees into employee pay instead of into company margin (aka profit). It is pretty clear when you look at the revenue per employee numbers at some of these 'digital product' companies (specifically Google and Facebook), that rank a…

>equally with management in the returns. Managers at Google don't make much more and in some cases don't make more than the SWEs they manage. Did you mean to say shareholders?

I was told by someone in HR that has HR friends at Google that the manager of a group always makes at least as much as the highest paid employee in that group.

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

#170

Post by cubano »

Spooky23 wrote: post #46
i_am_proteus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason modern corporate bureaucracies are so bloated and complicated is to reduce the personal risk to executives by muddying the apparent decision-making process at the top. Executives can make it look like they're people who execute complicated processes rather than decision-makers. They end up taking credit when things go well, and they might look bad when things go poorly, but they essentially never g…

That’s a very one dimensional view. Bureaucracy exists to standardize control and improve consistency. Think of a group of friends who go out for dinner. When the group grows, you generally need to set rules to avoid folks stuffing on tips or itemizing their bill to save a buck.

On a side note, he wouldn't be a friend for very long if I knew the tool didn't tip.
Post reply on HN