You can prove it had an effect on the employees that worked there, and to a fairly exact number. The agreement covered all employees, not just tech workers. Combined that makes up about 350k employees, and you can then extrapolate how many were engineers in silicon valley, or engineers in general. That means that there was at least a proportion of the population that was affected very inversely by these agreements. If you then realize that other companies use the larger more successful companies' salary policies as the model for their own, then it would have impacted other companies as well, and the employees that work there.
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.
Your comment suggests you don't understand the distinction between saying something is false and saying there's no evidence either way.
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?
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.
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.