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Sounds awesome considering those body shops use up most of the H-1B quota and significantly underpay their employees compared to industry wages. For example, so

Sounds awesome considering those body shops use up most of the H-1B quota and significantly underpay their employees compared to industry wages. For example, somewhere between 47% and 85% of H-1Bs are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers, evidence that the program is not being used to bring over workers with "specialized knowledge" as they claim--but to drive down wages. It makes sense though, when you look at the biggest H-1B recipients: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx It's mostly the low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.

shas3 10y ago
I'm not sure about the bidding war. I've been in situations where companies are looking for people with specific skills (e.g. working with specific microbiology techniques) but would never be able to outbid what Facebook or someone in Bay Area would pay for generalist skills in another field. There is nowhere close to 100% elasticity in wages to make an auction system fair. Also, this would handicap companies in low-cost-of-living regions of the US. This includes a massive chunk of the economy in solid economies with low costs of living like Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia.
- davidw 10y ago
  Auctions are also predicated on some random, arbitrary number that has little relationship with reality. And, I'll add, is currently absolutely dwarfed by the number of people coming in on other visas; mostly family ones, IIRC.
- untog 10y ago
  I'd also be curious how this would affect startups - I very much doubt you can factor in some equity into that equation, so you're looking at a high upfront cost no matter what.
- ng12 10y ago
  That's why there's also L1, EB3, etc. The problem with H1B is the volume and relatively weak definition of what a "skilled employee" is.
- hamandcheese 10y ago
  ...bummer? This is already the situation with US based talent willing to relocate (which is a fair benchmark since H1B workers are relocating no matter what).
- geebee 10y ago
  I'm not sure that I'm sympathetic to employers who want to pay less. Keep in mind, the US takes in well over a million immigrants a year, and has a huge internal workforce. The H1B was created to help employers find critical and highly skilled workers that are in desperately short supply in the US. "Oh, but we can't afford to pay them a lot of money, that's not fair!" isn't the sort of argument that tends to evoke much sympathy. We're talking about empowering corporations to bestow US live and work rights on an employee of their choosing, in an end-run around normal immigration procedures. Honestly, if the salary isn't really high, I'm skeptical about whether this visa is being used properly.
  - tn13 10y ago
    > We're talking about empowering corporations to bestow US live and work rights on an employee of their choosing, in an end-run around normal immigration procedures. What is wrong with that ? Honestly I dont see why getting Indian and Chinese workers as cheap labor is bad either. Whatever regulations drove out manufacturing sector from USA mgiht drive out tech from USA too.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      Manufacturing didn't really leave the US, the jobs are just done by robots.
      - j_koreth 10y ago
        H1-B workers are generally mostly used as programmers and brought in by large tech companies to use instead of native labor. I'm not really sure what manufacturing has got to do with this unless programming was made obsolete by robots already.
    - dpark 10y ago
      The entire justification for the H-1B visa system is so that we can bring in highly skilled labor to fill positions that cannot be filled with citizen talent for a reasonable price. If you're hiring H-1Bs at below market, your failure to fill the position is as likely due to your underpaying as it is an actual labor shortage. You cannot reasonably justify the need for H-1Bs if you're underpaying. Further, if you use H-1Bs to fill positions that you could have filled with local talent, then you're taking that visa away from another company that might legitimately need it. Making H-1Bs dependent on bidding or pay seems a plausible way to ensure that they are going to companies with real need and not just companies that are trying to undercut the labor market.
- andrewfong 10y ago
  You could index wage to some cost-of-living metric set by the Department of Labor. That would control for regional differences between company. It'd also further incentivize "outsourcing" to domestic locales with cheaper costs of living. That's arguably a good thing since places with cheaper costs of living would benefit more from the workforce bump than those with high costs.
  - luckydata 10y ago
    The Bay Area could truly benefit by some reduction in the H1B workforce. The influx of foreign workers contributes greatly to the housing shortage that's hurting everyone right now. p.s.: Just in case you're wondering, I'm an immigrant and I left the bay area exactly for the reasons I'm highlighting.
    - redditmigrant 10y ago
      Bay area's housing shortage is entirely self inflicted by its residents who refuse to allow more housing to be built. All this to maintain some arbitrary idea of character. A character that is frozen at some random point in time. There is no good reason for most of the bay area to be strip malls apartments and 2 story apartment complexes. There are more than enough examples of cities(Barcelona, Paris) with character, history and more vertical housing.
      - luckydata 10y ago
