Blackmagic Raises Price of Many Items

[Paul F]

Beyond just looking at historical changes in the ratio of CEO to burger-flipper pay, as jonpais mentioned, i have developed an idea of the 1960s economy and social contract from documentaries and news articles. I do believe that fundamental changes in how we do business have transpired over the last 50 years.

Doug said -First of all, people always long for the good old days -- that uusally never were. You seriously believe that employees are treated worse than they were a generation ago?


I think Doug has it sized up more correctly Abe. We appear to have this filter in our brains that make the past better. Job-wise, there were some things that were better I suppose, Overall, I'd say things are quite a bit better for employees today. The one thing I think you have right is back then there was a bit more cohesion in employment. I think a fair portion of the country could count on working at a single company through their career. My father and his two brothers all put in over 40 years at the same company.

I lived in the '60s. If anyone has any notions of things being better overall back then, let me tell you, it was a confusing, tumultuous, and fear-filled decade, My father moved the family out of the city in hopes of surviving a nuclear war. I did drills like all children did to 'duck and cover'. We would run into the school hall and curl up a ball with our heads pressed against the wall in hopes that that would have us. The Soviet Union put nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida in Cuba. We all sweated bullets those two weeks that the day we feared had come and we all imagined seeing that flash of blinding light and a mushroom cloud. We were all going to die anytime, or, for those that were 'prepared', come out of Armageddon having survived in the bunkers many people built in their backyards that would 'save the family'.

Well, that was tough enough. But then the president was assassinated, his brother was assassinated, Martin Luther King was assassinated, and Malcolm X. The country watched Lee Harvey Oswald get assassinated live on TV.

And the Vietnam war, distinctive in that a draft was used to fill the roles in the armed forces rather than volunteers. A lottery was held to assign a number to your birthday. A friend at school was assigned a low number. He was very upset. He left school.I never heard from him again.

There were the race riots, tearing cities apart. The social upheaval from the younger generations rejection of the old ways ('Don't trust anyone over 30" was the saying) and the feminist movement. There was Manson, the Bay of Pigs, the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, Francis Powers,

But it was equally wonderful.

 

[Thomas Smet]

Call me old-fashioned, but I think things were better when management cared about giving a fair shake to their underlings and valued the broader company and social cohesion that this generated. There are also a lot of anti-competitive shenanigans going on these days. For example, there was the pact between Google and Apple that they wouldn't poach each other's engineers, thus depressing salaries in that sector.

I think that employers have a lot more responsibilities to their employees than they do to their customers. I always try to treat my hires with respect and pay them appropriately even if they're hard up and could be had for less.

Precisely which decade are you referring to when management cared about people? Also which planet are you talking about?

 

[Thomas Smet]

The settlement happened in 2015:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-indus...r-415-million/

(I would consider poaching to be a good thing since it's more free market and applies appropriate upward salary pressure.)

Beyond just looking at historical changes in the ratio of CEO to burger-flipper pay, as jonpais mentioned, i have developed an idea of the 1960s economy and social contract from documentaries and news articles. I do believe that fundamental changes in how we do business have transpired over the last 50 years.

Some of the sentiments you express remind me of when people say. "Look how good we have it today! Look how cheap TVs are!" But fundamentals like housing, health care, and education have all become far more expensive relative to median earnings. Likewise, you can point at company perks and leave policies (which are probably limited to information workers in growth industries anyway), but it isn't as important to me as salaries and income inequality.

AS a software engineer I found that lawsuit rather ridiculous. These are people already making a ton of money. Not some minimum wage employees suffering. Some of them making at least a quarter to half a million each per year. The greed in this case shifted and the employees wanting even more money to share industry secrets started this BS lawsuit so they could be poached. It did not depress salaries. It prevented over inflated salaries by greedy companies wanting to take industry talent and secrets. Why did they deserve millions in the settlement for this? They all still had very good well paying careers.

You have to look at all of this stuff from different perspectives. And sometimes what may look like an injustice actually isn't an injustice. There are horrible injustices all over the world without pretending moderately rich people are somehow suffering. These are engineers that drove fancy cars and had mansions in the San Francisco Bay Area and yet wanted more. Now they each made a ton of money with no effort at all. A team of lawyers made a ton of money as well. Where is the injustice?

