Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring
reuters.com
reuters.com
It literally recommends that companies maintain a "do not hire" (aka "do not poach") list of other organizations from which HR is forbidden from recruiting. It also recommends calling the CEO of the other company on the down-low to ask permission before extending an offer.
It really disgusted me when I read it. Such smart people doing such dumb things, and encouraging would-be CEOs to do the same.
Wow, just wow. I'm reading that same book, but haven't gotten to that part yet. All I can say is... we (Fogbeam Labs) would never, ever, ever do something like this. When the day comes that we have money to hire employees, we are going with a strict policy of "We will poach anyone, anytime, from anywhere. If you want to keep your employees, treat them well enough that they won't want to leave".
Your startup sounds like the kind that won't have trouble attracting people, myself included.
I think he's guilty of trying to overly engineer management here and don't agree but he does have a logic around a really narrow use case.
All you are saying is that you are free from reprisal in that situation, OK, great, but that doesn't improve your compensation situation.
There is a really profound, fundamental mismatch in power between employers and employees: an employee depends upon the employer for the means of basic existence, while the employer does not have the same dependence on any given single employee.
That disparity in power means that there must be very strong legal and social constraints on employers to make the labor market reasonably fair and equitable. Since essentially the only means the employee has at their disposal to better their situation is leaving or seeking better offers elsewhere, this fundamental right must be strongly protected.
Employers can't have it both ways: laws that allow them to fire for any reason or no reason, set any level of compensation they choose (including cutting pay at any time for any reason) all in the name of the free labor market, but at the same time making secret backroom deals to limit compensation or employee attrition. It's either a free labor market or it isn't.
Laws against hiring and pricing agreements are interventions in the market. Laws against hiring agreements are not consistent with a free market.
There's nothing wrong with people (employers) making agreements with other people (employers) regarding the things they own (their money).
Price fixing and hiring agreements do not involve force, fraud, or misrepresentation- yet the regulation or prohibition thereof directly violates the property rights of the market participants.
I've read the Wikipedia entry you've linked to in its entirety, so I kindly ask that you will read this one: https://mises.org/daily/4397
The percentage of people who agree with what I've asserted here has no bearing on the validity of my arguments. And attacking my argument for being libertarian is argumentum ad hominem. Shooting the messenger does not address the message.
No. Saying that the framework you're basing an argument on is flawed isn't dismissing the argument because of a personal flaw of the person asserting something. It's saying that the core axioms/assumptions are flawed.
Maybe you over-identify with that ideology and are taking criticisms of the ideology personally since it feels personal, but it's not at all about you, it's about the ideas you're espousing.
And you've espoused none. You may disagree with said axioms but you haven't pointed out what those are or why you disagree with them.
"You're wrong" isn't an argument. "You're wrong because what you're saying sounds like libertarianism" isn't an argument either.
Hiring agreements are where an employer uses the power of their position (and those they are colluding with) to control their employees. I would argue this is just another form of 'force'. You don't need to physically harm someone to control them.
To put it another way: If person A is forcefully preventing me from voluntarily serving person B, that makes me person A's involuntary slave.
If you ever own a business, you deserve for it to fail.
But to answer your question directly: Yes, if nobody wants to hire you... nobody wants to hire you. I don't see why Google should be forced to hire you anymore than you should be forced to work at Google.
Poaching is the active targeting of employees of other companies, which when done in the umbrella of an investors holdings is bad form (don't bite the hand that feeds you). When done to another company is generally a bad idea if you expect to have to have amicable dealings with them (license patents, buy parts, etc). However, if they're a direct rival and there's no foreseeable reason to be on good terms with them, there is no reason to not poach their employees other than the reason you know you're not acquiring a loyal employee, but one loyal to the money.
A 'do not hire' list is an attempt to blacklist anyone who essentially leaves whatever the umbrella is of its reach, which is an attempt to place a monetary cost on anyone trying to leave the corporate fold. It would be like a bartender breaking the legs of anyone trying to leave. Anyone else who was planning on leaving isn't going to, but they're certainly not going to be buying drinks and that's really going to drive down profits when the bar is at capacity and no one is drinking. There's a reason companies are employing "quitting" incentives, and that's for the very reason that happy employees are productive employees and the notion of one bad apple spoils the bushel.
