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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

#61

Post by mehrdada »

skybrian wrote: post #51
cliffy wrote: post #35

The settlement is laughable given the number of people whose salaries were held down as a result of this collusion. It's not just workers at these companies that suffer. It has a network effect of holding salaries down at companies which aren't even colluding. Another example of (usually giant) companies deciding to risk breaking the law because its cheaper in the long run to do so.

It was a long time ago. I got a raise out of it and later retired early, and I'm a pretty average software engineer, for Google anyway. Your argument that I "suffered" when actually they treated me very well by almost any standard isn't going to work. Based on what I've heard about current salaries for in-demand people, I think it's safe to say that any depressing effect on software engineers' salaries is long gone?…

The fact that some "average software engineers" got lucky to join at the right time and a sweet deal (by some metric) does not make a criminal act okay that makes thousands of more software engineers who would join later and did not share the same economic upside suffer. Note that people who joined Google before 2010 are a small minority of the current employees.

> I think it's safe to say that any depressing effect on software engineers' salaries is long gone?

Every problem can be solved with one level of indirection. At scale, all of the big tech report their salary stats to survey firms who "aggregate" them and give it back to them. Yup.

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

#63

Post by omega3 »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #14
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 kids, profit is for capital , never labor. Know the difference!"

Are you paraphrasing here or quoting directly? What is the source?

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

#65

Post by kjar »

inlined wrote: post #4

One of the things that made my mind explode was that this was blatantly recommended in The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Horowitz argues that your relationship with your business partner is worth more than the employee and you shouldn’t entertain solicitations for employment.

Reminds me of the work “Disposable People”

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

#66

Post by skybrian »

cobookman wrote: post #17
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…

There is a lot of ageism in this industry. I'd be curious if SWE at FAANG is equivalent to football players in the NFL. Aka, Sure you might make more but what's the earnings over total career?

The salaries and other compensation are often high enough that if you live modestly, invest your money, and most importantly, the stock goes up, the career might be over when you realize you have enough to retire early.

But as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

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

#67

Post by Nevermark »

inlined wrote: post #4

One of the things that made my mind explode was that this was blatantly recommended in The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Horowitz argues that your relationship with your business partner is worth more than the employee and you shouldn’t entertain solicitations for employment.

Balancing the risk/reward of poaching employees from a partner company makes sense.

This is not about backroom agreements to artificially keep wages down, but about weighing the pro's and con's any particular action which could derail important projects.

If the employee is worth more than the risks of poaching them, then do so. If not, it would be foolhardy to do so.

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

#68

Post by Animats »

stcredzero wrote: post #27
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 bu…

It's not determinative, but it shows who to investigate.

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

#69

Post by arebop »

drdeadringer wrote: post #8

I don't know how this is still a super secret unknown to the public at large. This has been reported for years. What am I missing?

These employees aren't very sympathetic victims. Nobody wants to hear about how some 5%-er with a bunch of good alternatives should be making more and having more choices about who to work for.

You'll even find in the comments here that many of the affected employees themselves feel they got at worst a fair deal, because after all some (most!) workers get paid less and work in harsher conditions and so forth.

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

#70

Post by yardie »

maxxxxx wrote: post #32
samatman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has been shown repeatedly that boards won't do much and repeated fines are more and more just another cost of business. Either the fines need to be raised to a level where the company loses profit for one or more years or we need to go after individuals.

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