They were significantly lower during the no-poach agreement. After it ended, Google immediately raised all its engineers' salaries by ~15%, and salaries quickly increased from there.
Look at self driving car engineer salaries today. Those wouldn't have happened under a no-poach agreement. Compare to the mobile OS race, with tens of billions of dollars (at least) on the line. The no-poach agreement between Apple and Google prevented them from beating each other with engineers, so the money poured into lawyers' pockets through litigation instead.
Look at self driving car engineer salaries today. Those wouldn't have happened under a no-poach agreement. Compare to the mobile OS race, with tens of billions of dollars (at least) on the line. The no-poach agreement between Apple and Google prevented them from beating each other with engineers, so the money poured into lawyers' pockets through litigation instead.