Salaries since 2008 went up mostly in reaction to US DOJ finding that Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar had an anti-competitive agreement to not hire each others employees, in order to depress wages. (http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-at-1076.html)
I do wish we could get rid of the "poaching" term for at-will employees. Either it's easier to bag trophy talent on the Google reserve than in the open field (in which case, good on those employees for improving their lot) or it's harder (in which case, good on Facebook and others for figuring out how to compete for them.) Either way, it's hardly a situation for which an external observer needs a judgmental descriptor.
It is simply competition over the girl and one factor is who can take her out for the more expensive dinners. (Another being who makes her laugh more.)
Come on, that's not fair. jonah's citing two ways men try to woo women (expensive dinners and making her laugh) and using them at as analogies for ways that companies try to woo employees -- either paying them better salaries or being a more rewarding place to work.
Actually I disagree - the poaching between FB and Google actually sets difficult precedents for pretty much everyone else.
You get FB enticing talent from google, and google giving raises to keep people and this makes all other companies at a disadvantage.
Further, paying college grads 100K+ sets them up to be prima donnas almost immediately.
Last, it is against the stance that when starting your own company, and taking on money, the VCs want you to take smaller salaries to show that you have skin in the game, that you're hungry etc... This makes it such that lifestyles become set and the likelihood of anyone willing to take less is not going to happen.
Over time - the overall market salary expectations increase, but now the available talent pool that is actually worth those salary levels shrinks - putting both talent and employers in a catch 22.
Every single entrepreneur in the valley should see Google, and even more, Facebook as nothing but their enemy (until they try to acquire you, that is)
Considering inflation over the past 20 years, $100K salary is not prima donna material. Engineers aren't overpaid; they are fortunate enough to have salary keeping pace with inflation.
Much of the rest of the educated working class is underpaid, with real wages falling, due to weak bargaining power against the aristocracy.
Based on your comment then, do you believe that the only thing anyone should be really interested in is stock?
Here is why I ask, my salary ranges between 110K and 175K depending on the project, position, how interested I am in it etc...
I am a very senior infrastructure deisgner and PM.
I am 36.
To say that someone out of college getting 100K as an expected base salary is not pirma donna material -- then you are setting them up to believe that, as an engineer, their salary expectations should grow over time to say ~350K.
However - nobody pays that.
We can argue that everyone is underpaid, sure, I feel underpaid. But the truth is that the only way I am going to get a comfortable windfall is to build / sell somethinf of my own.
The fact seems to be that the mean salary is fairly flat regardless of experience in general - but in the relatively more rare cases that people cash out, there i wild profit to be made.
This is clear in SV where it is far more common for people to make out on their stock -- but that clearly indicates at least some sort of bubble for silicon valley as compared to the rest of the country/world.