Just saying I think you can find a much better example of corporate greed.

 

[Paul F]

Those sorts of lawsuits are common in the industry. I have forgotten the basis for it But you couldn't poach other companies people or you would get sued.

When we were in the booming days of dot-com (1998-2000), everyone knew that a competing company could not contact employees to poach them. We had to make contact first with the startups. Even then, a former boss of mine would call me once in a while to say 'hello' and be very careful what he said, but still in a round about way, ask me to join them. We had about 3 poaching lawsuits with the startups while I was at one company.

 

[cpreston]

Those sorts of lawsuits are common in the industry. I have forgotten the basis for it But you couldn't poach other companies people or you would get sued.

I thought this type of thing would fall under a non-compete agreement in a contract which was usually a one or two year agreement not to work for the competition after leaving the job.

In any case, I know Canon has raised their prices and I'm guessing we will see even more companies raising their prices. Prices certainly aren't going to be coming down.

 

[JimGao]

…hurry yup and git yer Komodo

 

[ahalpert]

AS a software engineer I found that lawsuit rather ridiculous. These are people already making a ton of money. Not some minimum wage employees suffering. Some of them making at least a quarter to half a million each per year. The greed in this case shifted and the employees wanting even more money to share industry secrets started this BS lawsuit so they could be poached. It did not depress salaries. It prevented over inflated salaries by greedy companies wanting to take industry talent and secrets. Why did they deserve millions in the settlement for this? They all still had very good well paying careers.

.

I'm amused that you think that these software engineers are the greediest actors in this drama. In any case, I highly doubt that Apple and Co. would have been forced to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars if they weren't at fault.

The broader point I'm trying to make is that management colludes against their workers, even with other companies.

Then there was the lawsuit Apple lost over slowing down old iPhones every time they released a new model. (I witnessed the effect firsthand with a client who remarked to me that her phone was seeming sluggish lately and maybe it was time to upgrade. After all, a new model had just been released...)

All of which is to say that I generally have a low opinion of corporate ethics

 

[ahalpert]

Precisely which decade are you referring to when management cared about people? Also which planet are you talking about?

I think my meaning has been mistaken. I'm specifically referring to employee compensation, specifically in relation to executive compensation.

This excerpt from a Paul Krugman column sums up my current beliefs:

Some -- by no means all -- economists trying to understand growing inequality have begun to take seriously a hypothesis that would have been considered irredeemably fuzzy-minded not long ago. This view stresses the role of social norms in setting limits to inequality. According to this view, the New Deal had a more profound impact on American society than even its most ardent admirers have suggested: it imposed norms of relative equality in pay that persisted for more than 30 years, creating the broadly middle-class society we came to take for granted. But those norms began to unravel in the 1970's and have done so at an accelerating pace.

Exhibit A for this view is the story of executive compensation. In the 1960's, America's great corporations behaved more like socialist republics than like cutthroat capitalist enterprises, and top executives behaved more like public-spirited bureaucrats than like captains of industry. I'm not exaggerating. Consider the description of executive behavior offered by John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1967 book, ''The New Industrial State'': ''Management does not go out ruthlessly to reward itself -- a sound management is expected to exercise restraint.'' Managerial self-dealing was a thing of the past: ''With the power of decision goes opportunity for making money. . . . Were everyone to seek to do so . . . the corporation would be a chaos of competitive avarice. But these are not the sort of thing that a good company man does; a remarkably effective code bans such behavior. Group decision-making insures, moreover, that almost everyone's actions and even thoughts are known to others. This acts to enforce the code and, more than incidentally, a high standard of personal honesty as well.''

Thirty-five years on, a cover article in Fortune is titled ''You Bought. They Sold.'' ''All over corporate America,'' reads the blurb, ''top execs were cashing in stocks even as their companies were tanking. Who was left holding the bag? You.'' As I said, we've become a different country.

