Totally agree with zedshaw here. When a long-running, highly-secret conspiracy with demonstrable follow-through (HR staff being fired) is uncovered, the onus is clearly on the conspirators to prove that their conspiracy was harmless, rather than on the uncoverers to quantify its harm. I understand why a venture capitalist would be nervous about the implications of this conspiracy's discovery (higher programmer salaries = shorter runway for investments), but trying to downplay (with no evidence) the impact of the no-poach on developers is disappointing to see on a site called Hacker News.

Can't we use New York software engineer salaries as an analog here? It's another market where good engineers are highly sought after. $200k for an engineer with 8 years work experience is not uncommon.

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 think I speak for everyone here when I say that we'd love to have your brain figure out how much of an effect this collusion could have had on engineer salaries or how to make sure this doesnt happen again.

$200K? In a bank, or a startup? That's not something I've seen outside of CTO roles.