9 ms·
Apple and Google’s wage-fixing involved dozens more companies, over 1M employees
- Clanan 13y agoTo entrepreneurs, business people, managers, etc.: Please remember that your company is more than its product – it’s a group of people surrounded by a community of family, children, neighbors, etc. Whether your goal is world-changing or niche, do your best to take care of those people as professionally as you can. Business is business of course, but don’t rationalize bending the rules just to make a few more bucks. If you get caught, you’ll pay. But even if you get away with it, remember how powerful a guilty conscience can be at turning profits into dust.
- Roboprog 13y agoThat's a nice thought, but I don't think sociopaths suffer much from a guilty conscience. I do believe fines and jail time have some effect on them, though.
- ahomescu1 13y ago> Please remember that your company is more than its product – it’s a group of people surrounded by a community of family, children, neighbors, etc. Whether your goal is world-changing or niche, do your best to take care of those people as professionally as you can. Business is business of course, but don’t rationalize bending the rules just to make a few more bucks. Do customers care about that? When you search on Google, or buy a Macbook, do you care about the people behind them? I imagine most customers don't.
- kryptiskt 13y agoWhat I don't get is that I see Eric Schmidt strutting around in all kinds of media these days, how come no one ever asks him about his role in this shit?
- TDL 13y agoCynical view: The media does not challenge the powerful and the wealthy, they merely act as PR hacks.
- walshemj 13y agoIf they smell Googles blood in the water they will be after them just like Murdoch does the BBC.
- cfqycwz 13y agoAlternately, perhaps the media don't report this because it's simply too complicated or nuanced for a sound bite, or irrelevant to their audience. Who wants to hear some of the most highly-compensated people in America complain about their employers conspiring to suppress their already unimaginable-for-many salaries?
- nerfhammer 13y agoindustry media is usually fawning - why pay a writer to write a whole article when you can just reprint a press release with slight edits? - they live in fear of "losing access" because they have nothing else to cover - kool-aid-drinking sells E.g., can you imagine TechCrunch announcing a new startup and then criticizing its concept? it would make startups would think twice about giving them any releases, writers would be able to produce less content, no kool aid. outsider media, on the other hand, can land on the other end of the pendulum of being overly cynical, paranoid, underinformed etc.
- bztzt 13y agoI actually think a lot of media has both sets of problems at the same time. They will take press releases or whatever and reprint them coated in identical thin layers of snark and generic cynicism, without providing any real criticism or context.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago>E.g., can you imagine TechCrunch announcing a new startup and then criticizing its concept? it would make startups would think twice about giving them any releases, writers would be able to produce less content, no kool aid. On the other hand, that's the only thing that would make me read TechCrunch and take them seriously.
- justinph 13y agoShocking, but not necessarily surprising given what has already been revealed. Seems like the kind of thing that a union would help protect against.
- cottonseed 13y ago> The agreement prompted a Department of Justice investigation, resulting in a settlement in which the companies agreed to curb their restricting hiring deals. Wait, the result of an investigation where wrongdoing was found is ... that the companies agreed not to do it anymore? Yes, I know there is a still a civil class action lawsuit going, but still.
- CoolGuySteve 13y agoFor those who don't know, to sign up for the ongoing class action suit, go to https://www.hightechemployeelawsuit.com/ https://www.hightechemployeelawsuit.com/ and request a form. Apple gave them my old address (even though they know my current address), so I had to request a claim number since the mailing got lost.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- CoolGuySteve 13y agoPeople decry the greed of financial sector employees, but one of the best things about moving there from silicon valley was that people had a pretty good idea of their worth as a proportion of the firm's balance sheet. I really appreciated that compensation expenses on the balance sheet of a typical investment bank are fixed at 37-39% throughout the year, with the delta between salary and allotment being paid out as bonuses. It significantly improved my income. I would gladly work at a tech company with a similar incentive structure, and I think more engineers should start asking for it. Financiers get paid a lot in the form of bonuses, but the correct answer is not to daisy cut by hollowing out their income. We should be asking why tech employees don't also make the same kind of revenue. When Google and Apple have profits per employee of over $1M but the average engineer salary is only slightly higher than $100K according to glass door while both these companies are building stockpiles of cash holdings, something is obviously broken. I suspect part of it is the 'doing it for passion' mantra, but another part of it was Apple HR's now obviously crooked refrain of 'we pay the prevailing market wage'. Just because I'm doing something I'm passionate about doesn't mean I like getting ripped off.
