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I think that his accomplishments may outweigh that transgression, which likely affected 15,000 software developers at most. He did manage to help vastly increa

I think that his accomplishments may outweigh that transgression, which likely affected 15,000 software developers at most. He did manage to help vastly increase Google employees' personal wealth through a meteoric rise in their stock value. In this case, it's probably best to match the malfeasance with the risk. What do you think he is likely to harm within government program management? Edit: my original estimate of 15k was way off base. A subsequent poster has suggested it was a minimum of 64,000, probably substantially more.

mnglkhn2 11y ago
I would say it affected an entire industry. If the salaries have a certain value in SV then everybody else will use those as a signal and adjust their offers accordingly. edit: not really difficult to do, you can compare the salaries per region (averages, median and distributions) pre and post lawsuit.
- harryh 11y ago
  It's fine to say that, but finding actual data to support that hypothesis is awfully difficult.
accountatwork 11y ago
> which likely affected 15,000 software developers at most Where does this number come from? When the wage fixing agreement was canceled, Google immediately issued an across the board raise, and compensation has increase very quickly since then. That's 15k software devs right there, not even considering the second-order effects, which are surely non-zero.
- linkregister 11y ago
  I made a rough tally of the developers employed by the companies involved in the conspiracy at that time. What do you think is a more accurate count? Can you discuss the second-order effects? They're not apparent to me. Edit: HN isn't allowing me to reply to you. Thanks for correcting my estimate. I was way off.
  - accountatwork 11y ago
    15k barely covers the engineers employed by Google alone at the time. The class action lawsuit covers 64k employees, and that's a subset of the employees affected. If your argument is that Eric Schmidt's entering in the agreement only affected employees at Google, that's clearly false. A single company no-poach agreement would clearly be worthless, so it must be the case that Eric Schmidt's actions affected employees at other companies. If you believe some of the latest news, the agreement spread to enough companies that 1M employees were directly affected: https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage.... Schmidt and Jobs were central in creating the agreement and its spread. As for the second order effects, do you know a hiring manager? Ask them about how competitive offers have changed since the no-poach agreement was canceled. The effect is much larger than just having to keep up with the across the board raise Google gave to their employees when the agreement expired, which was itself non-trivial.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Right. I'm sure that he knew better than they did, it was fine for him to limit their choices through collusion as long as he also took actions which helped some of them a little and himself a lot.
SixSigma 11y ago
When your costs don't increase in line with profits then share price rises. The easiest way to do this is wages. In the 1980s it was through massive layoffs.

mnglkhn2 11y ago

I would say it affected an entire industry. If the salaries have a certain value in SV then everybody else will use those as a signal and adjust their offers accordingly. edit: not really difficult to do, you can compare the salaries per region (averages, median and distributions) pre and post lawsuit.

harryh 11y ago
It's fine to say that, but finding actual data to support that hypothesis is awfully difficult.

accountatwork 11y ago

> which likely affected 15,000 software developers at most Where does this number come from? When the wage fixing agreement was canceled, Google immediately issued an across the board raise, and compensation has increase very quickly since then. That's 15k software devs right there, not even considering the second-order effects, which are surely non-zero.

linkregister 11y ago
I made a rough tally of the developers employed by the companies involved in the conspiracy at that time. What do you think is a more accurate count? Can you discuss the second-order effects? They're not apparent to me. Edit: HN isn't allowing me to reply to you. Thanks for correcting my estimate. I was way off.
- accountatwork 11y ago
  15k barely covers the engineers employed by Google alone at the time. The class action lawsuit covers 64k employees, and that's a subset of the employees affected. If your argument is that Eric Schmidt's entering in the agreement only affected employees at Google, that's clearly false. A single company no-poach agreement would clearly be worthless, so it must be the case that Eric Schmidt's actions affected employees at other companies. If you believe some of the latest news, the agreement spread to enough companies that 1M employees were directly affected: https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage.... Schmidt and Jobs were central in creating the agreement and its spread. As for the second order effects, do you know a hiring manager? Ask them about how competitive offers have changed since the no-poach agreement was canceled. The effect is much larger than just having to keep up with the across the board raise Google gave to their employees when the agreement expired, which was itself non-trivial.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Right. I'm sure that he knew better than they did, it was fine for him to limit their choices through collusion as long as he also took actions which helped some of them a little and himself a lot.

SixSigma 11y ago

When your costs don't increase in line with profits then share price rises. The easiest way to do this is wages. In the 1980s it was through massive layoffs.