> Does anyone on planet earth feel like engineer wages are/were artificially low?

Yes. Just because wages are high does not at all prevent them from being suppressed.

There's actually pretty strong evidence that wages are suppressed across the board in tech. In near-perfect labor market equilibrium, you'd expect employers to not have open headcount for extended periods because if they're unable to hire for a position they rationally increase its salary. Yet in tech you see many/most companies with near-permanent open headcount who still steadfastly refuse to increase salaries outside certain predefined bands.

Whether such behavior is consciously profit-driven or unconsciously motivated ("non-managers should never make more than $200k") I don't know but it's largely the reason for the longterm hiring crunch.

Every time I read a comment like this I know I'm at Hacker News. Did you read the article? These companies all held illegal discrimination pacts designed specifically to prevent them from needing to shell out a little bit more cash to keep their best employees from leaving for other employers that offered a better deal. The wages were, by definition, held artificially low.

YES.

based on anecdotal evidence, top engineer salaries start capping out at 150k, when in reality this should go into the 300, 400, 500k range like lawyers and finance people make.

it's already starting to turn, so i'm hopeful.

At many companies, both startups and established, if you're a top performer and/or joined early enough, stock grants can easily propel you into this range (and beyond).

the figures he referenced are straight salary. A typical 30 year old investment banker at top firms will make 400k salary, but could easily be over 7 figures with bonus. Startup equity is rarely, if ever, worth that much on a risk-adjusted basis.

Not just startups, but even big companies like Google and Facebook have seen significant stock growth that have resulted in 2-3x compensation increases -- even if you joined post-IPO.

Ah, yes the "get rich through stock options" myth again. It is funny how everyone uses Facebook and Google as examples not realizing that they are pretty much unicorns. The truth is that 7 out 10 start-ups fail, and your options will be close to (or completely) worthless. Even if your start-up does well, are you really going to get rich with your 0.05% share of the company? Except for VP Eng or CTO positions, it is rare that anyone in development gets more than 0.5% of shares. Which are diluted at every round of subsequent VC round.

the average banking bonus is far less risky ie it will pay out most if not all of the time

i'm talking about cash compensation on an annual basis. this is what matters when you are working for a living.

i.e., not the stock lottery which doesn't apply to 99% of people.

They could be, it's all relative of course. The most affected engineers in this case were likely the cream of the crop. It's in a way analogous to professional sports, where (if salaries were truly unrestricted) the very top players could easily demand a multiple of their already astronomical salaries. To combat this, some leagues like the NBA have 'salary caps' and 'maximum contracts'. You won't see the government going after this extremely obvious anti-worker collusion because there isn't much sympathy for multi-millionaire athletes. However, salaries for the best are almost certainly artificially low.

In a larger sense, argument isn't about what the affected workers "should" be paid, it's about who gets to decide: the potential recruits or their prospective employers.

As someone who believes that free markets generally "find a way" (in spite of information asymmetry), I'm hesitant to endorse the government's view point. One good thing that can come of this is more of these top-notch engineers get fed up with this sort of behaviour and start more startups. At the same time, I'm not going to shed any tears for Apple or Google if they lose in the courts.

these teams also have minimums they must spend on players and minimum salaries per player. in the MLB and NBA the player's unions are very powerful and salaries would likely fall without them (NFL is a different story)

> salaries would likely fall without them

The median salary would likely fall, the mean would likely rise (or stay around the same) but the very top salaries would rise dramatically, in line with what these same players make on the free market as brand ambassadors.

This brings to light an uncomfortable truth: incentives are not really aligned for the very top talent and the majority of workers. To extend the sports analogy, Roger Federer recently opposed spreading prize money more equally in the grand slams, saying essentially that players should win more to get more money. (right now tennis prize money is essentially a power law distribution).

Have you seen what a lawyer or a doctor with the same experience makes?

Both have more education than the typical programmer, the majority of lawyers actually barely make over $100k, and doctors are not only significantly more trained than programmers but also generally work more and literally save lives.

I do.