        Preaching to the choir, but reality is it won't change anytime soon. I voted with my feet and left, I miss the area but I couldn't justify anymore how much of a hassle it was living there lately.
    - dntrkv 10y ago
      Do you have any stats to back that claim up?
      - luckydata 10y ago
- jlarocco 10y ago
  I don't buy that argument. H-1B is supposed to be for hiring top notch people with valuable, specialized skills. Those people should be making a lot of money. H-1B is not meant to bypass the regular supply and demand of the job market that usually helps adjust salaries.
- curun1r 10y ago
  Another option would be to put in place a system where companies could be have their H1-B applications automatically approved if they maintain a certain ratio of citizens/green card holders to H1-Bs within the desired salary band and classification. Say, for example, you want to hire an H1-B engineer at $160k/yr and the required ratio is 4:1. If your engineering workforce within the $150k-$175k salary band is already greater than 4-1 non-H1-B, you should be allowed to hire an H1-B. But companies that try to abuse H1-Bs, either by hiring too large a percentage of their workforce or by underpaying them would have to use the lottery system, provided there are any H1-B slots left. Such a system seems like it works for the large Facebooks and Googles of the world as well as smaller startups and companies in areas of the country with lower CoL. It also works for citizens, green card holders and H1-Bs, since it encourages employment of non-H1-B employees and similar wages for all types of employees. It would only penalize the body shops, those that underpay H1-Bs and those companies that rely on too large a percentage of H1-Bs for their workforce. The only thing you'd have to do is ensure that the local employees are roughly the same job function as the H1-Bs, so that companies couldn't offset underpaid H1-B engineers with similarly-paid customer support or similar gaming of the system.
  - snovv_crash 10y ago
    I like this idea. It also helps immigrants with integration into their new society, instead of forming pockets of foreigners.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  I don't see how. If you absolutely need that skill, then you need it, cost of living based salary be damned.
- nathanvanfleet 10y ago
  Really glad for your comment. I was agreeing with him until you made such a concise argument for how that makes no sense.
- gozur88 10y ago
  What I would have done is divided out the number of slots on a state-by-state basis (proportional to population, say) and had an auction in each state. I'm not convinced there would be a huge demand for H-1b visas if companies couldn't underpay them relative to people with green cards or citizenship. Certainly on the margins there are companies that are looking for specialized skills, but for the most part the industry likes high H-1b caps because they depress wages.
cthalupa 10y ago
This pits new grads against people with many years of experience. If kids come to the US for their undergrad/masters/phd and want to work here, they're not going to be the highest paid people competing, but they might have more long term value and chance of truly integrating with the country.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  I'm not sure there are enough people with many years of experience to fill the quota so I doubt new grads are going to miss out. Looking at [0] and a simple bit of JS, the bottom end of the 65k person cap is at line 281 at a salary of $100,442, which is on the low end for new grads at Google, Facebook etc. Plus, > If kids come to the US for their undergrad/masters/phd and want to work here I'm not sure of the details but some of my colleagues are in this position and they work on some kind of visa that isn't a H-1B and is related to the fact they recently finished studying here.
  - cthalupa 10y ago
    There's plenty of jobs out there that aren't at Google, Facebook, etc. Companies in lower cost of living areas aren't going to pay that much.
- stale2002 10y ago
  That is correct. H1B is for highly skilled workers. If the new grad isn't the highest skilled worker, then the visa isn't for them.
  - Terr_ 10y ago
    Yeah, some of this is almost a product-management problem applied to law: Have a very clear goal for your legislation and don't try to make it so everything for everyone.
  - cthalupa 10y ago
    What alternative is there for new grads?
X86BSD 10y ago
My wife is Indian. From Noida. I wasn't going to comment at all on this topic since it's already been beaten to death. But when I see the name Cognizant my blood BOILS. Cognizant is the most atrocious slave labor company I have ever had the misfortunate of dealing with. My wife's first company in the US to work for was Cognizant. It is horribly run by corrupt indians, and they treated her like absolute slavery. The hours, the offshore team management and conference calls, the incredibly low pay, the worst most backstabbing coworkers ever. She had managers that not only never called her, they didn't even know she worked for them when she would get relocated to another state for another one of their clients. Cognizant is appalling as a company.
- giis 10y ago
  As ex-cognizant employee, I completely agree. My 4yr with them in India is absolute worst career decision. Manager(s) did treat fellow employee as slave. If you think yourself as a person with some kind of self-respect , I bet you will never grow up on career. Their managers want shoe-lickers not talents. Since the work is mostly junk, even school student can do them after few months of training. Ive seen these outsourced companies cheating their foreign clients like creating fake billings when employees are actually on leave or working on some other project. Indian (outsourced) IT is so bad, I'd say almost 80% people in US(working for bodyshops) is there because they are close to management not due to their talents. I have lot of friends, who stuck in their life thanks to IT. They do all the hard work in india but their counter-part in onsite gets the reward and visibility, I feel very sorry for them.
