It would be interesting to see an analysis of what the economic impact of these depressed wages has been. $3 Billion is probably not too far off the mark. Probably not $3 Billion directly to the programmers impacted, but definitely to the broader economy.
3B$ is around 11k$/year/programmer[1], which is less than a 10% raise at the salary levels these developers have. Sounds quite fair or even low for what they could have gotten had they decided to move.
[1] Assuming 4 years and 64000 developers, which after some googling seems to be what's at stake in the lawsuit
Across the industry, the number of employees affected is easily in the high hundreds of thousands, at a direct cost to them of tens of thousands of dollars per year. So billions to maybe low tens of billions is not an unreasonable range. And would that get trebled under California employment law?
This, right here, at multiple levels. A company paying market rates have benefited from this collusion. Any company still paying market rates after this is knowingly taking advantage of this illegal behavior.
What I'm saying is that the amounts of cash held by - and available to - these companies is so eye-poppingly astronomic that even an twelve digit settlement - which the law may allow - is nowhere near enough to bankrupt them.
Agreed. Even 3 decimal places wouldn't do justice to what they have done to us. Fuck those greedy bastards. If we were smart we would unionize ... err, sorry, I mean form a professional association to represent our interests. Like doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.
Why has no one mentioned jail time for breaking the law and potentially damaging people's lives and livelihood? Why do we always think money is the solution. Jobs is burning in Hell, so no hope there, but anyone else this can be attributed to should do time, not pay their body servants salary and laugh at how the poor struggle to eat.
I think after 2008 it's pretty clear that executives personally don't have to fear any consequences from wrongdoing. Either someone way down the chain of command goes to jail or the shareholders pay for a settlement.
So you think $324 billion dollars is appropriate? Wouldn't that essentially bankrupt all the companies involved? Who needs to worry about jobs when some of the biggest tech firms on the planet are wiped out! Not to mention that $324 billion spread across 64000 plaintiffs is $5 million each... You wouldn't be looking for that easy windfall, now would you?
If I go with your figure of 64,000 * 5,000,000, it's not the tech-apocalypse. It's not like that money is going straight into a crack pipe.
People with a lot of technical know-how would suddenly be set loose in a cash rich environment full of new millionaires who are looking to build their own empires.
That scenario could very well be a second dotcom boom.
More to the point, when one of the little people gets caught breaking the law, we don't question the consequences their punishment will have on any industry. These companies not only broke the law but were terrible corporate citizens.
Anything that doesn't hurt a lot will not be an appropriate punishment, it'll just be considered the cost of doing business.
The effect of this scenario on the high end real estate market in the Bay Area would horrifying / amazing depending on whether or not you were already holding property.
You go directly from "tech firms wiped out apocalypse" to "64000 plaintiffs [..] $5 million each" and don't notice the disconnect?
Frankly, that needs to happen, and not only when theres cause. We need a Netflix chaos monkey that breaks up big companies and redistributes their wealth to let creative destruction create something better.
It need not be instantly due and there cash flow positive. 15b each per year and there done in 10 years and still profitable.
Also, free cash is hardly their only capital. Google could for example sell YouTube. They could also sell bonds or stock etc.
PS: Not that I think 300B is the right penalty, but there needs to be some real risks to prevent such behaviors or the penalties simply become yet another cost of doing business.
True but it seems hard to argue that the amount can reasonably be more than all of the cash on hand, since the companies wouldn't have been able to pay the employees anything like that amount, so it can't reflect the market value of the lost salaries.
The only real effect of bankruptcy would be that guys like Page and Brin would be worth $13 billion instead of $26.
Assuming that it would actually bankrupt them, how does bankruptcy cost jobs?
The cash goes to employees who will likely spend / re-invest in the startup economy, this will likely create more jobs as there are economies of scale in software companies.
The capital remains and would be sold to a new owner... since these companies are profitable the jobs remain and the company just has a lower bank account with new owners.
If you had the opportunity to buy Google/Apple/Adobe for 50 cents on the dollar, why would you fire everyone? It makes no sense, they are all extremely profitable companies.
> Wouldn't that essentially bankrupt all the companies involved?
The sensible thing to do in these types of circumstances is to pay the settlement using newly issued shares in the company. That dilutes the interest of all the existing shareholders (effectively the money comes out of their pockets because the price per share goes down) but it causes no damage to the company's operations.
