>>> Just how long do you expect them to wait?
That depends on what you're waiting for. I was talking about economic processes, they don't happen overnight. If you want to improve your personal situation, you don't have to wait for that.
My observation of discussions on HN about age discrimination. (I'm not a software engineer, so I have no personal touch with that job market)
If you want to improve your personal situation, you don't have to wait for that.
When the top employers are actively colluding against you, maybe yes, you do. You have no power against a company worth $400B, unless you band together with your peers. Perhaps in some kind of legal action...?
Now, I think you already understand that, and your counter was "well then someone will hop in and pay you what you are worth and they will suffer for colluding". But clearly that hasn't happened.
Seriously, the fact that the word "collude" can even be used here is a bad sign. If you pay attention to business history, that word is never good.
>>> But clearly that hasn't happened.
How you know that? The salaries in the industry are one of the highest of any, and compared to the effort needed to enter the industry (compare to, say, lawyers or doctors and how much you have to spend in time and money to become one) is even higher, probably one of the best among all (legal) industries, especially if you take out salaries that are achieved by political gamesmanship and not by market forces.
>>> Seriously, the fact that the word "collude" can even be used here is a bad sign. If you pay attention to business history, that word is never good.
If you argue on the grounds "I used this word, and this word sounds bad, ergo the thing I've named with this word is bad by the fact of the word sounding bad" - you lost the argument. Unless you think words are magic and the mere fact of calling it "collusion" automatically and magically taints it.
Good lord, not any effort, just efforts that are, in fact, illegal. Your argument seems to be based on,
"Well these people already get paid a lot, so I don't really see why they should get paid more, even if their wages are being illegally depressed"
you still think they owe you more and need to be coerced to pay you more
The suit is not to "coerce" the companies to pay them more, it's seeking damages for the companies allegedly doing something illegal to pay them less.
>>> it's seeking damages for the companies allegedly doing something illegal to pay them less.
Same thing. They couldn't extract money (in addition to huge money they did extract) by voluntary negotiation, so they extract it by coercion. When it is being done is a technical detail.
>>> Besides, how can their talent leave for players paying better money when nobody except for the large players can afford top wages?
If their wages are so high already as to be unaffordable for most of the industry, it significantly deducts from my sympathy about them being oppressed by wage-suppressing large companies. To both have wages that nobody except very few very rich players can pay and then complain their wages should actually be even higher and are artificially and illegally low seems to me a bit greedy, not?
>>> Just because Google can extract $150k+ of value out of an engineer doesn't mean another company can.
Another company then sucks at what it is doing if it can't extract value efficiently. But experience shows new players routinely come out to disrupt existing ones. But if Google is able to both extract huge value and pay huge wages - unattainable anywhere else - what exactly is the complaint about? That these wages aren't huge enough yet and could be even huger?