How could I possibly take any action that damages this relationship?
I think this should be obvious, but burning a factory down is fundamentally different from hiring agreements, in that it is destruction of someone elses property. A hiring agreement does not involve the destruction or restriction of property, but laws against such agreements do.
> To collude to deny others the right of free association and free employment is just as wrong.
Hiring agreements do not deny anyone the right of free association or free employment. Employment is a free exchange between the employee and the employer. Not coming to an agreement (not offering you a job) in no way is a restriction of your right to make an agreement in the first place. If I don't want to work with you, that doesn't restrict your right to form an agreement with me or with someone else.
> The CEOs of major corporations that dominate an industry can have a disproportionate impact on an industry
I don't see how that's relevant to the fact that laws against hiring agreements are laws against free association.
Has no bearing on whether it's right or wrong.
Why isn't it? Those agreements don't restrict or infringe on the freedom of others to form different agreements, or avoid forming them.
> What about colluding on prices?
Same exact situation. Price agreements don't restrict the freedom of other parties to set prices contrary to that agreement.
> Aren't these all the same infringement?
Without getting into specifics... Yes.
> The truth is sometimes society has to take away the rights of the few for the sake of the many.
I truly commend you for your honesty about what these laws are.
> The fact is rules like this almost certainly make our economy more productive as a whole.
I don't see where that's been demonstrated here. They certainly aren't productive for the firms who are punished for, or prevented from, forming such agreements. I would argue that the fact that firms do form such agreements when free to do so, means that they are productive for the economy as a whole by definition.
By allowing those firms to make more money. They are the economy too. The economy does not exist for one persons or class of persons benefit.
> This was done to keep salaries low, so a handful of people could make more money.
People cooperated to reduce their expenses without restricting the right of anyone else to cooperate. Just because people make money doesn't make it wrong. Conversely, a handful of people (the defendants) colluded to make more money by keeping salaries high, except they did it by restricting the rights of everyone else.
It seems more reasonable that each human in a group will try to maximize their own economic outcomes as well as to assist the other humans that they personally care about in maximizing their economic outcomes. In the modern world, it's often expected that humans are able to extrapolate that the people that they don't know are similarly worthwhile human beings. So while it's generally considered acceptable to try to maximize things for themselves, doing so while knowingly making other humans worse off is seen as morally detestable.
It's important to remember that humans generally care much less about abstract ideals than they do about themselves, the people they care about, and their social standing. The "economy" as it exists in reality does in fact exist for the benefit of one class of persons: those persons who are willing to tolerate it and have the power to change it. When this real-life economy is no longer tolerated, it is changed, in ways like antitrust legislation, class action lawsuits against companies that participate in wage collusion schemes, and the French Revolution.
Also, please remember you can't look at a statement in a vacuum. "Why isn't it? Those agreements don't restrict or infringe on the freedom of others to form different agreements, or avoid forming them." Perhaps not technically, but realistically they absolutely do. If we had a million worlds with a trillion firms and easy travel between them then such actions would automatically correct, but we don't and thus people do not realistically have the option to turn them down. The whole point of capitalism is to reward and penalize decisions. It kind of breaks down (predictably) when one side has enough power to prevent the downside of a bad decision. Remember, free speech doesn't mean you can run into a theater and yell fire.
Do not hire is different than do not poach.
The wisdom I subscribe to is, if you have common investors, it's bad form to actively poach from portfolio companies.
For companies that are later stage, it's bad form to poach key employee's from portfolio companies.
Do Not Hire agreements between companies, however, seem unreasonable, except when there is clear cause for conflict of interest.
In a [post] on his blog Horowitz describes a scenario in which a person currently employed at a company that is "important" to you comes in for an interview. The recommended course of action is to 1: block the hire, 2: inform said company about it. There are two things i just can't agree with at all:
* The part about informing the current employer: about 50% of the time it will end with ruining the next few weeks or months of his/her life. I.e. getting them fired, with ruined prospects of getting the job they took the risk for. Note that at e.g. apple the standard procedure when they find out that an employee is looking for a job is to escort them out of the building right then and there.