- justincormack 13y agoPresumably this whole cartel was around trying not to get where investment banking and other areas are. Many of those companies (like Goldman Sachs) were once partnerships, where paying out a lot of income is normal. It may take tech companies a while to get there as there is huge level of founder and VC control in most companies and they want payouts rather than employees getting them.
- tomp 13y agoIn investment banking, your bonus is based on the profit generated by (1) the company as a whole, (2) your team, and (3) yourself. In tech companies, all but the first one are usually 0.
- refurb 13y agoExactly. Bonuses based on profit generated a much easier to calculate when each employee (or groups of employees) have a direct link to the profit generated. In addition, the profit generated in banking comes in clearly delineated lumps, i.e. you work on a deal that has a start and an end with a short timeframe. If you're a tech person, how do you determine how much of the profit was generated by that one person? Also, how do you pay based on profit generated when the profit is spread out over the life of the product?
- walshemj 13y agoInteresting that it has reached the UK. Maybe we need an investigation in the Uk/EU as well.
- lotsofmangos 13y agoI think this is the relevant bit of law, point (e) about the conclusion of contracts being subject to other parties, as this covers the conclusion of employment contracts, among other things. 1. The following shall be prohibited as incompatible with the common market: all agreements between undertakings, decisions by associations of undertakings and concerted practices which may affect trade between Member States and which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the common market, and in particular those that: (a) Directly or indirectly fix purchase or selling prices or any other trading conditions (b) Limit or control production, markets, technical development, or investment (c) Share markets or sources of supply (d) Apply dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage; (e) Make the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations that, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts http://eur-lex.europa.eu/Notice.do?val=262491:cs&lang=en&list=262491:cs,262487:cs,201150:cs,114690:cs,71708:cs,27020:cs,426:cs,108:cs,&pos=1&page=1&nbl=8&pgs=10&hwords=article%2081~&checktexte=checkbox&visu=#texte http://eur-lex.europa.eu/Notice.do?val=262491:cs&lang=en&lis...
- skore 13y ago[edit] Yes, I know we have a title limit here, thanks for pointing it out again and again. The question is why the, in my humble opinion, most important word of the original title was dropped. OP: Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees HN: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing involved dozens more companies, over 1M employees Maybe this is too nit-picky even for HN, but: Why does the headline here on HN only name "wage-fixing" (aka the symptom of the problem) instead of also naming the underlying cause like the article does: This is a cartel. Dropping the word has a whiff of spin. I sure as heck hope they get the treatment they deserve and that this will strengthen the understanding that this type of stuff is exactly why you want strong unions. Judging from the history of both in the US, I'm not holding my breath, though.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tylerkahn 13y ago"Apple and Google’s wage-fixing involved dozens more companies, over 1M employees" - 80 characters "Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees" - 106 characters HN has an 80 character limit for titles.
- cpncrunch 13y agoThe Pando article itself is spin. It wasn't a 'wage fixing cartel'. It was a non-poaching agreement, which may or may not have resulted in lower wages as a side-effect. I'm not sure it's even accurate to call it a 'cartel'. A cartel agrees to fix prices, which didn't happen in this case. They didn't even agree to fix wages, so the article is essentially bullshit in my opinion.
- ulfw 13y agoOh good ol' Silicon Valley
- Roboprog 13y agoIt's funny how the alternative to S/V wages and staff is almost always to go to India (or similar place), as well, rather than ever consider branch offices in any smaller towns in the US. But of course, there's no talent in Denver or Des Moines, but plenty overseas (if it's cheap enough) It's intolerable to have to call somebody on Mountain Time or Central Time, but OK to have to coordinate meetings on the other side of the world.
- pskittle 13y agoOh boy! It's just worth asking what kind of world we're leaving behind for our predecessors.We're pushing humanity forward but at what cost .
- icebraining 13y agoI think you mean successors.