  - X86BSD 10y ago
    Exactly this. The nepotism, the inability to get promoted because you are not a relative or someone, the people who work with management getting all the credit as you said, its all just disgusting. I can't believe Cognizant is as huge a company as it is. They should never have been able to get the size they are.
    - giis 10y ago
      >They should never have been able to get the size they are. May be thats because no one really speaks about dark-side of Indian body-shops. Students are attracted by (initial) high-pay and on-site chances etc. It will take at-least 3 or 4 years to realize the mistake of joining outsourced services industry. By then its too late to leave the company - because all these years they execute some batch jobs and worked in excel sheets. Only option is either completely quit IT & do some other business or go for higher-studies & hope for better future. I assume less than 1% may quit, 10-20% will give high-studies a try while rest of them stuck due to lack of courage or/and personal/family commitments.
arcticbull 10y ago
How about the top in their job title in their geographical area? That way you can take into account pay variance over the US.
SilasX 10y ago
>Sounds awesome considering those body shops use up most of the H-1B quota and significantly underpay their employees compared to industry wages. ... It's mostly the low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant. Stupid question: Can you feasibly fix this by restricting it to large companies like that? Isn't that just going to cause them to split into several companies, like NIS ("Not-Infosys") and TNI ("Totally Not Infosys").
wyldfire 10y ago
> the program is not being used to bring over workers with "specialized knowledge" as they claim--but to drive down wages. While that might or might not be the intent, it seems like a pretty likely effect, right? Just based on the additional supply alone? I wonder about the effect of cutting back H1-B visas too much. If it made salaries rise significantly, wouldn't it upset the social hierarchy of these businesses? Software devs being so scarce that they're getting paid more than executives, e.g.? Seems like working with more foreign software firms is almost a given if costs skyrocket like that.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Depends on how the execs' compensation is structured. After a certain level they get paid more in stock than in cash. This should, theoretically, incentivize them to succeed. Many devs, outside of the startup scene, are not paid in stock. They get a working wage. If their commitment causes the companies stock to increase by 20%, they will likely not see a 20% bump in pay the next salary go round.
deepGem 10y ago
I think a generic rhetoric that Indian outsourcing companies just drive down wages is plain wrong. Most of the contracts that these guys bag are long term maintenance type contracts. The companies that are awarding these contracts are doing so mostly because they are stuck with legacy software that are hard to replace. The replacements costs are typically higher than the 5 year maintenance costs. It's no wonder that the people who are employed for these type of roles are paid less. In other words, the market determines the price. Infosys and the like are just optimising for profitability, like any other public company. Given how competitive the market for talent is, H1B employees of these companies are always free to find other jobs. Since they already have a H1B visa, transfers are possible. Agreed not all companies will sponsor a transfer but many do. Even startups. Some lower quality body shops try to enforce some 'bonded contract' but that is illegal and will never fly in labour courts. So no, the outsourcing companies are not underpaying talented people. They are just paying the correct price determined by the market for that particular aggregated job function.
- diogenescynic 10y ago
  >a generic rhetoric that Indian outsourcing companies just drive down wages is plain wrong >They are just paying the correct price determined by the market for that particular aggregated job function. If 47% and 85% of H-1Bs at bodyshops are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers, what is your argument that they aren't driving down wages? If these employees weren't on visas, do you really think they would still all be paid below the market rate? And even still, why are visas for "specialized knowledge" workers going to what you call "maintenance type contracts" for "legacy software"? There's a huge disconnect between the intent and purpose of the visa programs and their actual use.
  - deepGem 10y ago
    If 47% and 85% of H-1Bs at bodyshops are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers Who are the peers ? People in similar job functions ? It's very hard to know just by the report. A 'software engineer' job function is the same on paper across Facebook and Infosys. While the software engineer in Infosys is mostly performing maintenance related tasks and nowhere on par with the software engineer in Facebook, talent wise. There are exceptions of course and they always find better jobs. "There's a huge disconnect between the intent and purpose of the visa programs and their actual use." Yes absolutely. That's mostly because there is no other legal option for these companies to hire. L1 was an option, but the USCIS hiked L1 fees and it's now very expensive. Also L1 requires the employees to have spent a year at the home branch.

