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Comment by Iftheshoefits | Hacker News Reader

Software engineers as a rule are grossly underpaid relative to the actual value they provide, whether they are employed at Google or Web Body Shop X in Podunk Midwest Town Y. Collusion of this sort is deleterious on the whole precisely because of the indirect but very much desired effects of wage depression, even if some individuals benefit and others are more disproportionately harmed.

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What's your evidence for "grossly underpaid"? Do all of the tens of thousands of employers meet in secret to hold the line against higher salaries? Are there laws against software engineers starting their own firms where they'd be paid their full value?

Your claim doesn't pass the smell test. Pay levels are set by a giant, uncoordinated, massively competitive process.

If you know any software engineers who are grossly underpaid for the value they can provide, hire them! Then "underpay" them just a teensy bit, instead of the "grossly underpaid" exploitation they suffer under now. Pocket the difference for yourself, as a reward for seeing their true value so much better than every other employer.

Where is your evidence that pay is "set by a giant, uncoordinated, massively competitive process?" Pay is set by a variety of factors that generally favor the wealthy and connected, usually in such a way that workers rarely benefit from expanded wealth (wage stagnation). Additionally there is a coordinated effort (see: any Koch political outfit or its allies) to weaken and destroy unions, which are the principle means other than law that laborers gain in wages and working conditions. Moreover, there is very strong evidence in the form of the subject of this thread that pay is set, at least to some non trivial extent, by acts of collusion.

It seems to me you believe very strongly in a black-and-white world where "the market" functions just fine. It is terribly out of sync with actual evidence, though, which you simply brush aside while scribing arguments containing numerous unsupported assertions and demands that others support their statements. As if we should simply accept your point of view as the truth by default.

There's no "wage stagnation" in this industry. Also, for the positions under discussion, no unions to "weaken and destroy". I can't tell if you are a software engineer in the bay area, but as one trust me that there are hundreds of high-tech employers who don't coordinate, and they do spend a lot of effort and money to attract and retain employees.

You know who wasn't part of the alleged cartel? Facebook. Microsoft. Yahoo. Amazon. Oracle. Salesforce. Twitter. Yelp. Autodesk. HP. Cisco. VMWare. AMD. Workday. Electronic Arts. Zynga. Netflix. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Also, no seed- or VC-funded or YC-backed startups of the past 10+ years were part of the cartel. Also, no consulting/contracting shops were part of the cartel.

You seem to be applying some sort of undifferentiated-laborer/factory-floor model to a region/industry where it doesn't apply.

There certainly are market failures; when they happen, they can be studied and quantified. There's no evidence of that here. All we have is angry crusaders with grandiose damage claims, who probably weren't even affected by the no-poaching agreements.

maybe less than the US but the average for devs in London UK is less tan a tube driver gets.

An it is statistics 101 that if you change the skewness and kurtosis of a distribution if effects not just those at the top.

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