[kkowalczyk]

Pointing out the obvious: engineers are not "goods" that Google or Apple produces.

Even if consider employees salary to fall under that dubious categorization, good luck proving the salaries were "likely depressed" when during that period the salaries went up. A lot.

It seems that it only affected lazy and apathetic engineers i.e. those who couldn't be bother to send out a resume.

[ryanobjc]

Uh, goods are not just things companies produce, but also things they consume. Therefore it could also include employees.

Also, if you have a look at the class action filing, the mechanism of action is quite clear.

To lay it out, the way that salaries are set is for any given title (eg: Software Engineer I), there is a pay range. Hiring managers do not have the general permission to go outside the pay band. Under the interests of fairness, these pay bands are adhered to fairly strictly.

So depressing the wages of even a sub-section of the employee pool helps keep the pay band down.

While you may deem this a mere 'theory', there is evidence of it's affects. Specifically that Google was forced to give 10% raises to their entire employee when Facebook would not accede to a cold-call prohibition.

Your final sentence is not very complementary to your fellow engineers - often times engineers are focused on the problem and unaware of their place in the market. To call them lazy and apathetic is pretty mean spirited.

[vidarh]

> only affected lazy and apathetic engineers

Or loyal and happy ones, which believed the company was paying them market rates.

In any case, if the companies formed a price fixing cartel, they're just as wrong if they failed to have an effect as if they did have an effect - the damage is just smaller if they didn't have an effect.

[zorpner]

Do you seriously mean 'good luck proving the salaries were "likely depressed" when during that period the salaries went up' when there were non-recruiting agreements between the top payers? How do you think salaries increase?

It would be shockingly unlikely if salaries were not depressed, and that is what's actually obvious.

[epc]

The "obvious" is irrelevant.

Under US antitrust law, if you conspire with others in the marketplace to fix prices, you can be prosecuted. Doesn't matter whether you're fixing prices for labor, pizza, cats, photos of cats.