SAN FRANCISCO — The workers of Silicon Valley have won an important victory over their bosses. What they did not win is a lot of money.

Four of the largest technology companies tentatively settled on Thursday a class action brought by 64,000 of their engineers, who accused them of agreeing not to solicit one another’s employees. The amount of the settlement was not released, but people with knowledge of the deal said it was in the neighborhood of $300 million.

The companies, which are some of the world’s richest, must think that is a bargain. At a moment when Silicon Valley is losing some of its luster even on its home territory, the antitrust case depicted the upper levels of the valley’s executive suites as a cozy old boys’ network. Private deals are made, and then the executives send emails saying they wanted everything to remain secret.

The defendants are Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel. Steven P. Jobs, the Apple co-founder, was portrayed in court papers as something of a bully, a man who would go nuclear when a competitor solicited his engineers. “If you hire a single one of these people, that means war,” Mr. Jobs warned Google in an email that became public.