- mindslight 13y agoThinking about it a bit, I bet this wasn't born out of a desire to want to keep wages down per se, but a desire to avoid turnover of productive up-to-speed people. It's quite funny to see that the downsides of near-instantaneous at-will employment are hitting companies so hard that they're willing to engage in such a boneheaded scheme, when sympathy is normally focused on employees. Perhaps if these companies want to bring back some semblance of employee loyalty, they should start incorporating longer termination notice periods in their contracts and making employees happy before they want to leave, rather than treating individuals as interchangeable cogs and getting what they ask for.
- riggins 13y agoThinking about it a bit, I bet this wasn't born out of a desire to want to keep wages down per se, but a desire to avoid turnover of productive up-to-speed people I understand your thinking but I don't think it logically holds together. If the main concern was stability, that could be addressed by matching/topping any competing offers ... so you're right back to this being about holding down wages.
- mindslight 13y agoYour method would increase complexity while making the pact harder to hide, and keeping down wages is a nice side benefit. Keep in mind people generally don't start off trying to do overt wrong.
- droopyEyelids 13y agoThats a misapplication of the aphorism. People don't start off trying to do wrong, they start off trying to benefit themselves. And an ignorant, unstructured, or illegal approach to benefiting yourself often hurts other people.
- mindslight 13y agoPeople do want to benefit themselves, but nobody wants to thinks of themselves as the bad guy either. In the simplest case, they invent a justification where their actions are actually positive or they're a victim, in more complex cases they tell themselves they're doing something for an innocuous reason even though there is a huge moral hazard and self-interest ends up winning.
- jroseattle 13y agoDon't be evil.
- hippee-lee 13y agoMy impression of that as a corporate mission is that is sounds good enought that most folks think, yeah that's a good thug to pursue. Having said this irl to other developers, the more I think about that, the more it disappoints me. Why? Because when I think about the mid level employee faced with making decisions, and they have to have an internal dialog with the selves as to if something is evil or not there are a lot of influencing factors that come into play. Is compensation bonus or promotion tied to the thing under consideration. How do individuals differentiate between evil and just really bad? My guess is that human nature (my own included ) is a lot easier swayed to 'well this is morally or ethically bad but not evil' when my own self interest is a factor in the decision to do or not do certain things. Thinking about that slogan for the last fee years makes me wish they had gone the opposite direction and raced to the top: be righteous, be ethical, be morally strong. For full disclaimer, I live in a world of my own construct where the glass is always half full and the scales always balance. However for, practical reasons, I have learned to understand the motivations behind the way the world and adjust my expectations accordingly.
- graiz 13y agoReading the actual text that's included in the article it seems to say that this is a non-poaching agreement for senior level roles. Specifically it says not to "Cold Call." It specifically excludes engineers and non-senior level roles so the allegation that it's over 1M employees is also not accurate as that number would include non-managers.
- chrismcb 13y agoreading the actual text in the article, how do you come to the conclusion that it is for "senior level roles" only? It talks about "staffing talent" "recruiting teams from any company" "one of our sales guys" Nothing in the article seems to limit it to just senior level roles. Where does it specifically exclude engineers and non-senior level?
- Roboprog 13y agoSome do-not-call agreements were at the senior management level, and some were not. (at least, that's what I thought I read)
- jasonlotito 13y agoSo, what people don't realize, is that this affects the entire industry, whether you were employed by one of these companies or not. With over 1M employees driving "market rates" for salaries, others followed and competed on those terms. This also impact hiring and employment for so many. Basically, anyone paying a competitive market rate these days is effectively benefiting from this. As a programmer, you should approach companies with this mindset.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- aspensmonster 13y agoTech workers totally don't need a union.
- nerfhammer 13y agoPart of the kool aid is that you, yes you, are merely a plutocrat-in-waiting so of course don't make things worse for yourself when you're going to be CEO of a billion dollar company. The extremely enginuitive and extremely lucky are going to strike it big and have these concerns. But you're enginuitive and lucky, right?
- mjolk 13y agoIf you're going to be smug and offensive, at least don't make up words.
- nerfhammer 13y agoI couldn't think of the word I wanted and that sounds like the word that would mean what I wanted it to mean, so I was very enginuitive in my wordification
- josh-wrale 13y agoHave you considered making a HN poll for this?