* Note it's not about "poaching", he explains thoroughly that it applies to people who ask for an interview on their own accord too.
If you don't want to read the whole thing, at least read this gem:
It is important to note that just about all of these kinds of policies violate the Right to Work laws in California. Specifically, if you block a hire based on this kind of policy and the employee loses their job and cannot find work, your company is liable for his wages. As a result, the business relationship with the other company must be extremely important for you to employ any kind of “hands off” policy.
said blog [post]: http://www.bhorowitz.com/is_it_ok_to_hire_people_from_your_f...
Do you have a source on this? I couldn't find anything with a quick Google search.
Note that logic: the problem is not with the company ben is advising. The issue is at the third part company. If that company decides to "go nuclear" and sever all ties because you poached/goaded or otherwise got involved in their "interal politics" (note: this is not a per-se issue of math/economics/money), bad things might happen to your firm.
CEOs of startups have a fiduciary duty to avoid "bad things", and even that choice is a catch-22 (ie, two bad things...) you pick the worst-bad one. And that is what he is saying.
In other words, he's talking about something that is a real-world problem. If you want to vent out about the issue, it really sits with the third part company. They are typically the one with all the power in the situation.
Example:
Startup A had 80% of its business tied to a single company, BigCo B. Like it or not, the CEO of startup A needs to avoid a situation where the CEO of BigCo B comes to the conclusion that he won't do business with A becaus of Politics (note: not economics).
Whether or not poaching is politically sensitive (or offensive) and/or warrants this type of "nuclear" response, is a function of many thing. But none of that is BH's responsibility in the larger world.
This dynamics is something that has played out for millenia from kings and queens and royal courts to how the predisent and Y combinator select their staff and senior leadership.
At a certain level of the game, its all about trust. And polticial power is essentially a combination of trust and goodwill. And its easy to disolve and can reak havok on any company of any size when systemically undermined. So you need to pay attention to it.
In other words, this is a much bigger issue. The tack of trying to shoot or lynch the messenger is sort of misplaced. Because the startup is the employer and may have a power asymmetry with a potential hire; but that startup is in itself subject to potential power assymetries at much higher levels.
(This goes for pissing off BOD members, VCs, and Key clients alike...maybe it suck/isn't fair...etc... but the reality is you need to pick your battes as a small company. And picking fights with the consituents you need to help you build your biz is ~dysfunctional and needs to be understood as such.)
Note that he has not described it as a morally ambiguous but sometimes unavoidable choice (like you did) but as the most righteous and noble option. That he's openly admitting he knows that it's illegal. Pay attention the sugar-sweet language of his parable and how its tone gets more colorful whenever the story takes a darker turn (from pov of the employee).
I mean, this entire thing is something out of a dilbert strip. I'm serious. This is something you'd expect Dilbert's CEO to write. The self deceit, the contrast between the language of "hurt feelings" vs the unstated reality of a person getting fired as a consequence and the stupidity of it all are mocked in hundred different Dilbert strips. Remember when this wage fixing story surfaced and the surprised comments that they were stupid enough to put it in email? If Mr Horowitz ever gets in similar trouble the paragraph i quoted above will make these troubles a lot worse.
But the situation of apple and google colluding (ie, this linked article) IMHO is a ~different situation here than the subject of the BH piece.
1> Google and AAPL as of the time of the lawsuit were not small players (fighting for their lives). They were 'fat cats' essentially at the top of the food chain.
2> Their motivations seem inherently economic/greedy, and fundamentally anti-competitive. They were not even vaguely 'customer centric' or otherwise constructive (except at the most tenditious levels).
3> The defendents were self aware their actions were unethica/illegal, and in the context of (1) and (2), were actively taking steps to hide/bury/conspire/collude regarding the illegal activity.
