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Comment by nezza-_- | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if in the ongoing process of this 'scandal' any numbers will appear on how many people were rejected because of such agreements. This is such an unfair move towards people who have great talent who might just be better off working for Google instead of Apple or vice versa because of their mindset. I hope for high penalties for the involved companies.

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Screw 'penalties.' Have you looked at Wall Street over the past decade? Every month or so there's some 'settlement' with a regulatory agency with some fine or the other for all kinds of issues. Class-action lawsuits also enrich the lawyers mostly. It would be best if the engineers themselves would get compensated, but not sure how it would be possible to identify the plaintiffs.

> Class-action lawsuits also enrich the lawyers mostly

Many companies love to use the public's negative sentiment against plaintiffs' lawyers to their favor, by invoking precisely the "class-action lawsuits also enrich the lawyers mostly" canard. This is a sleight of hand. The value of class-action suits is deterrence. Otherwise, it can be very profitable to steal a little bit of money or cause a little bit of harm to a large number of people. Look at it another way: if the alternative is the companies keeping the ill-gotten gains, is that better?

It's not necessarily sleight of hand when it's often true.

Sleight of hand is about manipulating attention. What I'm doing with my other hand that you're watching is "true" - what you're seeing that hand do is what it's doing - but you should have been paying attention to my elbow.

It's (let's grant) true that the lawyers make most of the money in a class action suit, but they're doing the work and taking much of the risk. Denying a legitimate claim to spite the lawyers is wrong if it means the company keeps whatever incentives lead it to hurt people.

I don't think I was necessarily disagreeing with your second point, although a person with a legitimate claim doesn't necessarily have to join the class-action unless forced to by the court.

As for sleight-of-hand, I was referring more to the context that somehow the lawyers are pulling a fast one when it's quite clear what the outcome shall be.

But I can see how my statement can be misunderstood.

And honestly, you'd have trouble convincing many people that wages were kept all that low. What's the median salary of an engineer in the Valley? [1] would seem to indicate a starting range in the low 6-figures is common. I don't know if these things go to juries, but if it came down to that, I imagine that an engineer complaining of a low 6-figure salary with stock options will convince a jury that (s)he is really being hurt that much will be very tough.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/record-salaries-for-valley-pr...

Edited to fix grammar.

At the same time, we're talking about a class of even more affluent people screwing engineers out of money. If that's what it looks like near the top, how does that play out down the pyramid? Not to mention, that this is an affront to free mobility of labor. Even if this is a "top 1% of the first world" problem, I do think it's worth taking a principled stand.

The problem is not just wages in the valley, for example the people on this article were in france.

And not only people that work in companies of the valley, for example, Google Brazil can pay here less than they pay in the valley, and other companies here end paying less than google pay, the result for example, is me. (I get 16k USD year, and I earn more than the average programmer here).

I'm sorry but 16k USD is not a good salary for a senior programmer in Brazil, at least not in Rio or São Paulo, working for a large company.

USD 26k to 37k is a common range for senior developers in my employer. And I'm not counting "13 salary", bonuses, overtime pay, health and dental care.

I doubt the average is less than 16k.

Then Catho, past companies where I worked and people I know are all liars?

The highest I was paid was 5k BRL as contractor (no 13, bonuses, overtime, etc...) and back then I was one of the highest paid persons of the company (that had about 50 programmers). I remember talking to other people and lots of people except DBAs and exotic language specialists working on IBM had also similar pays.

I have no ideas for companies you worked for, but I wouldn' trust Catho :-)

apinfo.com.br salary survey matches my experience for average salary. BRL 5k is an average salary for a senior developer. I was making BRL 4k after I graduated from UFRJ about five years ago.

A senior specialist (band 8) working for IBM earns way more than that, plus benefits.

The Valley is also an expensive place to live. I was at a conference in San Jose; and the organizers donated a portion of their income to a local Charity.

The charity organizer spoke a bit during one of the keynotes and said that any income under $70K was considered below poverty level due to the cost of living.

With that said, a 6 figure salary is not hurting, but not rolling in it.

$69,000/year is not "below poverty level" in the Bay Area. I mean, maybe some random charity has a very idiosyncratic view of what they personally view as "poverty," but it's not below the poverty line in any official sense, and, practically speaking, a $69,000/year wage makes you much richer in terms of purchasing power in the Bay Area than $11,000/year (ie, below the actual poverty line) in rural Alabama.

