17 ms·

Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

242 points by vwinsyee 13y ago

nerfhammer 13y ago
> It also offers a portrait of Silicon Valley engineers that differs sharply from their current caricature as well-paid villains who are driving up the price of real estate in San Francisco and making the city unbearable for others. What? "unbearable"? That seems a little out of place. Would most NYTimes readers have any idea what he's talking about? From the author's recent articles list: -- In little more than a decade, Google has become essential and omnipresent. Now the question is whether people will start to resent and oppose it. -- As entrepreneurs invade regulated industries and evade traditional watchdogs, the question of who is responsible when something goes wrong looms large. -- Airbnb likes to say that it gives more people the money they need to pay their bills. But new research suggests that as the sharing industry spreads, more people are going to need that money, because they’ll be unemployed. -- Uber and a Child's Death -- Hard-hit by recession, many in Europe have questioned whether jobs at Amazon’s warehouses there are good for the economy or dehumanizing. -- seems to exclusively write negative stories about bay area tech
- dhoulb 13y ago
  Wow, did Eric Schmidt run over his dog or something? Guy's got a serious bias!
  - chetanahuja 13y ago
    No. It has worked out well for his career. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_streitfeld/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s... "In 2013, Mr. Streitfeld was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting “for its penetrating look into business practices by Apple and other technology companies that illustrates the darker side of a changing global economy for workers and consumers."
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    Some people, myself included, find fault often (too often) and look for the flaws. Assuming the worst leads to pleasant surprises. Assuming the best rarely does. My 2c.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    yeah it's CP Snows Two nations repeating its self - Arts Grads vs the oily engineers. Some of his angst is that as a child of a major columnist in a broadsheet he feels that he should have a proper job on a proper news paper which in previous generations he woudl have stood a good chance of like say Polly Toynbee on the Guardian. Due to the decimation of the traditional print media he can't get a nice job on the NYT as a columnist and has to slum it in a tabloid and they are using typical tabloid "monstering" techniques
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  We could use a bit more self-reflection and a little less shooting the messenger around here. If you only want to read happy happy joy, disruption yeah, cheerleader stories about how awesome the tech industry is, I suggest TechCrunch. Our industry has a pervading attitude of treating anybody who is not "us" as roadkill on the highway to progress. That's going to turn against us a lot harder then these few relatively mild articles.
  - calibraxis 13y ago
    Yeah, when I want to learn why some startup failed or the reality of some tech, I don't listen much to the public tech world. I have to reach out to people and probe to get a better picture. Because then they won't be so busy applying spin for public consumption. Like recently, there was some article here about a failed startup, and it felt like most of the discussion was pointless. Killing time of people's lives for no end. Because I knew people at the company, and there was such massive dysfunction which severely cut the chances of success regardless of virtually any other factor. I mean really goofy, where elements should be on a sitcom. Or when you read about some tech which "everyone uses", and there's fundamental issues with it which inevitably bite people hard when they actually try to apply the thing, but everyone's like rah-rah.
  - hanswesterbeek 13y ago
    Exactly. The tech-industry is horribly naive. It operates based on the idea that the general public perceives them as those friendly shy nerdy guys from school. Wake up, guys. People have had tech giants invade their life way too much and they've all seen in The Social Network what kind of person a poster boy like Mark Zuckerberg really is.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      And when they need a scapegoat for the rescission they look around and think ok we bullied them in school with no come back and they are crap a lobbying as a group so lets go to town on techies. Its the "Anti globalization of fools" want to rile up your nice political machine just go "techie techie techie" any one get the reference to the infamous political observation I am making here.
wavesounds 13y ago
Can Software Engineers in California that weren't working at one of these companies get in on this class action? I mean even if you weren't at one of those companies its easy to see how suppressing wages at the largest companies would suppress wages for the entire industry.
- doktrin 13y ago
  Doubtful. Out of curiosity, why do you want to?
  - walshemj 13y ago
    for the $$$$ Though this action by major company's would depress wages across the board so its not a totally worthless suit.
WildUtah 13y ago
What can the villains in this drama use as power to force their illegal price fixing on reluctant companies? Just what you'd expect. "Mr. Jobs proposed a no-poaching deal to Edward T. Colligan, Palm’s chief executive. Mr. Colligan responded that such a deal would be unfair to employees as well as “likely illegal.” Mr. Jobs then threatened to unleash Apple’s patent lawyers on Palm." Yep. It's our badly broken patent system yet again.
- RachelF 13y ago
  Interesting, since most of Palm's ideas on smartphones pre-dated the iPhone. No wonder we've changed the patent law to first to file, rather than first to invent.
  - rz2k 13y ago
    I agree that the biggest liability to the economy at large of huge patent portfolios, little seen so far, is the ability of multiple incumbent corporations to collude and increase barriers to entry so they collectively are not threatened by innovation from upstarts. That said, most of the time that Palm (and Handspring etc.) devices existed, they were PDAs, and the reason Palm beat out Apple's Newton is probably that they chose a subset of functionality that was more modest and probably more appropriate to the hardware of the time. For example, while Newton's handwriting recognition was often unreliable, Palm devices asked its users to use a an arcane script that was easier to process. (Later lost in a patent-related issue, if I remember correctly) Probably someone here was actually involved in the history of developing the devices, but as I remember it, the revolution of Palm pilots and other models was that they worked more smoothly, and they synced more reliably with your computer than any competitors. That involves a lot of good engineering and attention to detail, but it does not necessarily mean that there can't still be overlaps with patents held by companies which invented something earlier but with an implementation that didn't win over enough customers to survive.