So this type of context is not the same. Calling out the BH essay seems to add a layer of useful sophistication to the discussion here. Half the utility, tho, is understanding the difference.
Workers should be free to seek to improve their lives without old white men making back-room deals against them. In this regard the tech industry is no more progressive than any other, and that's incredibly disappointing. We're supposed to be such an intelligent bunch.
I believe you misunderstood my point based on the following comment:
> Workers should be free to seek to improve their lives without old white men making back-room deals against them
I support the "Do Not Poach" rule. "Do Not Poach" does not prevent workers from seeking employment. It means, me as an employer, will not actively solicit employees of other companies if we have shared investors (given the size and complexity of the investments).
"Do Not Hire" on the otherhand, seems to be what you are taking umbrage with, and I concur. Employees should (generally speaking) be allowed to seek employment opportunities without back-room deals preventing that.
a) If you get sent a resume in response to an open req and you reject them based solely on the current employer of the applicant being a "friendly company" ("do not hire" list), that is illegal and wrong.
b) If you realize the applicant is from a "friendly company" and so you make a subtle threat along the lines of: "We are going to call your current employer to get a reference check before we decide to extend any offer, are you sure that's ok with you?" (also recommended in Horowitz's book), it's also wrong and unfair. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if that is overtly illegal however.
It is possibly even lawful to do that with the intent of avoiding poaching and ill will.
What's definitely not lawful is to conspire with the companies on that list to determine its makeup.
From +3 to now -4.
This is yet another iteration of American labor politics. That it involves workers with greater skills than in previous iterations is not germane. The reason that labor unions arose in the first place was that capitalists actively exploited workers. And, guess what? Capitalists still exploit workers, even when the workers tools are laptops and VMs rather than steam engines and Bessemer converters.
How easily we forget that our grandfathers fought and died for the forty-hour work week. How easily we give that up, because we're working for "disruptive startups".
If you want to know what previous iterations of no-hire agreements looked like; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklist_(employment)
I'd much prefer courts handle this than solving the problem by creating a second problem. Which in your example, the unions themselves eventually become too powerful or negatively effecting the job market and upward mobility of smaller players. We would see benefits in the early days then eventually reach by a stasis where everything starts moving extremely slowly and consumed by bureaucratic process.
Then only those embedded within the union system benefit, while competing global markets without constraints operate more efficiently. While smaller players in the job market start hiring less due to the high bar needed to hire union workers.
I've witnessed this first hand as an electrician in my family ran a successful business, until the workers organized into a union and he had to shut it down because their demands made it completely unprofitable (they demanded expensive benefits programs and high wages, keep in mind we live in Canada with public healthcare). The workers lost their jobs and most ended up working for another much larger company. Unions create bigger companies and bigger unions.
edit: for a (very rough) estimate of how much money google saved, remember that in late 10 they gave their entire staff a 10% raise, effective 1 Jan 11. So if you look at their 2011 10k [2], a very rough underestimate of their comp expenses -- looking at R&D alone -- is $5,162 (numbers in millions). So if 1.1x = 5162, then x = 4692 and that 10% raise cost google $470m. A fine less than the savings of one year of your illicit behavior -- and for just one company! -- discourages behavior exactly how?
[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870352360...
[2] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125120...
But I actually agree with you, as an alternative to unions the reaction I'd like to see is strengthening the courts ability to punish malicious acts by corporations and have more individual responsibility. As we've seen where banks destroy thousands of peoples lives by purposely gambling their savings away. Or pharma companies mislabeling products every year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Largest_Pharmaceutical...
While these cases are much worse than conspiracy to not hire people, I agree settlements aren't always the best solution because it seems to keep happening. There needs to be stricter and real punishment for businesses. One reason is we need to stop protecting those executives directly involved with the conspiracy from being shielded by corporate legal entities, who can easily pay out the fines.
Which is why I agree with the judge the current settlement is insufficient. Unfortunately a greater fine is the courts only option, that is the real problem IMO.
If the court system does not deliver damages that equal or exceed the amount of money these companies made by fucking their employees over, then the court is making it clear to the American people that they fully support such behavior.