shas3 10y ago

I'm not sure about the bidding war. I've been in situations where companies are looking for people with specific skills (e.g. working with specific microbiology techniques) but would never be able to outbid what Facebook or someone in Bay Area would pay for generalist skills in another field. There is nowhere close to 100% elasticity in wages to make an auction system fair. Also, this would handicap companies in low-cost-of-living regions of the US. This includes a massive chunk of the economy in solid economies with low costs of living like Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia.

davidw 10y ago
Auctions are also predicated on some random, arbitrary number that has little relationship with reality. And, I'll add, is currently absolutely dwarfed by the number of people coming in on other visas; mostly family ones, IIRC.
untog 10y ago
I'd also be curious how this would affect startups - I very much doubt you can factor in some equity into that equation, so you're looking at a high upfront cost no matter what.
ng12 10y ago
That's why there's also L1, EB3, etc. The problem with H1B is the volume and relatively weak definition of what a "skilled employee" is.
hamandcheese 10y ago
...bummer? This is already the situation with US based talent willing to relocate (which is a fair benchmark since H1B workers are relocating no matter what).
geebee 10y ago
I'm not sure that I'm sympathetic to employers who want to pay less. Keep in mind, the US takes in well over a million immigrants a year, and has a huge internal workforce. The H1B was created to help employers find critical and highly skilled workers that are in desperately short supply in the US. "Oh, but we can't afford to pay them a lot of money, that's not fair!" isn't the sort of argument that tends to evoke much sympathy. We're talking about empowering corporations to bestow US live and work rights on an employee of their choosing, in an end-run around normal immigration procedures. Honestly, if the salary isn't really high, I'm skeptical about whether this visa is being used properly.
- tn13 10y ago
  > We're talking about empowering corporations to bestow US live and work rights on an employee of their choosing, in an end-run around normal immigration procedures. What is wrong with that ? Honestly I dont see why getting Indian and Chinese workers as cheap labor is bad either. Whatever regulations drove out manufacturing sector from USA mgiht drive out tech from USA too.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    Manufacturing didn't really leave the US, the jobs are just done by robots.
    - j_koreth 10y ago
      H1-B workers are generally mostly used as programmers and brought in by large tech companies to use instead of native labor. I'm not really sure what manufacturing has got to do with this unless programming was made obsolete by robots already.
  - dpark 10y ago
    The entire justification for the H-1B visa system is so that we can bring in highly skilled labor to fill positions that cannot be filled with citizen talent for a reasonable price. If you're hiring H-1Bs at below market, your failure to fill the position is as likely due to your underpaying as it is an actual labor shortage. You cannot reasonably justify the need for H-1Bs if you're underpaying. Further, if you use H-1Bs to fill positions that you could have filled with local talent, then you're taking that visa away from another company that might legitimately need it. Making H-1Bs dependent on bidding or pay seems a plausible way to ensure that they are going to companies with real need and not just companies that are trying to undercut the labor market.
andrewfong 10y ago
You could index wage to some cost-of-living metric set by the Department of Labor. That would control for regional differences between company. It'd also further incentivize "outsourcing" to domestic locales with cheaper costs of living. That's arguably a good thing since places with cheaper costs of living would benefit more from the workforce bump than those with high costs.
- luckydata 10y ago
  The Bay Area could truly benefit by some reduction in the H1B workforce. The influx of foreign workers contributes greatly to the housing shortage that's hurting everyone right now. p.s.: Just in case you're wondering, I'm an immigrant and I left the bay area exactly for the reasons I'm highlighting.
  - redditmigrant 10y ago
    Bay area's housing shortage is entirely self inflicted by its residents who refuse to allow more housing to be built. All this to maintain some arbitrary idea of character. A character that is frozen at some random point in time. There is no good reason for most of the bay area to be strip malls apartments and 2 story apartment complexes. There are more than enough examples of cities(Barcelona, Paris) with character, history and more vertical housing.
    - luckydata 10y ago
      Preaching to the choir, but reality is it won't change anytime soon. I voted with my feet and left, I miss the area but I couldn't justify anymore how much of a hassle it was living there lately.
  - dntrkv 10y ago
    Do you have any stats to back that claim up?
    - luckydata 10y ago
jlarocco 10y ago
I don't buy that argument. H-1B is supposed to be for hiring top notch people with valuable, specialized skills. Those people should be making a lot of money. H-1B is not meant to bypass the regular supply and demand of the job market that usually helps adjust salaries.
curun1r 10y ago
Another option would be to put in place a system where companies could be have their H1-B applications automatically approved if they maintain a certain ratio of citizens/green card holders to H1-Bs within the desired salary band and classification. Say, for example, you want to hire an H1-B engineer at $160k/yr and the required ratio is 4:1. If your engineering workforce within the $150k-$175k salary band is already greater than 4-1 non-H1-B, you should be allowed to hire an H1-B. But companies that try to abuse H1-Bs, either by hiring too large a percentage of their workforce or by underpaying them would have to use the lottery system, provided there are any H1-B slots left. Such a system seems like it works for the large Facebooks and Googles of the world as well as smaller startups and companies in areas of the country with lower CoL. It also works for citizens, green card holders and H1-Bs, since it encourages employment of non-H1-B employees and similar wages for all types of employees. It would only penalize the body shops, those that underpay H1-Bs and those companies that rely on too large a percentage of H1-Bs for their workforce. The only thing you'd have to do is ensure that the local employees are roughly the same job function as the H1-Bs, so that companies couldn't offset underpaid H1-B engineers with similarly-paid customer support or similar gaming of the system.
- snovv_crash 10y ago
  I like this idea. It also helps immigrants with integration into their new society, instead of forming pockets of foreigners.
st3v3r 10y ago
I don't see how. If you absolutely need that skill, then you need it, cost of living based salary be damned.
nathanvanfleet 10y ago
Really glad for your comment. I was agreeing with him until you made such a concise argument for how that makes no sense.
gozur88 10y ago
What I would have done is divided out the number of slots on a state-by-state basis (proportional to population, say) and had an auction in each state. I'm not convinced there would be a huge demand for H-1b visas if companies couldn't underpay them relative to people with green cards or citizenship. Certainly on the margins there are companies that are looking for specialized skills, but for the most part the industry likes high H-1b caps because they depress wages.

