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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

#261

Post by yardie »

maxxxxx wrote: post #74
yardie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t bother to fine them. They’ll just use that to punish employees and shareholders. Make the executives liable.

Agree about the executives but if the shareholders and employees feel enough pain they may actually do something. Right now the "punishment" doesn't cause anybody enough pain.

Shareholder pain will be slightly lower dividend or stock price. Employee pain will be unemployment. And I think that is what drives most of these low level fines. Regulators recognize the company wouldn't suffer in the short term from large fines.

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

#262

Post by feenix566 »

nine_k wrote: post #210
module0000 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 1. "Just following orders" isn't now and has never been a valid excuse Yes it is, see: https://definitions.uslegal.com/c/corporate-immunity/ That said..I agree with the spirit of your post. The only officers that cannot receive corporate immunity are the CEO and CFO - they can be held liable in criminal and civil litigation.

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.

Is there a law in California specifically prohibiting colluding with other employers? If there isn't, then you can't make the case they should have known they were breaking it.

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

#263

Post by feenix566 »

JDulin wrote: post #194
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 c…

> A corporation ... is a collection of incentives, with men inside directed or manipulated by those incentives ... "Finding more moral men" is not a plan.

I couldn't agree more, and that analysis applies to all systems of human interaction, not just corporations. I wish people would use that framework to understand everything, specifically government.

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

#264

Post by jimmy1 »

jedberg wrote: post #252
jimmy1 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have heard the NIMBY argument many times before but I just don't buy it. It's too easy of a target. Plus there is so much land. Ok fine, won't build in your backyard, I'll build in the next yard over. We have this exact situation in a town called Davidson, NC where I am from. Builders can't build there. So they built in the hundreds of thousands of acres immediately right next to it. Problem solved.

Plus people exercising their right to let things happen or not happen on land and electing to do what is in their own best interest sounds fine to me and nothing to be vilifying. It sounds like to me the "NIMBY" finger pointers are just upset that low cost housing isn't built in neighborhoods they want to live in -- that is, it is being portrayed as some altruistic goal but really has self interest in mind.

Even if I conceded your point about NIMBYism, it may explain a very small part of the problem, but it absolutely does not explain why builders are not flocking to a state with a 117k/yr housing shortfall to figure it out.

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

#265

Post by maxxxxx »

yardie wrote: post #261
maxxxxx wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree about the executives but if the shareholders and employees feel enough pain they may actually do something. Right now the "punishment" doesn't cause anybody enough pain.

Shareholder pain will be slightly lower dividend or stock price. Employee pain will be unemployment. And I think that is what drives most of these low level fines. Regulators recognize the company wouldn't suffer in the short term from large fines.

I guess the fines will have to be much higher so the dividend is not just slightly lower. If employees knew their job is at stake they may also be less wiling to play along. I work in medical and we sometimes get pressure to cut corners but employees know that the FDA may shut down the whole thing so they refuse.

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

#266

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

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…

Builders seem to be following the same playbook as the private equity firms who bought up homes to rent/flip, which is to limit supply to keep upward pressure on prices.

I've seen regulations brought up as a reason why there isn't much new construction, but other states with similar building code/environmental regulations don't seem to have the same problems.

The exception to this IMO are zoning regulations. When those limit high density housing, eg condos/apartments, they can serve to substantially increase home prices. But, that's assuming builders are willing to build enough units fast enough to actually reduce unit prices, and they've consistently shown they will not do that.

Prop 13 could contribute somewhat too, but I imagine it's effect is also much smaller than private equity and builders limiting supply.

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

#267

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

jimmy1 wrote: post #264
jedberg wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I have heard the NIMBY argument many times before but I just don't buy it. It's too easy of a target. Plus there is so much land. Ok fine, won't build in your backyard, I'll build in the next yard over. We have this exact situation in a town called Davidson, NC where I am from. Builders can't build there. So they built in the hundreds of thousands of acres immediately right next to it. Problem solved. Plus people exe…

NIMBYism alone also isn't the problem per say, it's zoning plus NIMBYism that makes things hard. A vocal minority can effectively block zoning changes, which prevents developers from building high density housing. This is exacerbated by CA's so-so to terrible public transit. High density housing is far more annoying for whoever lives nearby when everyone living there has a car or two and the builder didn't also build a parking structure for those cars.

This is mostly a problem for coastal California too because land is limited and expensive. In inland California a developer can just buy and build someplace else.

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

#268

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

TheTrotters wrote: post #225
chillacy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a nit: Inflation is the result of too much money chasing too few goods, so not everything increases in price. Electronics and mass consumer goods typically stay the same price. Only goods which have limited supply and no substitution get more expensive, like housing. Otherwise everything else makes sense.

You’re confusing inflation with real prices. Inflation means that the level of prices rises. If house prices rise because local government forbid new construction then that’s an increase in real prices.

It's more complicated than that in coastal California. During the housing bubble, real prices were the same and new home permits were double to triple where they are now.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CASTHPI

http://1mcvsz24yrri2dwocy3w3fsm-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...

In that situation, relaxed lending standards and easy money from the Fed allowed a ton of money to flow into residential real estate.

Even though there's still easy money from the Fed, lending standards have tightened since then, and builders and private equity seem to be effectively limiting supply to keep home prices high.

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

#269

Post by baud147258 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #195
codedokode wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At least prices in Canada are net, tax is added when paying.

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

#270

Post by khalilravanna »

hopler wrote: post #244
khalilravanna wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the number of 64,000 employees is correct, even that $3B seems like a pittance. One commenter wrote their wage jumped by $100k the year after this settlement. $3B / 64k ~= $50k per person, less than half that number[1]. In the end they only had to pay an amount that was My guess is the executives who orchestrated this got a big bonus as a result. And why wouldn't they? They optimized for the corporation's good. Ho…

It was orchestrated by CEOs. They get big bonuses regardless. Also you are conflating base salary with total comp in your example.

A fair point about CEOs but the leaders of engineering had to sign off on this all along the way.

Of course my math is back of the envelope and nothing to go by but it definitely hints at the massive discrepancy.

To your point about salary/comp, Netflix is at least one example of a company that allows (allowed?) comp in the form of 100% salary.

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