We keep seeing large corporations taking part in unethical moneymaking schemes because they always come out ahead, even when they get caught.
that this was a laughably low amount considering the scope of the collusion and the time-scale over which it happened.
that it looks like a good deal to all the companies concerned on two fronts - 325 Million is a pittance compared to what Apple, Google or Adobe make in a month. and the perception of the non-tech folks that this is about the rich whining about not getting caviar rather than a real issue.
At least the first one is being addressed (somewhat). I hope the final settlement really makes them hurt financially so that it becomes one more item in the HR manual - "thou shalt not enter into illegal no-hire agreements even when pressured by an asshole" .
For the second issue there needs to be some effort put in towards communicating with the non-programmer public and educating them about why shit like this is a VERY bad idea no matter who does it or who is impacted.
So in other words, if this settlement had been approved, the employees would have gotten a raw deal, while their attorneys would have gotten tens of millions for poor work on a pretty clear cut case.
[1] Assuming 4 years and 64000 developers, which after some googling seems to be what's at stake in the lawsuit
People with a lot of technical know-how would suddenly be set loose in a cash rich environment full of new millionaires who are looking to build their own empires.
That scenario could very well be a second dotcom boom.
More to the point, when one of the little people gets caught breaking the law, we don't question the consequences their punishment will have on any industry. These companies not only broke the law but were terrible corporate citizens.
Anything that doesn't hurt a lot will not be an appropriate punishment, it'll just be considered the cost of doing business.
Also, Tesla sales would go sub-orbital.
Frankly, that needs to happen, and not only when theres cause. We need a Netflix chaos monkey that breaks up big companies and redistributes their wealth to let creative destruction create something better.
Google has ~$35 billion.
I'm not presenting that as an argument about the reasonableness of $300 billion, but it would likely not bankrupt them.
Also, free cash is hardly their only capital. Google could for example sell YouTube. They could also sell bonds or stock etc.
PS: Not that I think 300B is the right penalty, but there needs to be some real risks to prevent such behaviors or the penalties simply become yet another cost of doing business.
Assuming that it would actually bankrupt them, how does bankruptcy cost jobs?
The cash goes to employees who will likely spend / re-invest in the startup economy, this will likely create more jobs as there are economies of scale in software companies.
The capital remains and would be sold to a new owner... since these companies are profitable the jobs remain and the company just has a lower bank account with new owners.
If you had the opportunity to buy Google/Apple/Adobe for 50 cents on the dollar, why would you fire everyone? It makes no sense, they are all extremely profitable companies.
The sensible thing to do in these types of circumstances is to pay the settlement using newly issued shares in the company. That dilutes the interest of all the existing shareholders (effectively the money comes out of their pockets because the price per share goes down) but it causes no damage to the company's operations.
Don'd do the crime if you can't do the time, etc.
[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-eric-schmidt-sergey-br...
Do you have a better citation for this claim? The linked Business Insider article does not claim such a thing, and the court filings the article cites do not support the claim.
The article cites Google's Special Agreement Hiring Policy that divides companies into three categories: Restricted Hiring, Do Not Call, and Sensitive. Only the protocol with respect to Restricted Hiring companies is constrained to Sales, Product, and G&A. Google's protocol for the Do Not Call companies seems to prohibit actively recruiting any employee at those companies. The article does not address whether other companies limited the scope of collusion to, "sales and product people."
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/08/judge-rejects-comically-low...
Source: Judge Koh’s order http://www.scribd.com/doc/236255928/Apple-Google-Intel-Adobe...
It amounts to basically saying "Yeah, we artificially suppressed wages for years and years, sorry. But take this.... it is about what you would have made working for us for a week (at the suppressed wage level we created, lol!)".
The lawyers will make out really, well, though, which is why I'm generally anti-class action but happy that this decision was made.
Note how the plaintiff's attorney actually argued against this ruling (to protect their very large slice of the bird-in-the-hand pie). If they were acting for the right reasons they would be pushing for a much higher sum (even if it meant more risk) in the hope of causing sufficient punitive damage to the companies involved to really change behavior. $325.4 million split among these companies is peanuts.
