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Comment by bdw5204 | Hacker News Reader

This really isn't that surprising. The FAANGs, including Apple, have committed serious anti-trust violations especially their hoarding of talent during the 0% interest rate years to prevent them from starting competitors then freezing hiring and laying off en masse once the interest rates started rising. They really should have to pay damages in the 6 to 7 figure range to each developer who's been looking for work in the mid 2022 to present tech recession that they caused via their monopoly power.

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What is "hoarding of talent"? These are human beings and they have a right to work where they want. Let's be clear, apple "hoards" talent by offering them competitive pay and benefits. If others want to compete they should offer something as compelling. It doesn't have to be money, I personally left for less money multiple times. It could be working on an interesting problem or with smart people.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-...

> Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe will shell out $415 million to put to rest an antipoaching civil lawsuit that accused the companies of conspiring not to hire each other's employees.

> Filed by former employees of the companies involved, the lawsuit shed a light on the practice of some major tech industry players of allegedly working together to agree not to poach employees from each other. The affected employees had argued that such agreements limited their ability to rise up in the industry and stifled their attempts to earn higher salaries. Email exchanges among such top executives as late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs and former Google CEO and now executive chairman of Alphabet Eric Schmidt revealed how requests were made not to hire certain employees away from each other.

Which is pretty much the opposite of what the complaint upthread is making. The lawsuit you reference was basically about not "hoarding talent" by paying more money.

The post upthread didn't assert they hoarded talent by paying more.

They hoarded talent by conspiring to make it harder to leave, which had the bonus of not having to pay them as much.

Of course paying higher salaries is a big part of it. Yes, they're also somewhat prestigious to some people and imagine there's at least some interesting work. But it's lot like they're chaining people to their desks or generally forcing people into unbreakable long-term employment contracts. In CA, there aren't even non-competes generally.

Most people at Google, to name one, are free to walk out the door tomorrow.

> Of course paying higher salaries is a big part of it.

They were actively attempting to avoid that.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/jobs-e-mail-to-schmidt-suggests...

"In another e-mail exchange between two vice presidents at Google, the pair talk about ways to 'never get into bidding wars' on potential talent with Schmidt and longtime Apple board member Bill Campbell being copied in on it."

> But it's lot like they're chaining people to their desks or generally forcing people into unbreakable long-term employment contracts. In CA, there aren't even non-competes generally.

This wasn't contractual. This was direct anti-competitive conspiracy between top executives.

Ten years ago yes. Which has nothing to do with the upthread comment. It seems to specifically focus on disincenting them from doing startups

>The FAANGs, including Apple, have committed serious anti-trust violations especially their hoarding of talent during the 0% interest rate years to prevent them from starting competitors then freezing hiring and laying off en masse once the interest rates started rising.

> Ten years ago yes. Which has nothing to do with the upthread comment.

The upthread comment stated "hoarding of talent during the 0% interest rate years", which is 2008-2016.

I'd be pretty disincentivized to leave if I started getting the message that Jobs could personally get offers rescinded and recruiters fired at competitors as powerful as Google.

It also stated "They really should have to pay damages in the 6 to 7 figure range to each developer who's been looking for work in the mid 2022 to present tech recession that they caused via their monopoly power."

So I'm pretty sure it intended to refer to overhiring during the pandemic.

(People are often pretty loose when they use the ZIRP term.)

Well known lawsuit from ten years ago is relevant to 2022-2024 how?

The post said "hoarding of talent during the 0% interest rate years". That would be right smack dab in the "ten years ago" spot.

The answer is pretty simple. Make those clauses unenforceable, as well as non compete clauses. You could do it relatively easily without new regulations and fines and all the bs associated with new anti big tech initiatives.

Overall I don't think it's a winning proposition for the companies involved. So if they want to have an internal rule that forbids them from hiring people, they're just shooting themselves in the foot and will suffer consequences and give up eventually or cheat since it's unenforceable

These weren't contract clauses; they were direct conspiracy between top execs via email.

> One email exchange recounted how Jobs asked Schmidt to stop Google from trying to hire one of Apple's engineers. "I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this," Jobs wrote to Schmidt on March 7, 2007.

I'm curious why governments aren't held to this standard of conspiracy the are caught being "very pleased" if private companies did this or that to stifle various freedoms. If JS was honest and a comedian he'd bring something like this up to the FTC rather than give the federal government a nice ego massage.

> I'm curious why governments aren't held to this standard of conspiracy the are caught being "very pleased" if private companies did this or that to stifle various freedoms.

In the situation you're hinting at, social media companies regularly and frequently said "no" to those requests. That does not appear to have been the case in the Google/Apple non-compete conspiracy.

