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

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

#191

Post by AnimalMuppet »

goobynight wrote: post #131
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sho…

Absolutely everything you say could be true, and that still wouldn't make it serfdom, nor even close.

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

#192

Post by OrgNet »

pathseeker wrote: post #153
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…

>So now house prices in Mountain View and Sunnyvale go from $800K -> $2.4M, This just proves that the housing crises was the same before. A regular middle-class income cannot afford an $800k home. The problem is the same before and after: there isn't enough supply for people who want homes. Until you look at sales numbers and supply, your analysis is meaningless. Increased wages don't make housing prices increase. >n…

I guess if they insist in staying in this area, they need to start building tiny homes neighbourhoods...

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

#193

Post by thereare5lights »

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…

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

That's not true. Just look at Lt. William Calley.

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

#194

Post by JDulin »

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…

This is an important point, and I couldn't agree more.

This idea overwhelms me when I read the newest filings and indictments of pharmaceutical companies in the opioid crisis. A corporation, fundamentally, cannot "learn lessons" like people do. It is a collection of incentives, with men inside directed or manipulated by those incentives. If gently nudging 47,000 people a year to kill themselves with overdoses would create more revenue for the corporation, after lawsuit settlements, than not, they would likely do it all over again. Even if you change the men making the decisions - "Finding more moral men" is not a plan.

Executives must have skin in the game, because the possible upside to their career at the highest levels of American business are too great to hope they'll take a moral stand. The potential upside for Richard Sackler, and John Kapoor, and Steve Jobs is so high (Massive bonuses, stock prices), and the potential downside so low (They are fired, with a generous golden parachute), they are willing to take the chance they'll get away with it. The most likely outcome is that attorneys will get rich, and nothing much else.

The only solution to †his type of white collar crime and leadership malfeasance is to make executives, the individual human beings, feel a tinge of reptilian fear in their gut that they may go to prison and the livelihood of their families could be put in danger.

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

#195

Post by TeMPOraL »

codedokode wrote: post #151
Spooky23 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry it was intended to be "stiffing". Usually when a group grows to a certain size, somebody will decide that rather than chipping in $30, because they "just had a salad", they'll toss in $12.95 for the salad, skip tax and tip and disappear.

Interesting. I can understand that they don't feel obliged to pay the tip, but how do they justify not paying the tax?

Are prices in US restaurants given net, instead of gross?

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

#196

Post by morganw »

gok wrote: post #89

> Top executives of leading tech companies secretly agreed among themselves not to hire each other’s employees That's not accurate. The agreement was about recruiters cold-calling each other's employees. Employees were free to reach out on their own between companies. Workers routinely switched companies while the agreement was in effect. I still think it was bullshit, but it wasn't quite as egregious as the article…

A lot of the discovery was never redacted & released; it remains under seal. I think there was more going on like a courtesy "we're going to hire your person. You want us to turn them down & earn a chit for the future?".

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

#197

Post by ChuckMcM »

nostrademons wrote: post #163
ChuckMcM wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool, well those would be the neighborhoods of choice. I guess I was just underpaid :-).

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

#198

Post by skybrian »

mrmuagi wrote: post #157
skybrian wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never OK or legal but it was settled. I can say that I was happy with the settlement. I cannot speak for others except to say that I don't think I'm all that much of an outlier, so don't write me off, bro. I still think this is a better argument than people arguing on behalf of hypothetical others they don't know anything about. One data point is better than zero. If you want to pursue justice, find a current…

Perhaps you got a better deal, but the settlement itself was pennies (/u/nostrademons) reported in this thread it was ~1K for him/her but the wage inflation the next year was around 100k). > I still think this is a better argument than people arguing on behalf of hypothetical others they don't know anything about. One data point is better than zero. Harh, harh. I must admit, I know nothing about a lot of things. Than…

Well, maybe but filling in those numbers would be hard.

The reason it makes sense to settle something like this is that it's a bunch of what-ifs and would be hard to prove either way. How important is recruiting for getting people to switch jobs when it's well known you can get a higher salary from job-hopping and some people already do it? Particularly since there is also competition from other companies not in on it, and many people ignore recruiters.

It's never going to be clear whether the settlement was overly generous (a bit of unearned money for us) or whether we would have done much better if it had never happened, so the settlement should have been higher. The illegal collusion stopped, so I guess that's successful government action? Since the market for software engineers was and still is pretty robust, it seems like you could just as easily argue that it was a big success or that it made little difference.

It just seems weird to question the settlement now. Would you want to re-argue a settlement for some bankers who supposedly got screwed a decade ago? Aren't there more important injustices in the world that are still going on?

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

#199

Post by ChuckMcM »

joshuamorton wrote: post #165
pathseeker wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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).

Yes, I was generally draw the line at the same point, although I expect Director is in there too. Much of the director and above remuneration is in stock and bonuses which benefits disproportionately from profit.

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

#200

Post by taurath »

mi100hael wrote: post #143
taurath wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's call settlements what they are: Bribes. Sometimes a bribe can bring justice, but in cases like this where they've created a systemic problem, the knock-on effects are too large for a bribe to ever be true justice. Thats why people need to go to jail.

Hardly. Settlements go to the plaintiffs, not the authorities. Plaintiffs have to agree to the settlement offer. The plaintiffs could have gone to trial over this matter. They chose not to because fundamentally they must have perceived that the guaranteed settlement money was better than the risk that they walk away empty-handed. If the case was a slam dunk, the settlement would have been higher or they would have ju…

The value to the defendant in this case to not admit responsibility or wrongdoing is of higher value to the company than it is to the plaintiffs. The settlement money could always end up being higher than the plaintiffs would get out of trial so they can avoid this. The end result - those with the resources/lawyers to become plaintiffs get their money, the companies get to keep doing what they want, and justice isn't actually done.
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