Let's leave actual malfeasance on one side for a moment, and ask how the relatively modest salaries of top executives 30 years ago became the gigantic pay packages of today. There are two main stories, both of which emphasize changing norms rather than pure economics. The more optimistic story draws an analogy between the explosion of C.E.O. pay and the explosion of baseball salaries with the introduction of free agency. According to this story, highly paid C.E.O.'s really are worth it, because having the right man in that job makes a huge difference. The more pessimistic view -- which I find more plausible -- is that competition for talent is a minor factor. Yes, a great executive can make a big difference -- but those huge pay packages have been going as often as not to executives whose performance is mediocre at best. The key reason executives are paid so much now is that they appoint the members of the corporate board that determines their compensation and control many of the perks that board members count on. So it's not the invisible hand of the market that leads to those monumental executive incomes; it's the invisible handshake in the boardroom.

But then why weren't executives paid lavishly 30 years ago? Again, it's a matter of corporate culture. For a generation after World War II, fear of outrage kept executive salaries in check. Now the outrage is gone. That is, the explosion of executive pay represents a social change rather than the purely economic forces of supply and demand. We should think of it not as a market trend like the rising value of waterfront property, but as something more like the sexual revolution of the 1960's -- a relaxation of old strictures, a new permissiveness, but in this case the permissiveness is financial rather than sexual. Sure enough, John Kenneth Galbraith described the honest executive of 1967 as being one who ''eschews the lovely, available and even naked woman by whom he is intimately surrounded.'' By the end of the 1990's, the executive motto might as well have been ''If it feels good, do it.''

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/magazine/for-richer.html

I'm also not sure people realize how much the economy has changed in terms of who benefits from growth. Here's Robert Reich talking about the period from 1946 to 1978 when economic gains were broadly distributed, and what changed afterwards

Starting at 8:55

 

[Doug Jensen]

In any case, I know Canon has raised their prices and I'm guessing we will see even more companies raising their prices. Prices certainly aren't going to be coming down.

Last fall my wife thought I was crazy for paying $10K over sticker for the Land Rover I needed. Today it would cost far more than that -- if I could find one that I wanted at all. There's a 6-month wait for an FX6 and most other Sony cameras. Shortages and higher prices all around. If you can find what you want, buy it because it will only get worse.

 

[ahalpert]

. Shortages and higher prices all around. If you can find what you want, buy it because it will only get worse.

I think that's true in the near term, but Musk says that most of the materials he sources for Tesla are going down in price 6 months from now (which is the purchase lead time).

https://cointelegraph.com/news/elon-...-90-of-bitcoin

A lot of the inflationary pressure (covid lockdowns, Russia sanctions) is easing. Gas is down 20% in the last 2 months. Fed interest rate hikes are starting to slow the economy. I think products will become more readily available and inflation will decelerate. The cost of some things may come down.

 

[Thomas Smet]

I'm amused that you think that these software engineers are the greediest actors in this drama. In any case, I highly doubt that Apple and Co. would have been forced to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars if they weren't at fault.

The broader point I'm trying to make is that management colludes against their workers, even with other companies.

Then there was the lawsuit Apple lost over slowing down old iPhones every time they released a new model. (I witnessed the effect firsthand with a client who remarked to me that her phone was seeming sluggish lately and maybe it was time to upgrade. After all, a new model had just been released...)

All of which is to say that I generally have a low opinion of corporate ethics

I'm just saying these are all 6 figure people and in some case making easily $500,000 per year. I just don't consider their "struggle" the same as people barely able to survive and feed their children while working full-time. The greed is all around in this particular case. many of the people in this lawsuit were not even close to struggling. They were talented enough to even be head hunted meaning they were likely already well compensated for their skills.

Why should not being able to be poached result in a giant payout from a lawsuit settlement? How is a value put on something like that? Fight to change the policy but how does compensation fix that? It doesn't. It was a cash grab and nothing more. If the desire was really to change the policy there would not be a settlement. The case would keep going and it would have been a case to fine these companies until they change the policy.

I really think we need to tone down this conversion however before it starts to get too political or ugly.

I agree corporate greed is out of control. I'm just saying this particular case may not be the best example of that. Poaching is an ugly practice which is why its given an ugly term. Protecting intellectual property is not really a greedy act. Tech companies are built on knowledge and losing that knowledge to each other is just as bad as losing the product itself in some cases. I don't think this act was designed just to depress salaries but to protect that intellectual property. Salaries in that industry and region are already through the roof.

