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And yet their fates are intertwined.

• Apocryphon 5y ago
  The employees can always go work for tech companies that aren't big monopolies. For example, startups.
  • ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    Currently, it's worth noting that the exit plan of half these startups is to get acquired by one of these monopolies, have their products killed off, and be assigned to do mundane bugfixes for core business competencies.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      Isn't that partly because of the same problem of the mass concentration of wealth and power into a few key players? If you have less room to strike it out on your own right, then you're dependent on a bigger fish to snatch you up. Who's to say that if the playing field was more level then more startups would have the ambition to become their own would-be monopolies? Either way, the vast majority of the "computer nerds" in the OP are different from the founder class that would be more directly impacted.
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    And accept a fraction of the salary! Which is what is meant by "party's over" I'd think. The big companies not only pay the highest wages but exert upward pressure on other employers who would like to hire the same people. There are also non-monetary benefits to working at a large employer, like the greater variety of available assignments, generally better benefits (OK, sort of monetary), greater number of educational/training opportunities, and so on.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      Regulatory concerns or not, it's unlikely that the bull run of the past decade would've continued indefinitely. And there's plenty of post-unicorn little empires (Uber, Twitter, AirBnB, Robinhood, etc.) that probably command as great salaries as the monopolies. Not to mention there are other big tech companies that don't seem to be in regulators' crosshairs- Microsoft, Oracle, even Netflix. Neither Amazon and Apple are known to pay as great salaries as Facebook/Google, and as mentioned it's debatable whether their stock prices would've continued in as explosive growth as in past years. At any rate, if one was to break up the big companies (which isn't even likely to happen), who's to say that AdSense Inc. or Instagram wouldn't pay as well as they did when they were internal teams?
      • emodendroket 5y ago
        It’s no secret that large companies typically offer better pay and benefits across industries. And even Amazon and Apple have excellent pay compared to most other companies.
        • Apocryphon 5y ago
          Would Square, Stripe, Snap, Coinbase, Lyft, Twitter, Dropbox, et al really command lower salaries, FAANG RSUs vs. options aside? There’s a reason for why Facebook average turnover is like 2.5 years and Google average turnover is 1.1 years, there are options outside them in the industry. Even a cursory glance at Levels.fyi shows that Adobe pays competitively, and doubtless they're not the only older established company. Like I said, there’s still Netflix. The big monopolies, and really just Google and Facebook, might set the pace for comp and other employment practices for the industry, but they're far from the only game in town.
          • freyr 5y ago
            Google and Facebook set the bar for other companies to match or even exceed to attract talent. Without this pressure, I’d expect salaries to drop significantly across the board.
    • freyr 5y ago
      Yes, you got my meaning.