Salaries jumped by about $30K/year when the pact collapsed, so the commenters above who are calling for the decimal point to shift a place to the right aren't all that unreasonable.
"I'll settle for a personal letter of apology, written by and signed by Eric, Larry and Sergey."
AFAIK the SEC is already beginning to push for admission of wrongdoing.
If it doesn't, the only people this settlement will help is those at the named companies and not the trickle down effect it's had on the rest of the industry.
For a while. As time passes and this case fades from memory I expect such collusion to eventually happen again.
Unless you're an idiot you either stop doing it, or get better at it. That's why when you commit a crime they send you to criminal school, so you can swap notes about all the other ways guys got caught.
>In her ruling, Koh repeatedly referred to a related settlement last year involving Disney and Intuit. Apple and Google workers got proportionally less in the latest deal compared to the one involving Disney, Koh wrote, even though plaintiff lawyers have "much more leverage" now than they did a year ago.
>To match the earlier settlement, the latest deal "would need to total at least $380 million," Koh wrote.
$380 million??!!?!?! That's not really any better when they're suing for $3B, and having it come from a judge's mouth is NOT helping. I'm glad she turned down $324m, but the new number is still insulting.
Now the judge tells them "you have much more leverage". So tey have to work out how much more leverage they have. 5 times the leverage would be $1.9 billion.
That's at least how I understand the text, and I find it very honest of the judge. I guess she can't give them the exact sum she thinks is appropriate.
> Judge Koh said that she believed the case was stronger than that, and that the plaintiffs’ lawyers were taking the easy way out by settling. The evidence against the defendants was compelling, she said.
Can anyone explain this from the perspective of the economic/sociological motivations of the lawyers? People often complain about a huge chunk of the money going to the class-action lawyers who are too eager to settle, but the traditional argument is that a fixed percentage structure (rather than an hourly or flat rate) gives the lawyers the proper incentive to pursue the interests of the class by tying their compensation directly to the legal award.
Here's my best guess: Lawyers, like most people, are risk adverse for sufficiently large amounts of money. (They would rather have $10 million for sure than a 50% chance at $50 million.) On the other hand, the legal award will be distributed over many more plaintiffs. Since it will be much smaller per person, the plaintiffs are significantly less risk adverse. So the lawyers settle even thought it's not in the best interests of the plaintiffs.
This suggests the following speculative solution for correctly aligning the incentives of the lawyers and the class action plaintiffs: either (a) spread the legal work over many lawyers such that the potential compensation for them is small enough that their utility function is at least as linear as the plaintiffs or (b) turn the class-action lawsuits legal team into a corporation which must answer to many shareholders.
Proposal (a) has problems because it might require the number of lawyers to be comparable to the number of plaintiffs, which could be thousands or millions. Proposal (b) strikes many people as weird, and introduces other principal-agent problems, but it does have precedence:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/looking-to-make-a-pro...
Would love to hear an expert opinion on this.
The arguments for criminalizing such free association are based in sentiment not reason.
In general, completely unregulated free markets lead to monopolies and price manipulation, among other problems.
So no, collusion is wrong.
Let's say all companies form an agreement to not hire from any other company. They're now in a situation where either they must terminate the agreement in order to hire, or bid against other companies for labor that is not currently working for any of the firms. Companies bidding over labor drives wages upwards... not downwards.
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Someone I know in SF posted a picture today of their new Audi with a caption about how they were finally a real adult now that they owned one. I think that's pretty disconnected from reality, and sadly I think it is somewhat typical of the mindset that a lot of engineers have in this industry.
Even when I was making $15 an hour answering phones, I'd hear no end about how the bus drivers on strike shouldn't get paid $20 an hour. Yet no one wanted to quit their job and become a bus driver.
