Many companies love to use the public's negative sentiment against plaintiffs' lawyers to their favor, by invoking precisely the "class-action lawsuits also enrich the lawyers mostly" canard. This is a sleight of hand. The value of class-action suits is deterrence. Otherwise, it can be very profitable to steal a little bit of money or cause a little bit of harm to a large number of people. Look at it another way: if the alternative is the companies keeping the ill-gotten gains, is that better?

It's (let's grant) true that the lawyers make most of the money in a class action suit, but they're doing the work and taking much of the risk. Denying a legitimate claim to spite the lawyers is wrong if it means the company keeps whatever incentives lead it to hurt people.

As for sleight-of-hand, I was referring more to the context that somehow the lawyers are pulling a fast one when it's quite clear what the outcome shall be.

But I can see how my statement can be misunderstood.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/record-salaries-for-valley-pr...

Edited to fix grammar.

And not only people that work in companies of the valley, for example, Google Brazil can pay here less than they pay in the valley, and other companies here end paying less than google pay, the result for example, is me. (I get 16k USD year, and I earn more than the average programmer here).

USD 26k to 37k is a common range for senior developers in my employer. And I'm not counting "13 salary", bonuses, overtime pay, health and dental care.

I doubt the average is less than 16k.

The highest I was paid was 5k BRL as contractor (no 13, bonuses, overtime, etc...) and back then I was one of the highest paid persons of the company (that had about 50 programmers). I remember talking to other people and lots of people except DBAs and exotic language specialists working on IBM had also similar pays.

apinfo.com.br salary survey matches my experience for average salary. BRL 5k is an average salary for a senior developer. I was making BRL 4k after I graduated from UFRJ about five years ago.

A senior specialist (band 8) working for IBM earns way more than that, plus benefits.

The charity organizer spoke a bit during one of the keynotes and said that any income under $70K was considered below poverty level due to the cost of living.

With that said, a 6 figure salary is not hurting, but not rolling in it.

Plus, in some cases increases in income lags behind increases in cost of living.

I don't find that hard to imagine. In fact, I think the opposite would be true and I'll give my logic.

I believe in wrongful death suits (e.g. airline crashes) the earnings potential of the victim is considered i.e. higher payouts go to higher earners.

I assume a jury would follow the same logic and would be able to understand that the more an engineer earns, the greater the damages should be. i.e. a 1st year grad might have been hurt to the tune of $20K / year ... while it might have cost a more senior engineer $200K / year.

you see high paid professionals (i-bankers, brokers, lawyers, etc) win big awards all the time.

here's one about Merrill

Then, in the spring of 2004, an arbitration panel found Merrill had systemically discriminated against female brokers and awarded $2.2 million to a single employee.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-27/merrill-lync...

it's not exactly the same but you get the idea. Juries look at the possible damages and base the award of that. The higher the salary, the higher the potential damages.

If this blows up into a viral meme of some sort, it becomes political Kryptonite for any politician coming anywhere close to various high-tech visa-related legislation, who won't want to associate with any members of the cartel until the issue blows over (probably in about a year or less). So all sorts of visas get snarled up for a year or two, tying up various projects, driving up costs of this even more.

There are some interesting PR angles that Apple and Google can engage in to nip this sort of trial-by-heart-tugs, but I bet they will get control on the media image and quash this whole affair in the mainstream news media well before it gets to that stage. If they can limit any fallout litigation and the media coverage especially to just within the industry itself and not let it seep out into severe regulatory sanctions or public consciousness, then the cost-benefit of the cartel will work out fine. I predict wrist-slap sanctions if any, and a successful management of the media image, as this is a nice example of how agency challenges work out in a large, complex system.

Then again, maybe all the money would have gone to rent which is what seems to be happening now unless you won the IPO lottery where it is now all cash offers on million dollar homes.

This place is so expensive you need to 40kpa(of your gross income) just to live in 620sqft apartment.

If you make 100k here, you might be able to save 12k a year tops.