    - fredgrott 13y ago
      part of the story that is forgotten..there is a specific part of software in the mobile OS that Palm invented and patented and than gave that patent away for free to anyone who wanted to use it..if you are a mobile OS geek you know piece I am talking about
zcarter 13y ago
Some relevant points for engineers addressed here: http://blog.mightyspring.com/post/74827679281/battling-outside-forces-in-employment http://blog.mightyspring.com/post/74827679281/battling-outsi... Know who (with)holds information Avoid information asymmetry
- Nate75Sanders 13y ago
  It's standard to mention that you work for the company you're promoting.
suprgeek 13y ago
I have personally witnessed the frustrating side of this "no poaching" pact. A close friend was tired of the "Manager Arrogance" at one of these colluding companies. He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly. Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S. The wage hike would have been considerable for my friend (you can guess the two companies - Arrogant vs Top Payer) & he was pretty upset to learn that the real reason was Jobs being a Huge Asshole and bullying everybody into such a blatantly illegal pact. So this is a very real "wage theft" collusion case. Unfortunately most of the parties involved had the "good" sense to NOT document it officially so the Smoking Gun might be hard to prove conclusively. There was even a "no hire" list at one of these companies tacked on the wall of a HR Manager with the Caption "If you hire from there, we will fire (u) from here."
- raverbashing 13y ago
  What about quitting first after knowing of this fact?
  - watwut 13y ago
    I guess it is risky. Many people see finding next job before leaving previous one as the responsible thing to do. Especially if you live in an expensive location or have family or other financial obligations that simply needs to be paid. Technically, you can find "temporary" job in smaller company and then move to the company you "really" want to work in. It just seem to me somewhat jerk move toward that smaller company.
  - jhart3333 13y ago
    You mean everyone quit together? That's called a strike.
    - huxley 13y ago
      A strike involves work stoppage, it's a very different tactic than mass resignation. In 1999, Major League Umpires Association (MLUA) were not able to legally go strike so they opted to use mass resignation as their negotiation strategy. It backfired, cost 22 umpires their careers and led to decertification of the union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Major_League_Umpires_Association_mass_resignation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Major_League_Umpires_Assoc...
mrtree 13y ago
ONLY 6 COMMENTS? People should be virtually rioting for this.
- doktrin 13y ago
  Huh? This isn't breaking news. It's just the latest development in an old and ongoing story.
- pekk 13y ago
  It doesn't have a strong enough tie-in to Snowden to cause rioting. But seriously, some responses are more productive than others.
cgriswald 13y ago
Am I the only one that loves the fact that it involves 64K programmers?
- leoc 13y ago
  Well, the C64 was an Apple-beater...
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  As with earlier numbers: sounds like it should be enough for anybody, but I can think of a number of other companies which have been excluded from the suit which should be included. Cisco comes to mind.
  - rapind 13y ago
    I think he's saying he loves that it's 2^6 (K) programmers.
    - dman 13y ago
      That sir is not a serious definition of 64k. We all know 64k == 65536 ( 2^16 ).
      - rapind 13y ago
        touché
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Yes, I got that. As in 64k (or 640k) ought to be enough for anyone. And my point was, well, it's not ;-)
- patrickmay 13y ago
  64k programmers ought to be enough for anybody.
smprk 13y ago
Wouldn't a better idea than putting up a 'no poaching' kind of exit barrier be to give 'bonus every X period of time' kind of incentive, for employees you value and would like to retain? I wonder if in the world of technology it makes sense to retain a demotivated employee?
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  > I wonder if in the world of technology it makes sense to retain a demotivated employee? It absolutely does. The nature of tech work practically demands that every employee develop intimate knowledge of the very specific domain his work touches. It takes so long for new hires to become productive that in most cases the bottom line begs you to hold on to anyone who already has that intimate knowledge. On the other hand, keeping a tech employee motivated often looks like a fool's game to management. If he's good at what he does, he doesn't see the world the same way as they do. If you're a growth-oriented engineer, it makes sense for you to bounce around different companies so as to maintain a sense of movement and there's not much your employer can do to "maintain your sense of movement" because it's a completely alien concept to them and often presents as "unnecessary shit that will cost time and money and be risky". Your career goals will often clash hard against your company's needs. End result? This situation where top talent sinks collude to reduce their engineers' inherent negotiating advantage. This practice would be widespread, if only technology weren't such a wide field that any engineer with any desire at all for something better can very quickly find something. It only happened at the top level because that's the only circle in which there is no more upward mobility except among the same cloistered few.
- twic 13y ago
  That would cost money. The point of the no-poaching deals is that they were free for the colluding employers.
thinkcomp 13y ago
Case docket and documents here: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1860459 http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1860459
MarkPNeyer 13y ago
how can i join this lawsuit?
- shitlord 13y ago
  see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7323443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7323443
birken 13y ago
FYI, the exact definition of the class here is people who "worked as a salaried Technical Employee": (a) for Apple from March 2005 through December 2009; (b) for Adobe from May 2005 through December 2009; (c) for Google from March 2005 through December 2009; (d) for Intel from March 2005 through December 2009; (e) for Intuit from June 2007 through December 2009; (f) for Lucasfilm from January 2005 through December 2009; or (g) for Pixar from January 2005 through December 2009. Source: https://hightechemployeelawsuit.com/faqs/#q0 https://hightechemployeelawsuit.com/faqs/#q0 If you fall into this group and want to file a claim to be part of the settlement, you have until March 19th to do so (which you can do via the above website).
