That alone disproves your implied statement: That these agreements did nothing to anyone. It definitely did something, and just the fact that those companies amount to tons of employees and tons of salaries is enough to show it had an effect.

You however are pulling the oldest trick in the book. You want conclusive proof that these completely illegal actions by corporations had a measurable effect before you'll admit that they were wrong. But, it was a conspiracy. You're not going to get exact numbers. It's not like these guys are keeping a ledger of money saved by not-poaching. You are basically demanding the impossible.

But, you are also demanding more than you give yourself. Where's your proof this did nothing? I know, you didn't explicitly say it did nothing, but that's your clever trick. You just imply your counter argument and then run around dumping links to logical fallacies on Wikipedia rather than give real numbers.

So, Paul, stop being a hypocrite and give us your bet on what impact this really had. If you demand exact socio-economic evaluations before you'll believe this did anything, then I demand that you give the same evidence it did nothing.

And your first task will be to disprove what's already been proven in court: That these agreements did impact all the employees at these companies, that it did reduce salaries or they wouldn't have bothered, that reducing salaries was their goal, and that they did fire employees over it.

Until then, your demand for exact evidence violates the standard in philosophical argument that your own argument can't be used against itself.

I'm not saying the no poaching agreement had no effect. I'm saying he offers no evidence for his claim that it had a big effect. Complaining that someone has offered no evidence for a claim is not an "implied statement" that it's false. Do you understand that distinction?

Hedge funds pay $250k consistently.

Wouldn't SV look something similar?

Your argument is technically right but It sounds like an excuse to punt on a practice that most of us find f$cking despicable.

I'll take that. If I have to choose between saying something true but unpopular or false but popular, I hope I'd always choose the former.

This sort of argument is often made in Economics, and is logically sound. Ceteris Paribus aka everything else being the same.

I agree the article smells of link-bait. I don't understand why Facebook's IPO is different from every other IPO that has happened in the past. Why does the author feel that this IPO will raise wages of developers in the valley?

Do you believe this to be the case? If so, do you really mean to say that engineering salaries should not be set by market forces?

However lets take the case of NEw York where you can get program trading jobs for $300K and I have friends who got these kind of jobs. Hedge funds routinely pay $250K plus.

I think this is what would have happened in the valley.

Collusion for these firms was price-based collusion for products, not collusion to suppress the input costs of highly skilled labor. Manufacturers are said to have engaged in establishing minimum or fixed prices for their products.

Consumers will tend to absorb this form of market inefficiency. After the cartel agreements were broken, consumers reaped the benefits in the form of the "intensification of price competition" (lower prices).

It suggests that only in one case was there collusion in R&D, which might be a relevant example.

Additionally, the article cites outside competition from the USA as a factor. Competition from foreign sources on engineer wages such as India is still nascent. US manufacturing during this period was mature and robust.

its important because FB is the biggest social network on the internet. Believe it or not, many people still dont understand or get what "social web" means. Having FB stock publicly traded (company more transparent) and strong earnings would prove to the masses that web and social net is sustainable AND profitable AND here to stay. And it already works! look what happened with Zynga stock after FB IPO papers hit the daylight.

Come to think of it, there was at least one effect: at least 1 person was fired because he didn't respect the cartel rule.

That is exactly my point.

HEdge funds routinely pay $200+. With a fair market I think we should have seen similar numbers here in the valley.

There are many times more engineers in New York than in SV.

I had a team of coders and optimisers working for me whose salaries topped off at 150 all in, 200 for the one who could turn out assembly that ran in milliseconds.

I always saw my job as being finding in-efficiencies and irrationalities; they saw it as coding. I happened to code (and not all that brilliantly, hence the support). But the argument that pure developers should be compensated richly doesn't gel with the argument that programming is the new literacy.

I'm trying to find an analogous system which could help us figure out what would have happened to developer salaries in SV given what tech companies pay in NYC.

The basic financial literacy these guys are desired to have is higher than naught. Further, there are different technologies, paradigms, and cultures involved (though at a hedge fund the last part converges).

A test for this would be tech dev salaries in NYC versus SV.

Hedge funds regularly give $250K or more for an engineer with experience.

do you mean software engineers? That would surprise me.

At the very least the guy that got fired needs to sue someones ass off.

Ive seen plenty more spun for SEO linkbait on here which are gaming the system to post articles with tons of affiliate links for hosting companies

Unless those participants had absolutely no idea what they were doing, salaries did at least not rise as much as was warranted.

This is not some far fetched theory this is economics 101 applied to the real world. Asking for evidence for this claim is the real embarrasment here.

Libertarian views assume that free markets regulate themselves basically due to perfect competition. (Trying to keep this short and simple.)

Realistically, you do not always have perfect competition and you have problems with monopoly, oligopoly, etc. Firms are potent enough that their collective decisions can manipulate markets, and in this it would be labor markets. (Perfect competition assumes that firms cannot manipulate markets.)

Libertarians oppose a government presence in markets because they believe the result is inefficiently functioning markets, and we are all worse off.

In this case, the firms collude and are manipulating labor markets so that they behave inefficiently to the advantage of the manipulative firms and disadvantage of labor. (This is usually where people try to justify labor unions as a counter to the influence of firms.)

I think companies should do something really crazy. They should go and develop a new area which would eventually beat silicon valley. Where engineers can find very affordable rents, and very affordable modern deco houses. Where the weather is sunny, driving engineers who sit all day in offices to go outside and get some vitamin D. Where the gender ratio is balanced. Where your neighbors are good at other stuff and are willing to share there knowledge, like a real world quota.com.

A engineer, earning 120k from year 0 - 4, should very easily be able to save 250k and live comfortably in a 5 year timespan and not have to cut corners.

PG, there is a real problem here with silicon valley. I don't think the salaries are too low but I think the cost of living is too high.

If you truly want to be innovative and crazy, broaden your world beyond the web.

If they do that and it succeeds at all, here is what will quickly happen.

1. The area will be full of smart well paid people, and will be a place where those people want to live. House prices and rents will go up.

2. Since it was aimed at engineers, and prices are (now) expensive, it will tend to be occupied largely by engineers and other highly-paid people. Which, society being what it presently is, will lead to the same sort of sex ratio as you see in Silicon Valley.

End result: just one more SV-like area. And that's if it works, which it probably won't. (It's very easy to say that "companies should" develop an area with sunny weather and a balanced gender ratio and neighbours who are good at other stuff and willing to share their knowledge -- but not so easy to do it.)

Austin also has that potential I hear too and it's a sunny place. Texas also doesn't have state income tax.

I was trying to formulate an ideal living area, not just for engineers but for anyone who loves knowledge(think Quora).

I feel modern cities have so many problems, why not just start from scratch or from the ground up.

These agreements haven't gotten in the way that most engineers in the valley know there are a ton of other places they can work, including the "no poach" companies. Valley engineers switch jobs with an ease and frequency uncommon for the tech business in general.

Facebook alone certainly doesn't hire enough engineers for it to matter THAT much.

(And I'm assuming by SOX you mean Sarbanes-Oxley.)