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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

#251

Post by anfilt »

koonsolo wrote: post #222
nine_k wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, it reads "in good faith" . This only works when an officer in question could not know (s)he is breaking a law. Knowingly doing illicit things is not covered, afaict.

Definitely so. "But my boss told me to kill that person, else I would lose my job :'("

As a civilian it would be hard to come up for a good faith reason why an employer could legally kill someone.

Hypothetically: A person at Apple might not know why they can't hire someone from Google. For all they know it could have been ordered over apple trying to steal Google trade secrets as part of a settlement. Lots of possible reasons why it could be legal. The employee just does not necessarily have the knowledge. So they could make a defense that assumed their employer was acting in good faith.

It's pretty much impossible to prove good faith in the instances of death, and theft. Generally, such things are reserved for governments either through war or (criminal executions) or property seizure. If your employer was the government you may be able to make a good faith defense if it was related to your job and it turns out the government was violating the law.

Also keep mind it's a defense not an immunity. Also the more severe action the harder it is for there to be a lawful reason. There are very few instances were someone could legally kill someone vs not hire someone. It's like orders of magnitude different.

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

#252

Post by jedberg »

jimmy1 wrote: post #228
deepakhj wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the early 1960s, CA’s population was 15 million & we built 250K-300K homes/year. Today, CA’s population is 40 million & we build 80K homes/year. So our population nearly tripled while housing production dropped by over 2/3. And people wonder why housing is so expensive."

Wow this is jaw dropping. > By one estimate from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the state needs to build 1.8 million units over the next seven years just to keep pace with population growth You need to build about 257k just to keep up with growth, not to address any sort of shortage. This to me should sound like a builder's gold rush. Why are builders not flocking to CA to build? Are…

> Why are builders not flocking to CA to build?

NIMBYs. Builders want to build, but the people who already own won't let them in most cases. I live in Cupertino. They want to build 2000 units next to my house. Most of neighbors are against it because it will "change the character of the neighborhood". That is true, it will. But I'll be the farmers who lived here in the 1960s said the same thing when all of our houses were built as the farmers sold their land.

The main difference this time is that the current residents can't get rich selling their land because the developers want to build up, not out.

CA tried to solve this with SB 827, which would force upzoning near transit. Sadly, it was poorly written and failed to pass, but it was a good idea. It would have forced pretty much all of San Francisco to allow building medium size buildings in place of existing single family homes. And a lot of the rest of the Bay Area too.

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

#253

Post by acdc4life »

“A separate class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of 64,000 tech workers for an estimated $3 billion in lost wages.“

So they went through all this effort to save 3 billion/64000 = $46,875 per employee. Is that how it should be interpreted? If so, these executives are greedy scum.

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

#254

Post by deelowe »

e40 wrote: post #167
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 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.

Your friend of a friend lied to you. Comp is mostly based on level and performance and it's totally possible to have a higher level employee reporting to a lower level manager.

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

#255

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

GeekyBear wrote: post #189
zaphirplane wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not arguing the moral point. The parent poster said the threshold of the treatment becoming torture wasn’t crossed, you are saying torture is banned by the agreement. It needs to be torture for you point to have standing

How can the treatment of prisoners prove to be fatal without that treatment rising to the level of torture? As Obama put it, "We tortured some folks." He just refused to prosecute those guilty of ordering and carrying out that torture, despite our treaty obligation to do so.

Perhaps Obama was "just following orders" himself.

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

#256

Post by sage76 »

keepper wrote: post #139
kjar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> The market can decide that.

How, since they were not allowing the market to decide that.

> THATs who we should be fighting for.

It's not binary. Both fights are important.

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

#258

Post by animal531 »

jammygit wrote: post #79
munk-a wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Transfer of liability? There are candid emails between Steve jobs and Schmidt about the topic. Edit: They made a minor settlement and there was a lawsuit that got a tiny amount of press. http://time.com/42322/steve-jobs-chilling-response-after-get... Edit 2: there was not even a slap on the wrist legally speaking: "The proposed settlement, which if accepted by the court will be in effect for five years, prohibits the…

Yeah that's ridiculous. A real penalty would be for example to not allow them to appoint new employees for 5 years.

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

#259

Post by PunksATawnyFill »

jammygit wrote: post #79
munk-a wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Transfer of liability? There are candid emails between Steve jobs and Schmidt about the topic. Edit: They made a minor settlement and there was a lawsuit that got a tiny amount of press. http://time.com/42322/steve-jobs-chilling-response-after-get... Edit 2: there was not even a slap on the wrist legally speaking: "The proposed settlement, which if accepted by the court will be in effect for five years, prohibits the…

Jobs was a liar. He also said no engineers were laid off from Pro Apps, when in fact half of Pro Apps engineers were fired at the end of the 2000s.

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

#260

Post by Robin_Message »

stirfrykitty wrote: post #120
munk-a wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an embarrassment of the victor and never celebrated - atrocious actors on the victorious side have been punished at times throughout history but I agree the bar is higher. It certainly isn't celebrated though - and informed societies can still be outraged (See Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, Yemenese drone strikes under Obama & Trump, the Bay of Pigs, Guatemala... the general familiarity of this list is a testament t…

Depends on the situation. Let's say you have a hostile war captive (enemy combative of a high rank) who is the ONLY one who can provide you with critical, war-winning details. You (metaphorically) would want to do whatever it took to secure those details. I've been in hairy situations before. Everything Hollywood depicts goes out the window. Embedded reporters get a newfound respect for troops once they ride out just…

The problem with this kind of consequentialist ethics is that thinking the end justifies the means generally makes you very vulnerable to manipulation by others who tell you what the ends will be and then ask you to do the means.

Remember, Guantanamo also had taxi drivers and aid workers in it. How many of them are you willing to torture in order to find the terrorist you've captured and maybe get some information that might help stop a future terrorist plot? The hypothetical of capturing a top general with a tight deadline provides a terrible intuition when it comes to torture.

But that is exactly the kind of intuition Rumsfeld et al wanted people to be thinking about, in order to justify torture^W enhanced interrogation techniques.

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