- raverbashing 13y ago
  What happened in December 2009?
  - pron 13y ago
    The Justice Department intervened.
  - fidotron 13y ago
    Supposedly Facebook didn't play along.
tn13 13y ago
This is really pathetic. I can understand companies being ruthless in maximizing their profits but this sort of move is seriously counter productive. If the wages are not competitive it also means less incentive for bright youngsters to get into these professions. If this kind of agreements become more common, I think that will be like we killing our future.
- twic 13y ago
  Even with the suppressive effect of this collusion, wages remain more than high enough to make this industry an attractive option.
- hga 13y ago
  Well, it was one way of getting around California's unique non-competes are unenforceable law. I believe that more than anything else, that's responsible for the Bay Area's long term technological ecosystem success.
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  Companies do not, usually, plan decades ahead. They manage the next quarter and plan the next three years. Youngsters entering or not a professional area is something that takes 20 years to produce a measurable effect. Government, is the one that should do the multi decade planning.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    Except it never does. All those decade-long budgets and long-term plans are a sham that survives in the best case until next 2 year election, but more commonly till the next budget skirmish that happens once a couple of months. Specific people can have long-term agenda but government as a whole is incapable of that.
  - tn13 13y ago
    "I am from government and I am here to help" you can only shudder at those words irrespective of the context. I will be surprised to see if Google or its investors do not care about their long term future. I will be less surprised to see someone like Obama planning only for re-elections and short term popularity ratings.
drakaal 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
curiousDog 13y ago
I'm still surprised Google was in on this considering they are developer friendly and are a "do-no-evil" company to a considerable extent. It was probably pressure from Jobs. Developers hurt by this should squeeze them for every penny possible.
- tostitos1979 13y ago
  I am going to respond to this with a quote from the Batman reboot: it is not who you are inside, but it is what you do that defines you.
- pron 13y ago
  Google is no more a "do-no-evil" company than most. They might be slightly above average. Their "employee friendliness", as far as it goes, is blatantly self-serving, designed to create extreme allegiance to the company and possibly long working-hours. This is not in itself "bad", it's just that it isn't altruistic in the slightest, either.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  What you have described is Google's "brand image". It is carefully cultivated through PR and marketing to result in you having a positive impression of Google. You could uncharitably call it propaganda. Google is pretty good at promoting this image, but that's all it is.
- discardorama 13y ago
  It's not "do no evil". It's "don't be evil". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil Except, today it's more like "Don't be evil* * except where permitted by law and/or required for profit"
shiven 13y ago
This is bound to happen in any industry where supply of talent exceeds demand AND the powers-that-be can get away with collusion (either by virtue of being 'private' or simply being powerful and thus not give a shit). So what if one talented employee decided to quit one crappy company 'A' AND is unable to find work at the non-poach pact company 'B'? The place he quit will always find another willing sucker 'coz the supply is ever present (with, at most, a minor reduction in quality).
- gizmo686 13y ago
  When supply exceeds demand, you do not need collusion, because there are unemployed workers who you can just hire at your target rate. If that is not enough money to entice them to work for you, then it would still not be enough even if you colluded. What collusion allows is for the employers to maintain these low prices, even when demand exceed supply.
nnq 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
pron 13y ago
This case is a beautiful demonstration of the dynamics of both "free market" and regulation. Free market dynamics demand (in this case as in all cases) that large players must never compete on prices or wages (as your competitors have the resources to fight back, so competition on price just makes everyone worse off). On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market (antitrust), as well as a tool wielded by capitalists to strengthen their stranglehold (patents). It is perhaps worth reminding that the interplay between regulators and the market, and their co-evolution, have taken a different historical path than in Europe. While in Europe big government preceded laissez-faire, or at least, evolved hand-in-hand, the US was largely unregulated for many years. The result was that Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power in the US, advancing the "economy" but at the same time practically enslaving the population. It was after many years of cries for help by the American people, and a long struggle led largely by the press, that Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government, wrestle back some power, and save the people from feudalist oppression. Ironically, many Americans forgot what the US looked like when the government was powerless, and the market was allowed to roam free. People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about when playing out in the real world. Obviously, as patent law demonstrates, regulation can be (and is) abused by capitalists. As the world changes, power shifts, and players adapt new strategies in this constant power struggle, both the market and regulation need to evolve hand-on-hand. The big question is what will play the role the press once played in exposing the workings of the intricate system of interests that is the economy?
- crazy1van 13y ago
  " On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market " I don't see any evidence that regulation stopped the behavior in this case. Perhaps the law will be used after the fact to sue or jail some people, but it doesn't seem to be what actually stopped the problem. As another poster said, the class action date ranges end in 2009 because Facebook (a private company) wouldn't play ball. Capitalism is a messy system, but it does tend to self correct in the long run.
  - 13y ago
puppetmaster3 13y ago
don't tell me a about shortage if the market is manipulated
hanswesterbeek 13y ago
Yeah those poor high-tech workers have a really rough life indeed, it's time someone did something about it!
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Laws and fairness are for everybody.
  - hanswesterbeek 13y ago
    There's no disputing that. I'm just voicing the sentiment of main street hoping that we techies take it to heart.
    - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
      Yeah definitely its a 1st-world problem. But in context, there's more money and value being squandered in Silicon Valley due to this crime, than if it occurred in many other areas.
      - walshemj 13y ago
        Collusion amongst employers against employees happens in the third world often with far worse consequences look at south america
geebee 13y ago
I'm really glad to see that this issue is getting more coverage in the mainstream press. There was an article/editorial a while back (discussed on HN) from the guardian, but unfortunately, the writer used the incident (the collusion) to go on a rant about how valley leaders are hypocritical libertarians. That (reasonably enough) lead to a long debate about whether the leaders are libertarians even if they are mainly democrats, etc... This article stuck to the point much better. I do think Mr Levy (quoted in this article) went a little far in suggesting that the engineers are a very well heeled class. "Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, has the highest average wage in the country,” said Stephen Levy, senior economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “San Francisco and San Mateo are not far behind. It would be a mistake to think of these plaintiffs as an oppressed set of victims." Agreed, programmers in the bay area aren't dust bowl refugees. However, we need to recognize that the relatively high salaries don't go far in high cost regions (where many of these companies are located), and aren't that high relative to the higher wages typical of these regions. Application developers in SF earn, on average, a tiny bit less than RNs and a whisker more than dental hygienists (links at end). I'm 100% ok with good wages for nurses and dental hygienists, but keep in mind that these tech companies have been almost frantically lobbying congress to do something about a severe shortage of highly educated programmers and engineers. Well, first and foremost, how about you stop colluding to suppress their wages? That might attract a few more people into the field. http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b... http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2013/12/17/what-the-most-common-jobs-in-san-francisco-pay/#18915101=0 http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2013/12/17/what-the-most-co...
- smsm42 13y ago
  Is there indeed a shortage of app developers because of the low wages? I was always thinking of software as a segment where entry barriers are relatively low - compared to, say, medicine - and pay is exceptionally good. Of course, everybody wants to be paid better, but it doesn't look like software engineers are suffering especially badly from low pay.
  - geebee 13y ago
discardorama 13y ago
The sad part is that even though this behavior is illegal, no one will actually go to jail for this. Companies will pay a token fine (like Pixar and Lucasfilm did), and it'll be business as usual, but this time no emails and no documentation. Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change.
- denzil_correa 13y ago
  > Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change. That's pretty much it. Does the govt come down on corporations for such acts? One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents. More often than not, it is a fine and then things move on to find and execute a different loophole.
  - discardorama 13y ago
    > One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents. ... except when the corporate honcho refuses to do the government's bidding; in that case, his ass thrown into prison. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30/a-ceo-who-resisted-nsa-spying-is-out-of-prison-and-he-feels-vindicated-by-snowden-leaks/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...
- gizmo686 13y ago
  You don't need people to go to jail. One solution is to replace the token fine with a fine large enough that it is cheaper to play by the rules.
  - abofh 13y ago
    It's a civil case, the companies are being sued by employees for back-compensation, not by the government for shady practices.
tosseraccount 13y ago
Gee. Maybe there is a labor shortage.
rdl 13y ago
Arguably this helped startups, since an ex Apple guy who couldn't go to Google could found a startup (and then maybe sell to Google later). Still lame though.
wnevets 13y ago
but I was told Steve Jobs was a great man
pyrrhotech 13y ago
Engineers are so highly underpaid for the value they contribute to these companies. What's the average salary, $140k? It should be $300k, half a million total comp conservatively. Even at that amount, employers would still be getting a 50-75% margin on you. It's insane how much we are ripped off. Good eningeers can literally make or save companies 10s of millions a year, but are never compensated for it.
- wildpeaks 13y ago
  Make your own company if it's that easy to literally make or save 10s of millions a year, that way you can set the amount of own compensation.
- collyw 13y ago
  I am sure it depends on the engineer. Plenty of crap ones there that's work needs rewritten once they have left.
tomzinter 13y ago
Serious question - will this do much? Seems like in the case of a win, the companies will give token amounts (9MM from Pixar for example) and the claimants (given there are 64000) will get a tiny little check. Am I missing something? Is this worth pursuing for a prospective claimant?
dba7dba 13y ago
The drive to maximize profit by those in the executive suite has caused them to do some seemingly clever (according to those in power) things but are in fact stupid in the long term. A few years ago I overheard a new senior programmer argue with the cfo why developers should get 2 big monitors instead of a small 19". The cfo initially refused to go along. Of course some of it was due to his desire to keep cost down, as every good cfo should. But then he joked every dollar saved would mean more for his christmas bonus. we were a small/friendly company so I guess that's why he felt it was ok to joke about it. But I do believe his ultimate reason was to keep cost down at any 'cost' so that his bonus check would be bigger, as his performance is evaluated on how he manages the cash flow. What the cfo didn't see was the productivity gain that could be gained by the programmers having bigger monitors. And these programmers were making near 6-figure salary. Their combined man hour cost was greater than his. But a cfo was making a decision to fatten his bonus check. Obviously this was not a good choice for the firm to make but it had been going on for awhile until the new senior programmer spoke up. And I think this kind of logic in executive suite is probably common everywhere. Lastly, I think it's about time these big tech companies add profit sharing ON top of the base salary as part of the compensation package. Why should an executive make SO much more than master and phds who are adding real value to the company?

