Yes, there are scenarios where employees are stripped of agency. E.g a factory owner taking and holding foreign worker's passports. But if you're going to allege that something is preventing these works from accepting competing offers, you have to offer evidence for that claim.
* Employer-bound health insurance in the US
* Industry blacklists to exclude uppity employees and union members
* Noncompetes and NDAs
* Extremely localized jobs and an ever-shrinking number of larger and larger conglomerates as employers
Benefits are part of an employees compensation package. A competing offer could have even better healthcare than Id.
> Industry blacklists to exclude uppity employees and union members.
This is illegal and the last time SV companies were found doing this the government punished them
Is there any evidence that this is happening to Id employees?
> Noncompetes
Illegal in CA where ID is based. NDAs don't prevent you from working at competitors, only from taking confidential info.
> Extremely localized jobs and an ever-shrinking number of larger and larger conglomerates as employers.
Id is located in the Bay Area, probably the place with the greatest concentration of software jobs in the country if not the world.
If a period of unemployment kicks you off an insurance program that's covering life-essential treatment for a loved one, there is no mechanism of "choosing freely" here; ex-employees don't have the option of covering health care themselves and there are no guarantees that the other employer's health care will cover existing treatments even if the coverage is better in theory.
> This is illegal and the last time SV companies were found doing this the government punished them
Every recruiter has spreadsheets of blacklisted employees, one of the reasons why companies frequently outsource staffing to outsides for plausible deniability.
> Illegal in CA where ID is based. NDAs don't prevent you from working at competitors, only from taking confidential info.
So illegal en CA but legal pretty much everywhere else, once again limiting you if you want to move because COL is too high in California and reducing the pool of real employment alternatives.
> Id is located in the Bay Area, probably the place with the greatest concentration of software jobs in the country if not the world.
Software jobs but not gaming jobs. California suffers from an artificial shortage of affordable housing due to insane tax laws and building restrictions. There's nothing free market about this.
Maybe they can just start their own company. Well, you can't for the existing players to peer traffic with you if you need heavy network access.
Nobody doubts that employers can curb worker's ability to accept competing offers. The question is whether there's actually any evidence backing up the claim that Id employees aren't free to leave.
The fact you can't understand solidarity is your problem, not theirs.
How many of these collusions have not been brought to light?
Can I say for certain that this didn't happen at Id? No, but anyone making that claim ought to actually provide evidence that it happened at Id, not simple point to some other company that engaged in this behavior.
EDIT: I guess you can just downvote, sure, but why not engage?
