[drakaal]

This is the 99% lead charge that annoys me the most. (especially since many of the people leading it aren't 99%'ers they just think they are)

The assumption is that the only places to work are the big companies. Anti-Poaching agreements are rarely about the Money and more about the "I won't steal your trade secrets if you don't steal mine" types of "we can't patent this stuff" stand offs.

It is also protection against having a company put another company out of business by "poaching".

You look at some of the teams at companies and you can see where a group of 10 guys went from company to company. When they all left most the time that company failed. You can't withstand a blow of having 40% of your team walk, and take everything they were working on to a larger competing company.

"Salary Fixing" doesn't work. Someone always offers 15% more to get better talent and when that eats in to the talent pool everyone else has to ante up as well.

Silicon Valley just feels entitled. Yeah it costs more to live there, but the expendable income of SV engineers is vast compared to engineers anywhere else in the US, and the world.

[Zigurd]

If you are in a non C-level salaried position, and you don't have a few million in liquid assets, it is exceedingly unlikely you are a 1%er.

[drakaal]

For the world is any engineer in Silicon Valley is a 1%'er.

For the US at $200k you are a 95%'er At $550k you are a 99%

That's a lot different than "C-Level" and "millions in liquid assets"

A lot of people at Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft are 95th percentile.

Quite a few are 98th percentile.

http://www.whatsmypercent.com/

[walshemj]

exactly a BART train driver earns about the same as a developer and will have overtime and a much much better pension.

Same in the UK a tube driver earns far more than the average developer does in London and has a Final Salary pension plus overtime.

[drakaal]

A BART "train driver" is responsible for the lives of hundreds at a time. Attended school, and takes ongoing continuing education classes to maintain their license. They compete for a few hundred jobs in the US and if they don't get or keep that job there is no competition locally to transfer to.

That "SV Engineers feel entitled" thing I said. You just demonstrated it.

[walshemj]

I am not saying that BART or LU Drivers are overpaid - but that the average SV programmer or London developer is not overpaid when compared to them - techies are not very good at organizing collectively.

Name me one SV tech company that has a final salary pension open to new joiners.

And sorry 95% of the safety is in the TPS system and I would probably bet that the EE's that design and look after that system for London Underground are not paid £60k plus overtime

[hga]

And won't become unemployable as a regular salaried employee around age 35-40.