242 points by vwinsyee 13y ago

> It also offers a portrait of Silicon Valley engineers that differs sharply from their current caricature as well-paid villains who are driving up the price of real estate in San Francisco and making the city unbearable for others. What? "unbearable"? That seems a little out of place. Would most NYTimes readers have any idea what he's talking about? From the author's recent articles list: -- In little more than a decade, Google has become essential and omnipresent. Now the question is whether people will start to resent and oppose it. -- As entrepreneurs invade regulated industries and evade traditional watchdogs, the question of who is responsible when something goes wrong looms large. -- Airbnb likes to say that it gives more people the money they need to pay their bills. But new research suggests that as the sharing industry spreads, more people are going to need that money, because they’ll be unemployed. -- Uber and a Child's Death -- Hard-hit by recession, many in Europe have questioned whether jobs at Amazon’s warehouses there are good for the economy or dehumanizing. -- seems to exclusively write negative stories about bay area tech

dhoulb 13y ago
Wow, did Eric Schmidt run over his dog or something? Guy's got a serious bias!
- chetanahuja 13y ago
  No. It has worked out well for his career. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_streitfeld/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s... "In 2013, Mr. Streitfeld was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting “for its penetrating look into business practices by Apple and other technology companies that illustrates the darker side of a changing global economy for workers and consumers."
- lostlogin 13y ago
  Some people, myself included, find fault often (too often) and look for the flaws. Assuming the worst leads to pleasant surprises. Assuming the best rarely does. My 2c.
- walshemj 13y ago
  yeah it's CP Snows Two nations repeating its self - Arts Grads vs the oily engineers. Some of his angst is that as a child of a major columnist in a broadsheet he feels that he should have a proper job on a proper news paper which in previous generations he woudl have stood a good chance of like say Polly Toynbee on the Guardian. Due to the decimation of the traditional print media he can't get a nice job on the NYT as a columnist and has to slum it in a tabloid and they are using typical tabloid "monstering" techniques
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
We could use a bit more self-reflection and a little less shooting the messenger around here. If you only want to read happy happy joy, disruption yeah, cheerleader stories about how awesome the tech industry is, I suggest TechCrunch. Our industry has a pervading attitude of treating anybody who is not "us" as roadkill on the highway to progress. That's going to turn against us a lot harder then these few relatively mild articles.
- calibraxis 13y ago
  Yeah, when I want to learn why some startup failed or the reality of some tech, I don't listen much to the public tech world. I have to reach out to people and probe to get a better picture. Because then they won't be so busy applying spin for public consumption. Like recently, there was some article here about a failed startup, and it felt like most of the discussion was pointless. Killing time of people's lives for no end. Because I knew people at the company, and there was such massive dysfunction which severely cut the chances of success regardless of virtually any other factor. I mean really goofy, where elements should be on a sitcom. Or when you read about some tech which "everyone uses", and there's fundamental issues with it which inevitably bite people hard when they actually try to apply the thing, but everyone's like rah-rah.
- hanswesterbeek 13y ago
  Exactly. The tech-industry is horribly naive. It operates based on the idea that the general public perceives them as those friendly shy nerdy guys from school. Wake up, guys. People have had tech giants invade their life way too much and they've all seen in The Social Network what kind of person a poster boy like Mark Zuckerberg really is.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    And when they need a scapegoat for the rescission they look around and think ok we bullied them in school with no come back and they are crap a lobbying as a group so lets go to town on techies. Its the "Anti globalization of fools" want to rile up your nice political machine just go "techie techie techie" any one get the reference to the infamous political observation I am making here.

wavesounds 13y ago

Can Software Engineers in California that weren't working at one of these companies get in on this class action? I mean even if you weren't at one of those companies its easy to see how suppressing wages at the largest companies would suppress wages for the entire industry.

doktrin 13y ago
Doubtful. Out of curiosity, why do you want to?
- walshemj 13y ago
  for the $$$$ Though this action by major company's would depress wages across the board so its not a totally worthless suit.

WildUtah 13y ago

What can the villains in this drama use as power to force their illegal price fixing on reluctant companies? Just what you'd expect. "Mr. Jobs proposed a no-poaching deal to Edward T. Colligan, Palm’s chief executive. Mr. Colligan responded that such a deal would be unfair to employees as well as “likely illegal.” Mr. Jobs then threatened to unleash Apple’s patent lawyers on Palm." Yep. It's our badly broken patent system yet again.

RachelF 13y ago
Interesting, since most of Palm's ideas on smartphones pre-dated the iPhone. No wonder we've changed the patent law to first to file, rather than first to invent.
- rz2k 13y ago
  I agree that the biggest liability to the economy at large of huge patent portfolios, little seen so far, is the ability of multiple incumbent corporations to collude and increase barriers to entry so they collectively are not threatened by innovation from upstarts. That said, most of the time that Palm (and Handspring etc.) devices existed, they were PDAs, and the reason Palm beat out Apple's Newton is probably that they chose a subset of functionality that was more modest and probably more appropriate to the hardware of the time. For example, while Newton's handwriting recognition was often unreliable, Palm devices asked its users to use a an arcane script that was easier to process. (Later lost in a patent-related issue, if I remember correctly) Probably someone here was actually involved in the history of developing the devices, but as I remember it, the revolution of Palm pilots and other models was that they worked more smoothly, and they synced more reliably with your computer than any competitors. That involves a lot of good engineering and attention to detail, but it does not necessarily mean that there can't still be overlaps with patents held by companies which invented something earlier but with an implementation that didn't win over enough customers to survive.
  - fredgrott 13y ago
    part of the story that is forgotten..there is a specific part of software in the mobile OS that Palm invented and patented and than gave that patent away for free to anyone who wanted to use it..if you are a mobile OS geek you know piece I am talking about

zcarter 13y ago

Some relevant points for engineers addressed here: http://blog.mightyspring.com/post/74827679281/battling-outside-forces-in-employment http://blog.mightyspring.com/post/74827679281/battling-outsi... Know who (with)holds information Avoid information asymmetry

