[rconti]

This. And due to the high demand of our skills, we're able to effectively negotiate salaries and comp in a way that at least lets us think we're doing better than average (see: salary transparency, or lack thereof).

Plus, we're not a group generally known to like more layers of bureaucracy.

[jancsika]

> And due to the high demand of our skills, we're able to effectively negotiate salaries and comp in a way that at least lets us think we're doing better than average (see: salary transparency, or lack thereof).

So even with a history of Silicon Valley playing tricks to suppress what developers get paid[1], the typical HN reader is humdrum about salary because it's "better than average?" I have a hard time believing that.

> Plus, we're not a group generally known to like more layers of bureaucracy.

I get that.

But doesn't this seem weird:

1. Devs apparently don't care for the bureaucracy of the taxi medallion service. So two companies build a nationwide service that does an end run around it.

2. Devs apparently don't care for the lack of salary transparency. So they create a cryptographic system that... oh wait, nope, there's no app for that.

?

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11843237/Apple-G...

[fixermark]

> So even with a history of Silicon Valley playing tricks to suppress what developers get paid[1], the typical HN reader is humdrum about salary because it's "better than average?" I have a hard time believing that.

Yes, because the "pay suppression's" effect was to knock people making six-figure salaries down to six-figure salaries, on average. It actually had very little observable negative effect.

(Note that if you go back to the original lawsuits, they were regarding gentlemen's agreements around headhunting. Given that SV's default attitude is "individuals are responsible for themselves," an agreement against headhunting isn't interesting---if an employee is dissatisfied, they know where the competition is and who to talk to about changing companies. If anything, there's a weak positive to an anti-headhunting agreement for employees at the companies in question: it was one fewer recruiter squads pumping spam into an employee's inbox).

[rhizome]

Note that if you go back to the original lawsuits, they were regarding gentlemen's agreements around headhunting. Given that SV's default attitude is "individuals are responsible for themselves," an agreement against headhunting isn't interesting---if an employee is dissatisfied, they know where the competition is and who to talk to about changing companies

You may be interested to learn that one of the corrupt agreements was that in the event that an employee does talk to the competition about changing companies and one of the other colluding companies makes an offer to the employee, that company will not counter-offer beyond the first offer.

So, "little observable negative effect" is not quite as dispositive (or even as visible) as you portray it would be.

[fixermark]

It's still, on average, a choice between two very cushy six-figure-plus-stock-options deals. No doubt collusion like that puts downward pressure on salaries, but with so much inequality in income in the US, you could put a LOT of such downward pressure on salaries before anyone's going to bat an eye.

(Hm... There's either an economics or sociology paper in the making there about the consequences in employment practices when the wealth inequality in a nation skews large).

[rhizome]

This is one of the most worker-hostile perspectives I've read in a long time, certainly in a dismissiveness-per-sentence sense.

[fixermark]

Ask yourself: after these allegations came to light, did people flee from these companies? We are still talking employees with massive bargaining power and opportunities. "Apple," "Google," and "Lucasfilm" carry a lot of clout; the wronged employees could probably have found work anywhere in the market of their industry of choice if they chose to leave in protest over this mistreatment. We're not exactly talking unskilled labor or easily-replaceable skillsets here.

Did the companies shrink or grow their workforce?

If they grew, wouldn't that suggest to you that the workers themselves aren't seeing the hostility you are?

[aquadrop]

You need antitrust laws to work not unions, when SV companies had secret agreement.

And for 2 - there's app for that, but I don't think the statement is generally true.

[TAForObvReasons]

It's more "temporarily embarrassed billionaires" imho. Many HN denizens are angling to either work at google or launch a startup that is acquired by google or grow to the scale of google. Why offend the future employer / acquirer now over proletarian issues?

In case you aren't familiar with the Steinbeck quote:

> Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

[rconti]

Seems like a massive projection, but okay.

I'm not sure the pro-union crowd are doing themselves any favor by constantly telling people they don't know what they want, insisting things could only be better, inventing straw-man arguments, and so on.

[acct1771]

"Embarrassed" -> "disenfranchised" has a nice ring to it.

[novembermike]

This is misquoted quite a bit. Here's the actual quote.

"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. "I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."