[ColinCera]

What is naive is to assume without evidence that the actions of a handful of companies that employ a tiny percentage of software developers had a significant impact on average salaries nationwide. In the absence of any such evidence, it makes more sense to assume it had little impact, which is what I do. The example you cite is mere speculation, and one could easily speculate about an opposite effect, i.e., companies that would not ordinarily be able to compete with Google et al could offer candidates more than they otherwise would have, that is, they might be inclined to stretch salary offers for star developers rather than shrink them. But, there's no evidence that either thing happened to any significant extent.

[frostmatthew]

The example is hypothetical, but it is not speculation. A candidate [usually] decides to accept an offer or not on a number of factors. As a hiring manager you are unable to change most of these factors (e.g. you cannot change the tech stack, or the company culture, or the location). What you can change (to make your offer more appealing than others a candidate is considering) is the pay.

If you're considering another offer for X, I can make my offer more attractive by exceeding X. The lower X is the less it cost me to exceed it. If some companies (particularly large and desirable ones) are lowering X that will affect far more than "just" the 64,000 members of the class action.