Nate75Sanders 13y ago
It's standard to mention that you work for the company you're promoting.

suprgeek 13y ago

I have personally witnessed the frustrating side of this "no poaching" pact. A close friend was tired of the "Manager Arrogance" at one of these colluding companies. He quietly put out the word,pretty quickly got approached by a hiring manager at another company - things were going swimmingly. Then the Hiring manager put in the Req to HR - a V.P. called him personally and but confirmed this "no poaching" B.S. The wage hike would have been considerable for my friend (you can guess the two companies - Arrogant vs Top Payer) & he was pretty upset to learn that the real reason was Jobs being a Huge Asshole and bullying everybody into such a blatantly illegal pact. So this is a very real "wage theft" collusion case. Unfortunately most of the parties involved had the "good" sense to NOT document it officially so the Smoking Gun might be hard to prove conclusively. There was even a "no hire" list at one of these companies tacked on the wall of a HR Manager with the Caption "If you hire from there, we will fire (u) from here."

raverbashing 13y ago
What about quitting first after knowing of this fact?
- watwut 13y ago
  I guess it is risky. Many people see finding next job before leaving previous one as the responsible thing to do. Especially if you live in an expensive location or have family or other financial obligations that simply needs to be paid. Technically, you can find "temporary" job in smaller company and then move to the company you "really" want to work in. It just seem to me somewhat jerk move toward that smaller company.
- jhart3333 13y ago
  You mean everyone quit together? That's called a strike.
  - huxley 13y ago
    A strike involves work stoppage, it's a very different tactic than mass resignation. In 1999, Major League Umpires Association (MLUA) were not able to legally go strike so they opted to use mass resignation as their negotiation strategy. It backfired, cost 22 umpires their careers and led to decertification of the union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Major_League_Umpires_Association_mass_resignation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Major_League_Umpires_Assoc...

mrtree 13y ago

ONLY 6 COMMENTS? People should be virtually rioting for this.

doktrin 13y ago
Huh? This isn't breaking news. It's just the latest development in an old and ongoing story.
pekk 13y ago
It doesn't have a strong enough tie-in to Snowden to cause rioting. But seriously, some responses are more productive than others.

cgriswald 13y ago

Am I the only one that loves the fact that it involves 64K programmers?

leoc 13y ago
Well, the C64 was an Apple-beater...
dredmorbius 13y ago
As with earlier numbers: sounds like it should be enough for anybody, but I can think of a number of other companies which have been excluded from the suit which should be included. Cisco comes to mind.
- rapind 13y ago
  I think he's saying he loves that it's 2^6 (K) programmers.
  - dman 13y ago
    That sir is not a serious definition of 64k. We all know 64k == 65536 ( 2^16 ).
    - rapind 13y ago
      touché
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Yes, I got that. As in 64k (or 640k) ought to be enough for anyone. And my point was, well, it's not ;-)
patrickmay 13y ago
64k programmers ought to be enough for anybody.

smprk 13y ago

Wouldn't a better idea than putting up a 'no poaching' kind of exit barrier be to give 'bonus every X period of time' kind of incentive, for employees you value and would like to retain? I wonder if in the world of technology it makes sense to retain a demotivated employee?

vinceguidry 13y ago
> I wonder if in the world of technology it makes sense to retain a demotivated employee? It absolutely does. The nature of tech work practically demands that every employee develop intimate knowledge of the very specific domain his work touches. It takes so long for new hires to become productive that in most cases the bottom line begs you to hold on to anyone who already has that intimate knowledge. On the other hand, keeping a tech employee motivated often looks like a fool's game to management. If he's good at what he does, he doesn't see the world the same way as they do. If you're a growth-oriented engineer, it makes sense for you to bounce around different companies so as to maintain a sense of movement and there's not much your employer can do to "maintain your sense of movement" because it's a completely alien concept to them and often presents as "unnecessary shit that will cost time and money and be risky". Your career goals will often clash hard against your company's needs. End result? This situation where top talent sinks collude to reduce their engineers' inherent negotiating advantage. This practice would be widespread, if only technology weren't such a wide field that any engineer with any desire at all for something better can very quickly find something. It only happened at the top level because that's the only circle in which there is no more upward mobility except among the same cloistered few.
twic 13y ago
That would cost money. The point of the no-poaching deals is that they were free for the colluding employers.

thinkcomp 13y ago

Case docket and documents here: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1860459 http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1860459

MarkPNeyer 13y ago

how can i join this lawsuit?

shitlord 13y ago
see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7323443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7323443

birken 13y ago

FYI, the exact definition of the class here is people who "worked as a salaried Technical Employee": (a) for Apple from March 2005 through December 2009; (b) for Adobe from May 2005 through December 2009; (c) for Google from March 2005 through December 2009; (d) for Intel from March 2005 through December 2009; (e) for Intuit from June 2007 through December 2009; (f) for Lucasfilm from January 2005 through December 2009; or (g) for Pixar from January 2005 through December 2009. Source: https://hightechemployeelawsuit.com/faqs/#q0 https://hightechemployeelawsuit.com/faqs/#q0 If you fall into this group and want to file a claim to be part of the settlement, you have until March 19th to do so (which you can do via the above website).