In other words, it's only a conspiracy if both sides conspire.

In some situations they said yes, and because they felt pressure to do so, which would just be coersion.

This is basically a complaint that they hired too many developers and overpaid them--and now some of those developers who left or were laid off can't find as ridiculously well-paid jobs somewhere else. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of jobs out there; they probably just don't pay as well or are as prestigious.

There are rules about making the price of something too low to wipe out competitors too, I think in both antitrust and trade law:

https://www.trade.gov/us-antidumping-and-countervailing-duti...

You could probably say that's basically a complaint about giving consumers too good of a deal, but it is deeper than that.

Capping salaries that are too high would be a pretty novel application of anti-dumping law. But, heh, I'm fine with capping developer salaries at large tech firms.

The issue in the current market isn't ex-FAANG employees. Most of them can probably find jobs elsewhere or should have plenty of savings to live on until the Fed cuts the interest rates and they can get funding for their startup. It is people who don't have FAANG on their resume and can't find work at all because FAANG decided to use its monopoly power to manipulate the labor market. Specifically recent graduates and people who've been laid off from companies that aren't FAANG.

Manipulating the labor market is far worse than manipulating the consumer market. People can choose to live without computers even if that's increasingly challenging. People can't survive in a country like the US that lacks a basic social safety net without stable employment.

So your argument is that if these people were never hired in the first place, the market would be better for people with less good backgrounds either for reasons of schooling or experience? I'm not sure I draw that connection.

I generally get that things are tougher for juniors--especially juniors with questionable credentials--but I have trouble drawing a line that developers are generally worse who were showered with money at a few companies in 2021-2023. And there are always industry periods when things are tougher for some cohorts (or even all of them).

> If others want to compete they should offer something as compelling

Perhaps they cannot? Monopolies can apply to the purchase of labour, too. Indeed, the lack of viable competition, would be circumstantial evidence, to support the argument that there is a monopoly. Monopolies will sometimes overpay for labour in the same way they will undercharge for products - it can squeeze competitors out.

I've known plenty of people who left the big West Coast tech employers for elsewhere--possibly/probably for less money. Lots of reasons not to want to work for Google or Amazon.

Yes, and plenty of people quit the mines in company towns, and went to work in the big city. Considerable practical buyer or worker choice may exist, in an emerging monopolistic situation. Monopoly concerns aren't always the evil villain literally destroying all competitors, a single really large company can just be so big it distorts the market everywhere it turns. For an example on the consumer side, think Microsoft in the 1990s and early 2000s. In hindsight, obviously some monopoly concerns, even though there was niche and viable competition, in every sector they competed in.

Microsoft clearly had monopoly issues. I'm not sure they were from an employee perspective though. I don't remember Microsoft being viewed as a uniquely attractive employer in that period.

It's not a closed system with a fixed number of employees. They overpay for labor, which encourages more engineers to go into the field, which increases supply. Never underestimate the elasticity of supply.

Sorry but you're not going to convince me that high wages are a bad thing.

>Sorry but you're not going to convince me that high wages are a bad thing.

that's like saying all movies on demand for one subscription is a bad thing. It isn't... until it creeps into being a bad thing.

The high wages were the attractive bailey no one can argue with and we're seeing the motte rear its ugly head in a time where they are nigh impossible to compete with. I don't think "encouraging more engineers" is a good mechanism to encourage a monopoly.

>> This really isn't that surprising. The FAANGs, including Apple, have committed serious anti-trust violations especially their hoarding of talent during the 0% interest rate years to prevent them from starting competitors then freezing hiring and laying off en masse once the interest rates started rising.

> What is "hoarding of talent"? These are human beings and they have a right to work where they want. Let's be clear, apple "hoards" talent by offering them competitive pay and benefits.

The thing you're missing is that FAANG exploited short-term individual level incentives to create an environment that was more hostile to those individuals in the long term.

Sure, they may have gotten paid more for a little while, but where are they going to go when FAANG decides to dump them, because they didn't actually need them? The FAANG's actions inhibited the creation of those opportunities, because those opportunities competed with FAANG.

He just told you. They exerted their power to do unconscionable things to people and the market in general. Framing it as “competitive pay for people doin a job” is almost like doing their propaganda for them.

I don't know if it can be called "En Masse" if they STILL have more employees today than during the 0% interest rate years

it's en masse because it's way more than the baseline firing rate

Hiring in that period was also way more than the baseline hiring rate. Some companies doubled their headcount in the span of ~2 years.

And the revenue? Did it more than double? If so, they got their money's worth.