cthalupa 10y ago

This pits new grads against people with many years of experience. If kids come to the US for their undergrad/masters/phd and want to work here, they're not going to be the highest paid people competing, but they might have more long term value and chance of truly integrating with the country.

Veratyr 10y ago
I'm not sure there are enough people with many years of experience to fill the quota so I doubt new grads are going to miss out. Looking at [0] and a simple bit of JS, the bottom end of the 65k person cap is at line 281 at a salary of $100,442, which is on the low end for new grads at Google, Facebook etc. Plus, > If kids come to the US for their undergrad/masters/phd and want to work here I'm not sure of the details but some of my colleagues are in this position and they work on some kind of visa that isn't a H-1B and is related to the fact they recently finished studying here.
- cthalupa 10y ago
  There's plenty of jobs out there that aren't at Google, Facebook, etc. Companies in lower cost of living areas aren't going to pay that much.
stale2002 10y ago
That is correct. H1B is for highly skilled workers. If the new grad isn't the highest skilled worker, then the visa isn't for them.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  Yeah, some of this is almost a product-management problem applied to law: Have a very clear goal for your legislation and don't try to make it so everything for everyone.
- cthalupa 10y ago
  What alternative is there for new grads?

X86BSD 10y ago

My wife is Indian. From Noida. I wasn't going to comment at all on this topic since it's already been beaten to death. But when I see the name Cognizant my blood BOILS. Cognizant is the most atrocious slave labor company I have ever had the misfortunate of dealing with. My wife's first company in the US to work for was Cognizant. It is horribly run by corrupt indians, and they treated her like absolute slavery. The hours, the offshore team management and conference calls, the incredibly low pay, the worst most backstabbing coworkers ever. She had managers that not only never called her, they didn't even know she worked for them when she would get relocated to another state for another one of their clients. Cognizant is appalling as a company.