raverbashing 13y ago
What happened in December 2009?
- pron 13y ago
  The Justice Department intervened.
- fidotron 13y ago
  Supposedly Facebook didn't play along.

tn13 13y ago

This is really pathetic. I can understand companies being ruthless in maximizing their profits but this sort of move is seriously counter productive. If the wages are not competitive it also means less incentive for bright youngsters to get into these professions. If this kind of agreements become more common, I think that will be like we killing our future.

twic 13y ago
Even with the suppressive effect of this collusion, wages remain more than high enough to make this industry an attractive option.
hga 13y ago
Well, it was one way of getting around California's unique non-competes are unenforceable law. I believe that more than anything else, that's responsible for the Bay Area's long term technological ecosystem success.
sergiosgc 13y ago
Companies do not, usually, plan decades ahead. They manage the next quarter and plan the next three years. Youngsters entering or not a professional area is something that takes 20 years to produce a measurable effect. Government, is the one that should do the multi decade planning.
- smsm42 13y ago
  Except it never does. All those decade-long budgets and long-term plans are a sham that survives in the best case until next 2 year election, but more commonly till the next budget skirmish that happens once a couple of months. Specific people can have long-term agenda but government as a whole is incapable of that.
- tn13 13y ago
  "I am from government and I am here to help" you can only shudder at those words irrespective of the context. I will be surprised to see if Google or its investors do not care about their long term future. I will be less surprised to see someone like Obama planning only for re-elections and short term popularity ratings.

drakaal 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- walshemj 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.

curiousDog 13y ago

I'm still surprised Google was in on this considering they are developer friendly and are a "do-no-evil" company to a considerable extent. It was probably pressure from Jobs. Developers hurt by this should squeeze them for every penny possible.

tostitos1979 13y ago
I am going to respond to this with a quote from the Batman reboot: it is not who you are inside, but it is what you do that defines you.
pron 13y ago
Google is no more a "do-no-evil" company than most. They might be slightly above average. Their "employee friendliness", as far as it goes, is blatantly self-serving, designed to create extreme allegiance to the company and possibly long working-hours. This is not in itself "bad", it's just that it isn't altruistic in the slightest, either.
mratzloff 13y ago
What you have described is Google's "brand image". It is carefully cultivated through PR and marketing to result in you having a positive impression of Google. You could uncharitably call it propaganda. Google is pretty good at promoting this image, but that's all it is.
discardorama 13y ago
It's not "do no evil". It's "don't be evil". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil Except, today it's more like "Don't be evil* * except where permitted by law and/or required for profit"

shiven 13y ago

This is bound to happen in any industry where supply of talent exceeds demand AND the powers-that-be can get away with collusion (either by virtue of being 'private' or simply being powerful and thus not give a shit). So what if one talented employee decided to quit one crappy company 'A' AND is unable to find work at the non-poach pact company 'B'? The place he quit will always find another willing sucker 'coz the supply is ever present (with, at most, a minor reduction in quality).

gizmo686 13y ago
When supply exceeds demand, you do not need collusion, because there are unemployed workers who you can just hire at your target rate. If that is not enough money to entice them to work for you, then it would still not be enough even if you colluded. What collusion allows is for the employers to maintain these low prices, even when demand exceed supply.

nnq 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

pron 13y ago

This case is a beautiful demonstration of the dynamics of both "free market" and regulation. Free market dynamics demand (in this case as in all cases) that large players must never compete on prices or wages (as your competitors have the resources to fight back, so competition on price just makes everyone worse off). On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market (antitrust), as well as a tool wielded by capitalists to strengthen their stranglehold (patents). It is perhaps worth reminding that the interplay between regulators and the market, and their co-evolution, have taken a different historical path than in Europe. While in Europe big government preceded laissez-faire, or at least, evolved hand-in-hand, the US was largely unregulated for many years. The result was that Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power in the US, advancing the "economy" but at the same time practically enslaving the population. It was after many years of cries for help by the American people, and a long struggle led largely by the press, that Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government, wrestle back some power, and save the people from feudalist oppression. Ironically, many Americans forgot what the US looked like when the government was powerless, and the market was allowed to roam free. People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about when playing out in the real world. Obviously, as patent law demonstrates, regulation can be (and is) abused by capitalists. As the world changes, power shifts, and players adapt new strategies in this constant power struggle, both the market and regulation need to evolve hand-on-hand. The big question is what will play the role the press once played in exposing the workings of the intricate system of interests that is the economy?

crazy1van 13y ago
" On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market " I don't see any evidence that regulation stopped the behavior in this case. Perhaps the law will be used after the fact to sue or jail some people, but it doesn't seem to be what actually stopped the problem. As another poster said, the class action date ranges end in 2009 because Facebook (a private company) wouldn't play ball. Capitalism is a messy system, but it does tend to self correct in the long run.
- 13y ago

puppetmaster3 13y ago

don't tell me a about shortage if the market is manipulated

hanswesterbeek 13y ago

Yeah those poor high-tech workers have a really rough life indeed, it's time someone did something about it!

