How Apple, Google, and other tech companies conspired against their own workers • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by samatman » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

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 would agree with both.

But bringing charges against a company is important. Boards of directors are supposed to, well, direct the executives, not look the other way while they break the law and abuse their employees.

The way to encourage this is to hit the company, hard, right in the wallet.

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

#22

Post by fullshark » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

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 this happened before FB / Netflix / Unicorns started an open war for talent and blew salaries up.

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

#23

Post by munk-a » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

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.

Yea, this is where things get really stupid. The contribution of shareholders is very close to nil - the CEO may be the most impactful employee (though I think they're honestly not nearly as important as modern society says, being a replaceable cog themselves) but they are not worth the equivalent of 20 or 5000 employees.

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

#24

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#25

Post by shdh » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #21

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 would agree with both. But bringing charges against a company is important. Boards of directors are supposed to, well, direct the executives, not look the other way while they break the law and abuse their employees. The way to encourage this is to hit the company, hard, right in the wallet.

The cost was probably less than the profit in this outcome for each of the companies.

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

#26

Post by ummonk » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

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…

You've got the timeline backwards. The compensation only went up after this collusion ended.

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

#27

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #12

It should be possible to crunch through LinkedIn histories and determine where there's collusion between employers. If moves between employer A and employer B are lower than between A to C and C to B, something funny is going on.

With something as complex as employment decisions, there could be a lot of confounding factors. Example: What if A and B are located somewhere more desirable? There may naturally be a desire to stay where you are and less impetus to move. A and B might be in a class of company which confers more prestige, so there would be less impetus to move. A and B might entail more risk somehow. There are many of these.

Using bulk statistics to show things like bias and collusion is fraught with these issues.

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

#28

Post by turc1656 » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #21

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 would agree with both. But bringing charges against a company is important. Boards of directors are supposed to, well, direct the executives, not look the other way while they break the law and abuse their employees. The way to encourage this is to hit the company, hard, right in the wallet.

Oh I definitely agree. Both should ideally be charged because these people were acting on behalf of the company and were in management positions, which makes the company legally liable for their actions.

But if I only get to choose one to charge, I go the individual route any day of the week because it reduces/removes the moral hazard of getting to shift your criminal activity to an intangible, legal entity like a corporation. Sure, you'd never get the $435M settlement from these people, but once everyone knows the government is coming after them personally, I would bet my last dollar that this type of crap virtually never happens again.

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

#29

Post by citizenkeen » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #21

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 would agree with both. But bringing charges against a company is important. Boards of directors are supposed to, well, direct the executives, not look the other way while they break the law and abuse their employees. The way to encourage this is to hit the company, hard, right in the wallet.

But that's half the problem - we never do. These kind of criminal charges result in a few million dollars worth of fines. It's never enough to really hurt a company the way that losing one year in jail hurts a person.

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

#30

Post by i_am_proteus » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

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…

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 get held criminally liable. Nice work if you can get it.