It's a business and people have been numbed to companies being dishonest, but it's still a betrayal to hire so much, have them generate more money for your company, then drop them when convinient for the company.

>And the revenue? Did it more than double? If so, they got their money's worth.

Did that revenue double because of the contributions of the extra headcount, or because of the temporary artificial economic situation of that period that doesn't apply anymore?

From where I was standing, the revenue massively spiked during the pandemic way before the mass hirings even happened, let alone have those people become productive enough to have a positive impact on the bottom line. It was an open secret that a lot of newly hired people during that period were just keeping seats warm at home collecting nice compensations while playing videogames and doing next to no work (a lot of people were gloating about it on reddit and in my circles).

Given that knowledge, was it any surprise for anyone that this was not a sustainable increase and a correction would follow at some point in the future?

> but it's still a betrayal to hire so much, have them generate more money for your company, then drop them when convinient for the company.

Agree, but most tech companies aren't there to provide social services, but to make a profit, as much of it as possible. If people want ethical employers that will never let them go, maybe they should give up on 400k+ TC big-tech jobs, and become school teachers, nurses or social workers instead for much less money.

There are plenty of tech jobs out there that won't crash or won't let you go the moment the shit hits the fan, but they also won't pay anywhere big-tech TC.

It's like gambling, big money also comes with big risks. Similarly to 2008, the ones with the biggest compensations tended to also be the first ones to be let go in the process of reducing operational costs.

People aren't complaining about making bank, earning orders of magnitude above average pay during the good times, right? Then why do they expect sympathy when the charade that made them bank for a while comes crashing down?

>or because of the temporary artificial economic situation of that period that doesn't apply anymore?

A mix of both. Clearly if they thought they could get double the money with the same amount of people they would not have gone on a hiring spree.

If you want to take an inference: most companies post layoffs are still larger than 2019. So that implies that the inflation wasn't all temporary.

>but most tech companies aren't there to provide social services, but to make a profit,

Sure, companies will be as evil as regulation allows them too, nothing new. As I said, just becsuse people are numb to it doesn't mean we shouldn't call it out.

>There are plenty of tech jobs out there that won't crash or won't let you go the moment the shit hits the fan, but they also won't pay anywhere big-tech TC.

Oh it's okay. I work in games. I get the worst of both worlds, this isn't about chasing total comp for me.

My #1 goal is growth and it just feels like it stagnated in the professional conrext. Spending as much time looking for a job these past 2 years as I am working jobs. I've just kind of accepted the plataeu and am doing some indie work. But I still need some stability, and it's not like "lower paying" (so, well paying but not close to 400k total comp) are biting any better in this market. So may as well apply yo what I know.

>People aren't complaining about making bank, earning orders of magnitude above average pay during the good times, right?

My sector is :)

>why do they expect sympathy when the charade that made them bank for a while comes crashing down?

Outside of the above reasons: becsuse it's not sustainable. Stability is a big factor in any job market and in All sectors it feels like an all time low. Loyalty/tenure is dead and that's going to cause a huge brain drain across all white collar work as the seniors who live in an age of proper retention take off. It's a ticking time bomb.

I don't care about sympathy, we're on the internet. I do hope at least some people can look at the grander picture of it all, though. A storm is coming, not necessarily I the next 5 years, but maybe 10-15.

What does it mean to "hoard talent"? Pay high wages? I'm sure they've done plenty worth penalizing, but not that.

Eh, there’s kinda precedent in entertainment specifically, from the days of the studio system.

Though made up of a bunch of “free choices” the situation was still kinda shit for both consumers of film and actors.

So it may or may not be a good description of what’s happening, but it’s not a ridiculous notion.

>“I mean, we were just sitting there,” she said. “You had to fight to find work.”

>“It kind of seemed that Meta was hiring people so that other companies couldn’t have us.”

>“They were just kind of like hoarding us like Pokémon cards,” she said. “It was a very strange time to work there.”

https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/workers-at-meta-salesforce-say...

People who are dismissing this as "well they got paid well" aren't seeing the bigger picture. Artists in the 40's-70's or so were paid decent wages. Then when the company breaks critical mass, they can squeeze out the talent and replace them with starry eyed newbies who'd work for free if they could. 40 years later, we have VFX sudios work on award winning billion dollar moneymakers and still end up shutting down because the studio can't get a good bid going (oh yeah, they are bidding their talent for work now. Another issue).

People need to heed the lessons from other industries. These strategies aren't new.

I’m not sure employee compensation is part of the FTC remit.

The FTC is mainly concerned with the company's external behavior. Internal business would probably fall under the purvue of the NLRB, maybe the SEC, and such.

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