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Laws and fairness are for everybody.
- hanswesterbeek 13y ago
  There's no disputing that. I'm just voicing the sentiment of main street hoping that we techies take it to heart.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Yeah definitely its a 1st-world problem. But in context, there's more money and value being squandered in Silicon Valley due to this crime, than if it occurred in many other areas.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      Collusion amongst employers against employees happens in the third world often with far worse consequences look at south america

geebee 13y ago

I'm really glad to see that this issue is getting more coverage in the mainstream press. There was an article/editorial a while back (discussed on HN) from the guardian, but unfortunately, the writer used the incident (the collusion) to go on a rant about how valley leaders are hypocritical libertarians. That (reasonably enough) lead to a long debate about whether the leaders are libertarians even if they are mainly democrats, etc... This article stuck to the point much better. I do think Mr Levy (quoted in this article) went a little far in suggesting that the engineers are a very well heeled class. "Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, has the highest average wage in the country,” said Stephen Levy, senior economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “San Francisco and San Mateo are not far behind. It would be a mistake to think of these plaintiffs as an oppressed set of victims." Agreed, programmers in the bay area aren't dust bowl refugees. However, we need to recognize that the relatively high salaries don't go far in high cost regions (where many of these companies are located), and aren't that high relative to the higher wages typical of these regions. Application developers in SF earn, on average, a tiny bit less than RNs and a whisker more than dental hygienists (links at end). I'm 100% ok with good wages for nurses and dental hygienists, but keep in mind that these tech companies have been almost frantically lobbying congress to do something about a severe shortage of highly educated programmers and engineers. Well, first and foremost, how about you stop colluding to suppress their wages? That might attract a few more people into the field. http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b... http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2013/12/17/what-the-most-common-jobs-in-san-francisco-pay/#18915101=0 http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2013/12/17/what-the-most-co...

smsm42 13y ago
Is there indeed a shortage of app developers because of the low wages? I was always thinking of software as a segment where entry barriers are relatively low - compared to, say, medicine - and pay is exceptionally good. Of course, everybody wants to be paid better, but it doesn't look like software engineers are suffering especially badly from low pay.
- geebee 13y ago

discardorama 13y ago

The sad part is that even though this behavior is illegal, no one will actually go to jail for this. Companies will pay a token fine (like Pixar and Lucasfilm did), and it'll be business as usual, but this time no emails and no documentation. Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change.

denzil_correa 13y ago
> Unless a few people end up in jail for this, nothing will change. That's pretty much it. Does the govt come down on corporations for such acts? One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents. More often than not, it is a fine and then things move on to find and execute a different loophole.
- discardorama 13y ago
  > One rarely sees corporate honchos being jailed for such incidents. ... except when the corporate honcho refuses to do the government's bidding; in that case, his ass thrown into prison. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30/a-ceo-who-resisted-nsa-spying-is-out-of-prison-and-he-feels-vindicated-by-snowden-leaks/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...
gizmo686 13y ago
You don't need people to go to jail. One solution is to replace the token fine with a fine large enough that it is cheaper to play by the rules.
- abofh 13y ago
  It's a civil case, the companies are being sued by employees for back-compensation, not by the government for shady practices.

tosseraccount 13y ago

Gee. Maybe there is a labor shortage.

rdl 13y ago

Arguably this helped startups, since an ex Apple guy who couldn't go to Google could found a startup (and then maybe sell to Google later). Still lame though.

wnevets 13y ago

but I was told Steve Jobs was a great man

pyrrhotech 13y ago

Engineers are so highly underpaid for the value they contribute to these companies. What's the average salary, $140k? It should be $300k, half a million total comp conservatively. Even at that amount, employers would still be getting a 50-75% margin on you. It's insane how much we are ripped off. Good eningeers can literally make or save companies 10s of millions a year, but are never compensated for it.

wildpeaks 13y ago
Make your own company if it's that easy to literally make or save 10s of millions a year, that way you can set the amount of own compensation.
collyw 13y ago
I am sure it depends on the engineer. Plenty of crap ones there that's work needs rewritten once they have left.

tomzinter 13y ago

Serious question - will this do much? Seems like in the case of a win, the companies will give token amounts (9MM from Pixar for example) and the claimants (given there are 64000) will get a tiny little check. Am I missing something? Is this worth pursuing for a prospective claimant?

dba7dba 13y ago

The drive to maximize profit by those in the executive suite has caused them to do some seemingly clever (according to those in power) things but are in fact stupid in the long term. A few years ago I overheard a new senior programmer argue with the cfo why developers should get 2 big monitors instead of a small 19". The cfo initially refused to go along. Of course some of it was due to his desire to keep cost down, as every good cfo should. But then he joked every dollar saved would mean more for his christmas bonus. we were a small/friendly company so I guess that's why he felt it was ok to joke about it. But I do believe his ultimate reason was to keep cost down at any 'cost' so that his bonus check would be bigger, as his performance is evaluated on how he manages the cash flow. What the cfo didn't see was the productivity gain that could be gained by the programmers having bigger monitors. And these programmers were making near 6-figure salary. Their combined man hour cost was greater than his. But a cfo was making a decision to fatten his bonus check. Obviously this was not a good choice for the firm to make but it had been going on for awhile until the new senior programmer spoke up. And I think this kind of logic in executive suite is probably common everywhere. Lastly, I think it's about time these big tech companies add profit sharing ON top of the base salary as part of the compensation package. Why should an executive make SO much more than master and phds who are adding real value to the company?