- martinald 13y agoThis is absolutely ridiculous. There should be some seriously punitive fines for this. While I can see the lack of sympathy because these employees are so well compensated and rewarded for the work, if this affected blue-collar jobs instead there would be people on the streets, and quite rightly. As someone else pointed out, Google and Apple are probably making on the order of $900k/year profit per employee - there is obviously cash in the bank to pay market salaries without resorting to disgraceful tactics like this.
- paul9290 13y agoWhat is the going salary in a general sense for a UI/UX Developer in Silicon Valley these days? From junior to mid to senior level? Thanks!
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI've lived and worked in the bay area for 30 years this month. Scary to think about but it lends an interesting perspective. At some point in their growth, senior management is far enough away from the day to day engineering that the differences between individuals becomes nearly completely obscured except for a small percentage of standout folks. This level of management is incenting a group to 'grow the company' and they need more folks to do more things. The problem is that engineers have wildly variable effectiveness in a role (they aren't fungible as folks would like) and the recruiting group is being rated on 'quality hires'. So if you split the population of engineering talent into loosely defined groups of 'employed at a hot[1] company', 'employed at a non-hot[2] company', or 'unemployed' the recruiters consider these (unreasonably) to be 'best', 'ok', and 'not ok' groups to recruit from because they correlate the hot/not-hot bit to their incentive probability. In the 80's it was Intel, AMD, and National Semiconductor all trying to growth by hiring the 'hot' talent from their competitors. In the 90's it was Ebay, Yahoo, and Sun, and in the naughts it was Google, Oracle, Intuit, Paypal etc. So you have this system set up and the 'cheapest' way (in an economic sense) for a recruiter to be successful is to exploit the work of some previous recruiter that was successful and recruit the top talent from their pool into your pool. Combined with California's labor laws which favor employees and you end up with a situation that repeats itself over and over and over again. The issue is that recruiting quality people out of the entire pool is "hard" and poaching the top engineers at a competitor is "easy." We don't incentivize recruiters to do the hard work, which leads to a host of other problems as well (like ageism, university discrimination, etc) [1] 'hot' in this context is buzzworthy or having good growth and execution press. (exemplars, 'Google', 'Facebook' or 'Apple') [2] 'non-hot' is a company that is idling along (not failing) but not generating a lot of buzz either (exemplar 'Computer Associates' or 'IBM')
- patrickxb 13y agoAll the law firms in NYC (perhaps other cities) pay the same salary to all associates. It's agreed upon between them. That being said, it's not exactly a suppression of the salary as I believe it is quite reasonable, but more like an equal playing field. You wouldn't go to another firm based on salary.
- nerfhammer 13y agoThere's no part of that that isn't illegal collusion and if true then there would be overwhelming incentive for some aspiring legal minds to launch class action suits against that
- rco8786 13y agoI'm actually really confused. I don't understand how companies agreeing to not cold call each other's employees is "overwhelming evidence of wage fixing".
- walshemj 13y agoAnd presumably if you found some one standing over a corpse hacking at it with a blood stained axe you'd think they where trying to administer a new form of CPR? Its direct evidence for Christ's sake.
- rco8786 13y agoEhh, no? Look I'm not saying it's a fair/legal practice what they did. I'm just not a law expert and don't see how it's direct wage fixing(indirect, sure).
- hueving 13y agoTake a class in economics then. You will learn what happens what happens to the price when demand is suppressed.
- danra 13y agoI wonder what the general mood is regarding this in Apple and Google. More importantly, I wonder if there are going to be any significant repercussions. Would appreciate comments from employees of these companies, whether this information being uncovered has had any effect in the workplace so far.
- daphneokeefe 13y agoAnecdotaly, I recently moved home to San Francisco from Charlotte, NC. The dominant employers in Charlotte are the big banks, and there aren't a lot of major tech companies there. I was surprised to find that the pay scale -- contract or salaried -- is about the same or less in SF for a senior web developer, despite the great difference in the cost of living in those cities. Maybe this explains it.
