[nnq]

OK, so you can stop the "no poaching" and you'll have:

--> smaller than they should be engineer wages --> higher engineer wages --> even higher engineer wages -->

... --> absurdly high unsustainable engineer wages -->

... --> more outsourcing --> even more outsourcing -->

... --> massive outsourcing -->

... ... ... --> smaller than they should be engineer wages

...I think the "evil masters" of this "no poaching" pact managed to prevent an engineers' job marked fluctuation. And you think about it, such a fluctuation would only have benefited the foreign outsourcing providers and encouraged the displacement of parts of tech industry outside US ...which imho would've have been a great thing for Europe's tech sector and maybe even for worldwide IT innovation as a whole, since lots of new pseudo-innovations start to sound more and more like "american-inbread ideas".

[ceras]

Engineers wouldn't price themselves so high that they would be outsourced: that only happens to people who don't have any room left to let their wages fall, either because they already earn too little to sustain themselves or there is a legal price floor (e.g., minimum wage). An engineer making $200k isn't going to starve from taking a 50% pay cut, and they'd certainly rather take that than no job at all.