I kind of think the high cost of living thing is not that relevant here. The cost of living is high because the people who live there make a lot of money. If they made more money the Valley wouldn't be more affordable for them. It would just be more expensive.

There are many other factors that influence cost of living in a given area, not just income.

Plus, in some cases increases in income lags behind increases in cost of living.

Not everyone in the bay area makes a lot of money. There are a lot of blue collar/service workers who don't even know what hackernews is who would kill to make that 70k a year.

Correct but they have nothing to do with the conversation we're having.

The high 6 figure salaries for entry level positions should be reserved for the finance industry, where real value is generated.

I imagine that an engineer complaining of a low 6-figure salary with stock options will convince a jury that (s)he is really being hurt that much will be very tough.

I don't find that hard to imagine. In fact, I think the opposite would be true and I'll give my logic.

I believe in wrongful death suits (e.g. airline crashes) the earnings potential of the victim is considered i.e. higher payouts go to higher earners.

I assume a jury would follow the same logic and would be able to understand that the more an engineer earns, the greater the damages should be. i.e. a 1st year grad might have been hurt to the tune of $20K / year ... while it might have cost a more senior engineer $200K / year.

You're expecting a jury that will probably not be making 6 figures to award an senior engineer $200k / year without death or injury being involved? I don't think they'll get that kind of settlement.

its not like employment suits are a mystery

you see high paid professionals (i-bankers, brokers, lawyers, etc) win big awards all the time.

here's one about Merrill

Then, in the spring of 2004, an arbitration panel found Merrill had systemically discriminated against female brokers and awarded $2.2 million to a single employee.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-27/merrill-lync...

it's not exactly the same but you get the idea. Juries look at the possible damages and base the award of that. The higher the salary, the higher the potential damages.

Male vs Female suits are one thing, and sticking it to Merrill is a bonus, but I wouldn't bet on the jury in this one. I'm just not confident developers are going to win this one.

A likely tactic if this goes to litigation is to argue a combined halo effect and "rising tide lifts all boats", and assert that if the jury assigns penalties to the companies to award the benefits thereof to these high-falutin' Silicon Valley engineers, then all the trodden-upon blokes unfairly hammered elsewhere in this fine nation of ours would get their just and due market wages. Throw in talk of the Great Recession and how dare these companies perpetrate such outrages when these hard working less-compensated engineers were barely hanging onto their houses with some sob stories with real faces, and testimony from compensation experts that yes, if so-and-so in the Valley got their "fair" compensation that is 150% of their current level, then whosit in Podunk, Middle America would get at least a 15% bump as the overall scale goes up everywhere. Cue a "if I just had 10% more we would have kept the family farm" sob story, and the cartel could prevail in court and still lose in the court of public opinion, and end up paying more in PR, marketing and lobbying expenses to clean up the aftermath than they could have ever saved in just not setting up the cartel in the first place.

If this blows up into a viral meme of some sort, it becomes political Kryptonite for any politician coming anywhere close to various high-tech visa-related legislation, who won't want to associate with any members of the cartel until the issue blows over (probably in about a year or less). So all sorts of visas get snarled up for a year or two, tying up various projects, driving up costs of this even more.

There are some interesting PR angles that Apple and Google can engage in to nip this sort of trial-by-heart-tugs, but I bet they will get control on the media image and quash this whole affair in the mainstream news media well before it gets to that stage. If they can limit any fallout litigation and the media coverage especially to just within the industry itself and not let it seep out into severe regulatory sanctions or public consciousness, then the cost-benefit of the cartel will work out fine. I predict wrist-slap sanctions if any, and a successful management of the media image, as this is a nice example of how agency challenges work out in a large, complex system.

A judge would never allow that kind of grandstanding. I've worked on a price fixing litigation. What happens is that the parties hire antitrust economists to estimate the damages based on empirical data and theoretical models. Then these economists present their reports to the jury as expert testimony.

A jury of peers in the Valley might agree. In fact a good attorney would argue that paying non-colluded wages to engineers lifts all boats, so the blue collar workers on the jury would presumably have had more pay themselves had the engineer been paid properly.

Then again, maybe all the money would have gone to rent which is what seems to be happening now unless you won the IPO lottery where it is now all cash offers on million dollar homes.

Are you from the bay area?

This place is so expensive you need to 40kpa(of your gross income) just to live in 620sqft apartment.

If you make 100k here, you might be able to save 12k a year tops.

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