- eranation 13y agoMy unproved explanation is about age, young people tend to not want to work for banks (citation needed). Young people can afford less salary but prefer equity, fun culture, amenities and perks (citation needed 2). A Sr. Java Developer living in Charlotte, Atlanta or Texas needs to make a 6 figure salary to stay in a middle class level quality of living (2 kids, single family home, 2 cars, hole foods market) A Single Developer in SF needs the same amount of money to live well in the city with roommates. a NC bank wanting a good web developer can either pay a young SF developer the same money she is making there to compensate for the loss of "living in SF is more fun for young adults than in Charlotte" + "it's a bank, we don't have a ping pong table or beer in the fridge" effect. Or pay a salary that is going to be enough for a bit older developer who has a family, to live comfortably. If you consider that there is a cost to moving to Charlotte that is more than a monetary cost, that cost needs to be taken into consideration in the compensation.
- fixermark 13y agoThe funny thing about all of this is that a"cold call" block is actually something the engineers might want. As a software engineer: I've been chased by recruiters while heads-down on a project. It's an annoying distraction. With the tools at my fingertips (glassdoor, social and professional networks of other engineers that aren't particularly restricted by corporate borders in a deeply-interconnected era), I know the market value of the job and I know who's willing to offer more and less; I also can know about the corporate and engineering culture of the other companies. In short: if I want a change, I know where the door is and I know who's hiring. While in general, I'd agree with the notion that decreased price signalling could depress wages, I think it's a stretch to push software engineers working at the listed companies into an "oppressed workers" mold; it's a notoriously well-compensated field. It's certainly a booby-trap to reason from one's own experience. But I find myself thinking that software engineers themselves might welcome the idea of a "no cold-call" list.
- tricolon 13y agoDo recruiters actually call you? I've gotten countless emails, which are easy to ignore—but I think I'd go insane if they started trying to call me.
- mjolk 13y agoRecruiters definitely sell telephone contact sheets to each other (or take them along when they change companies). I've even had recruiters call me on my desk phone at work trying to do a sales pitch.
- outside1234 13y agoDoes anyone know how we sign on to the class action? I was at Microsoft and then Google during this time and this probably affected my starting salary at Google.
- dbloom 13y agoGo to https://hightechemployeelawsuit.com https://hightechemployeelawsuit.com . If you were affected, you should have gotten a (snail-mail) letter.
- soheil 13y agoIncredible how so many people still kill to work at those companies. Maybe this is a sign that likes of Google on are on decline at least as far as their ability to attract top talent is concerned.
- cykho 13y agoYour contribution at a big company amounts of a little under half the compensation equation (the rest is politics). If you want to work at a big company spent half your time playing the game. If you want your life to be about your work go to a startup.
- m0llusk 13y agoIt might be worth trying to take account of the perspectives of these companies. There are a relatively small number of the most talented engineers available. Being in such demand meant that they pay was being bid up out of reach and putting at risk development of critical products. It is also important to understand that at the time this was going on Apple was still just emerging from a near death experience during which it let go of five digits worth of employees. These companies felt poor, at risk, and their backs to the wall. If this were about workers being treated unfairly or very badly that would be one thing, but that is not what happened. All of the workers involved had great job security, compensation near or above six figures, great benefits, and stock options. Some peaks of compensation were prevented, but it is not clear that bidding wars for top talent would have been a good thing for the tech labor market as a whole. It could actually have been a drain on pay for everyone else because there was only so much to spend on workers which is pretty much the bulk of costs for these companies at that time.
- ChristianMarks 13y agoThe apologetics here are nauseating. You want to be slaves. Maybe technical labor ought to form its own cartel and stop working for these companies. Let the executives clean their own toilets.
- walid 13y agoWill the CEOs ever go to jail for this. This is clearly more than a TOS violation, which can land people in jail.
- tempestn 13y agoI seem to be in the minority here, but legality aside, I don't see an agreement between companies not to poach each other's employees as a terribly sinister thing. In fact, it seems entirely reasonable to mutually agree not to actively recruit employees from another company. Once you talk about refusing to hire potential employees who apply of their own volition, that would be another thing, but in my mind "no cold call" != "wage fixing scheme".
- tempestn 13y ago(I assume I'm likely missing something though, so I welcome counter-arguments. Would this still be a problem even if all they had done was avoid actively recruiting?)