To the rest of the public, we probably look like complaining oil or Walmart execs. While the rest of the general public is dealing with insane commutes and thankless/soul-crushing jobs, we got things like "The Social Network" movie, San Francisco gentrification issues, fancy catered parties and Google Glass. I can't even explain this to the rest of my family. They're like "Why are the people in your field complaining? Aren't they partying like it's 1999?" And seriously, my life is basically a dream compared to the rest of my family and past classmates not in tech. I make more money than I ever thought possible, I have no commute because BART is so close, I can WorkFromHome just about anytime I want, I work in San Franciso with lost of food options and my job is something I'd be doing on my free time anyway. I have the flexibility to be at my standing-desk on HN debating with people online while drinking my fancy glass bottle VOSS water from Norway. And the icing on the cake is probably the minimum 2 recruiter LinkedIn emails I get a week offering even more money. Also, I never negotiate salary. I just take the first offer so I assume I'm in the lower-range compared to most of HN.
Seriously, go try and explain this to the average lower/middle-class American outside of tech. This must look ridiculous. I'm right in the heart of this tech scene and I'm not even convinced we should be complaining.
Lawyers can charge hundreds of dollars an hour but no one begrudges them that because that is what the market for their services is. Maybe the market for strong IT workers will land in that range too if the market was allowed to work.
I think baseball players are a fairer analogy. People love to hate on baseball player salaries, but it's not their fault that the market value of their skills is what it is. They are obligated to fight collusion and have a union anyway, though.
It doesn't help that this is non-recruitment/poaching vs blacklist. That seems greedier that people are complaining about lack of inbound recruitment vs more heavy-handed/less abstract techniques.
I think it has to be fought, because of the precedent, like companies defending copyrights.
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voss_%28water%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy
I was walking around lake Elisabeth in Fremont just this afternoon marveling at the massive water pipes. There are two continuous strips of undeveloped land that go through Fremont and the South Bay that mark the travel of San Franscico's water supply.
They understand that different workers earn different salaries, and they get that "paid below fair market wage" means what it means, regardless of what "fair market wage" is the calibration.
But we can't have unions or talk of unions in the software industry, because that might upset the rather hilariously mistaken insider perception of this industry as being a meritocracy.
That's a shame, because collusion of this sort is illegal, full stop. If our industry "complains" about it, and wins, this precedent sends a very clear message to companies - including, and perhaps especially, those in other industries - that wage-fixing pacts of this sort are not tolerated. This may not completely stop other companies from attempting similar antics, but it certainly changes the cost-benefit analysis.
The 20s called. They want their cliches back. Most of the world is richer than US poor people these days. Of course, even if "most" are, there's still 1 billion people barely making enough for food, I'll grant you that.
Yeah. If you spout shallow nonsense like this, I cannot take you seriously. But out of pity, here goes:
Don't let my username fool you. I am probably much younger than you are. I grew up poor in a third-world country in awe of the average American. Now, people like me are being called "techie scum" by the same kind of people I used to adore and envy.
My point is this: Don't hate on people more hardworking or just plain lucky than you are. If you are commenting on the internet you are probably at the top of the world.
Oh, and "most" = "majority" = >51%. World population = 6.5 billion people sans US. US poor = probably less than 10k dollars per year (maybe less at PPP). So at least 3.5 billion people should be making more. Middle class Europeans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, etc, should definitely cover my claim, based on PPP prices.
Do you think the execs at Google/Apple care what Joe the plumber thinks about how much money they make. No, they're going to court to beat the settlement down.
You can be broke and have the adoration of the poor, or you can be rich and hated by the poor.
(There is a 3rd option which is chuck a few thousand at a democratic politician, and write an op ed piece in the NYT every few years about how the rich should pay more taxes, and enjoy not paying taxes.)
No, it's not our fault that others aren't as well off. But that doesn't make mean we can't do anything to help; it does mean we should complain about getting paid marginally lower six figures with a little more self-awareness.
Engineer's pay pales in comparison to the value they create. That's an issue.
Average office drone X probably shouldn't even have a job so yeah, they shouldn't expect to get paid as much as a developer at Google.
Who lives in this ultra expensive real estate? The execs stiffing the developers on pay while making bank on their work.
My point is that people CAN afford to live in these places and those people built their fortunes on the back of a labor supply with artificially suppressed wages.