giis 10y ago
As ex-cognizant employee, I completely agree. My 4yr with them in India is absolute worst career decision. Manager(s) did treat fellow employee as slave. If you think yourself as a person with some kind of self-respect , I bet you will never grow up on career. Their managers want shoe-lickers not talents. Since the work is mostly junk, even school student can do them after few months of training. Ive seen these outsourced companies cheating their foreign clients like creating fake billings when employees are actually on leave or working on some other project. Indian (outsourced) IT is so bad, I'd say almost 80% people in US(working for bodyshops) is there because they are close to management not due to their talents. I have lot of friends, who stuck in their life thanks to IT. They do all the hard work in india but their counter-part in onsite gets the reward and visibility, I feel very sorry for them.
- X86BSD 10y ago
  Exactly this. The nepotism, the inability to get promoted because you are not a relative or someone, the people who work with management getting all the credit as you said, its all just disgusting. I can't believe Cognizant is as huge a company as it is. They should never have been able to get the size they are.
  - giis 10y ago
    >They should never have been able to get the size they are. May be thats because no one really speaks about dark-side of Indian body-shops. Students are attracted by (initial) high-pay and on-site chances etc. It will take at-least 3 or 4 years to realize the mistake of joining outsourced services industry. By then its too late to leave the company - because all these years they execute some batch jobs and worked in excel sheets. Only option is either completely quit IT & do some other business or go for higher-studies & hope for better future. I assume less than 1% may quit, 10-20% will give high-studies a try while rest of them stuck due to lack of courage or/and personal/family commitments.

arcticbull 10y ago

How about the top in their job title in their geographical area? That way you can take into account pay variance over the US.

SilasX 10y ago

>Sounds awesome considering those body shops use up most of the H-1B quota and significantly underpay their employees compared to industry wages. ... It's mostly the low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant. Stupid question: Can you feasibly fix this by restricting it to large companies like that? Isn't that just going to cause them to split into several companies, like NIS ("Not-Infosys") and TNI ("Totally Not Infosys").

wyldfire 10y ago

> the program is not being used to bring over workers with "specialized knowledge" as they claim--but to drive down wages. While that might or might not be the intent, it seems like a pretty likely effect, right? Just based on the additional supply alone? I wonder about the effect of cutting back H1-B visas too much. If it made salaries rise significantly, wouldn't it upset the social hierarchy of these businesses? Software devs being so scarce that they're getting paid more than executives, e.g.? Seems like working with more foreign software firms is almost a given if costs skyrocket like that.

virmundi 10y ago
Depends on how the execs' compensation is structured. After a certain level they get paid more in stock than in cash. This should, theoretically, incentivize them to succeed. Many devs, outside of the startup scene, are not paid in stock. They get a working wage. If their commitment causes the companies stock to increase by 20%, they will likely not see a 20% bump in pay the next salary go round.

deepGem 10y ago

I think a generic rhetoric that Indian outsourcing companies just drive down wages is plain wrong. Most of the contracts that these guys bag are long term maintenance type contracts. The companies that are awarding these contracts are doing so mostly because they are stuck with legacy software that are hard to replace. The replacements costs are typically higher than the 5 year maintenance costs. It's no wonder that the people who are employed for these type of roles are paid less. In other words, the market determines the price. Infosys and the like are just optimising for profitability, like any other public company. Given how competitive the market for talent is, H1B employees of these companies are always free to find other jobs. Since they already have a H1B visa, transfers are possible. Agreed not all companies will sponsor a transfer but many do. Even startups. Some lower quality body shops try to enforce some 'bonded contract' but that is illegal and will never fly in labour courts. So no, the outsourcing companies are not underpaying talented people. They are just paying the correct price determined by the market for that particular aggregated job function.

diogenescynic 10y ago
>a generic rhetoric that Indian outsourcing companies just drive down wages is plain wrong >They are just paying the correct price determined by the market for that particular aggregated job function. If 47% and 85% of H-1Bs at bodyshops are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers, what is your argument that they aren't driving down wages? If these employees weren't on visas, do you really think they would still all be paid below the market rate? And even still, why are visas for "specialized knowledge" workers going to what you call "maintenance type contracts" for "legacy software"? There's a huge disconnect between the intent and purpose of the visa programs and their actual use.
- deepGem 10y ago
  If 47% and 85% of H-1Bs at bodyshops are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers Who are the peers ? People in similar job functions ? It's very hard to know just by the report. A 'software engineer' job function is the same on paper across Facebook and Infosys. While the software engineer in Infosys is mostly performing maintenance related tasks and nowhere on par with the software engineer in Facebook, talent wise. There are exceptions of course and they always find better jobs. "There's a huge disconnect between the intent and purpose of the visa programs and their actual use." Yes absolutely. That's mostly because there is no other legal option for these companies to hire. L1 was an option, but the USCIS hiked L1 fees and it's now very expensive. Also L1 requires the employees to have spent a year at the home branch.