 

[Thomas Smet]

I think that's true in the near term, but Musk says that most of the materials he sources for Tesla are going down in price 6 months from now (which is the purchase lead time).

https://cointelegraph.com/news/elon-...-90-of-bitcoin

A lot of the inflationary pressure (covid lockdowns, Russia sanctions) is easing. Gas is down 20% in the last 2 months. Fed interest rate hikes are starting to slow the economy. I think products will become more readily available and inflation will decelerate. The cost of some things may come down.

Don't get me started on the so called shortages and inflation. This isn't the forum for that topic at all. Why make a profit on 10 items when you can make more profit on 7 items?

 

[ahalpert]

. Poaching is an ugly practice which is why its given an ugly term. Protecting intellectual property is not really a greedy act. Tech companies are built on knowledge and losing that knowledge to each other is just as bad as losing the product itself in some cases. I don't think this act was designed just to depress salaries but to protect that intellectual property. Salaries in that industry and region are already through the roof.

Aren't there massive penalties for violating those NDAs? Or look at the lawsuit between Tesla and Rivian

Also, I don't think that the plaintiffs were as elite and well-paid as you think. There were 65,000 of them. From the original article I referenced:

The case started when a former Lucasfilm software engineer filed a lawsuit alleging that the seven companies involved conspired to keep salaries low by agreeing not to poach one another's employees. Other complaints followed and were eventually combined into a single class action lawsuit that covered almost 65,000 employees who worked for the seven companies between 2005 and 2010.

The suit itself followed a 2009 antitrust investigation into the companies by the US Department of Justice. That matter was settled the following year, with the companies ending their agreements not to contact employees of the other firms involved in an attempt to hire them.

Sure seems like a sort of truce so that the companies don't all end up paying more for the same talent, since if they're poaching from each other they will probably just circulate employees back and forth

 

[Doug Jensen]

I'm pretty sure that all major league sports have very strict rules regarding how and when players from other teams can be approached. So, if it is legal for team owners to conspire in that way, then why can't employers agree not to poach talent in other professions? It's a double standard. Also, athletes aren't going to bring intellectual property and insider knowledge of product development with them, so I would say it is even more important for technology companies to have a gentleman's agreement to keep things civil.

 

[Peter C.]

I think people are unaware why there are rules and regulations preventing companies from doing certain things. It's easy to have a street mentality like companies should be able to do whatever they want because freedom and capitalism is great. The underlying problem is that there is a tendency as companies get bigger and more powerful they use that power to engage in anti competitive practices that undermine a free market. In the case that is being discussed no matter the intentions its not legal to collude to control the free market of labor. This would be like saying I can break the law if I have good intentions. Their intentions were most likely to suppress salaries and reduce turn over so they wouldn't need to hire and train new employees who left for better opportunities.

 

[ahalpert]

Nearly the only way I've gotten rate increases has been because I was willing to walk away from (or at least get too busy for) a client in favor of someone who could pay me more, causing the first client to match or exceed their offer. (And it's not like I forget what I learned and how I improved my craft working for Client 1.) How are you gonna do that if the only people who could compete to hire you have agreed not to? Would you have to wait until your contract is finished and then voluntarily go unemployed so that you can see if you get offers?

I know people who have been at the same company or with the same clients forever and they literally never get a raise.

Also, seems a bit disingenuous to say athletes don't possess IP. They know their team's playbook...

 

[Doug Jensen]

Their intentions were most likely to suppress salaries and reduce turn over so they wouldn't need to hire and train new employees who left for better opportunities.

Yup, that's major league sports.

 

[Doug Jensen]

Also, seems a bit disingenuous to say athletes don't possess IP. They know their team's playbook...

That's funny. Here's the baseball playbook: Hit ball with stick, run in circle.

 

[NorBro]

DJ, if I had unlimited money, I would truly pay you whatever you wanted - if you accepted it - to stand in front of a professional pitcher throwing a ball 92-95mph towards you.

Forget about even trying to hit it; just stand by the plate, for starters.

 

[ahalpert]

That's funny. Here's the baseball playbook: Hit ball with stick, run in circle.

Isn't the trading window in baseball like 9 months out of the year? Seems like they just don't want you to trade in the lead-up to the postseason