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This one sentence says it all: "The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over

• mberning 10y ago
  It is ridiculous that so many people support this wretched and miserable system. Anybody that has worked with these type of firms knows what is going on.
• perseusprime11 10y ago
  I agree. There are only two factors that contribute to this problem- 1) Hiring at low wages to help the bottom line of a company and 2) Hiring quickly because we need "bodies" to show progress against projects.
• Panini_Jones 10y ago
  > None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn. As a new grad interviewing for software engineering positions at FB, Google, Etc., I make exactly the same amount as my U.S. peers who have also received offers. Moreover, how do you know that the SE level of the H1B hires is exactly that of the pool from which Indeed.com calculates their averages? What if the H1B program was taking in a huge amount of new grads right now and not as many senior positions? Then the H1B average would be different than the Indeed one. Moreover (again), as I make the same amount of money as a U.S new grad, my company would pay for Visa sponsorship, and even pays more to fly me in to interview. Not only that, they put me through more interviews, costing more engineers time.
  • the_commentary 10y ago
    > What if the H1B program was taking in a huge amount of new grads right now and not as many senior positions? Then the program in turn wouldn't be abiding by the idea of the H1B program in the first place, which is to bring in people who have skills that can't be found in the US. You can hire new grads from the US just as easily as abroad, just maybe not at the artificially low prices that you want to pay them.
    • dlp211 10y ago
      Except, in this context, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and others aren't underpaying anyone. Also being a new grad != employable at one of these companies, and no, training isn't going to help them either.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • ep103 10y ago
    Congratulations. You're not the average.
  • ones_and_zeros 10y ago
    This gets to the crux of the issue with the H1B system as it relates to age discrimination. Why are we hiring fresh grads on a "best and brightest" visa? If the college degree from a US institution made them the best and brightest, why wasn't a citizen in that classroom seat? If they are truly geniuses why are they paid at entry level wages?
    • fjdlwlv 10y ago
      Maybe there were no citizens who passed the entrance requirements to that college
    • bradleyjg 10y ago
      H1B is not the best and brightest visa. That's O for temporary visas and EB1 for permanent visas.
• conanbatt 10y ago
  Honestly, tying the qualification of H1B to salary only works as some sort of state-sponsored unionization. Not to mention the salaries of H1B employees are public, and that they are bound to a company meaning they have less bargaining power. And that the sampling is completely different, one is more of an homogeneous american citizen and the other is basically every country in the world, with varying degrees of knowledge,education, expertise, cultural fit,language penalties, relocation costs, etc. EDIT: and remember, for a company to issue an H1B, it costs them many thousands of dollars, that the future employee has to be paying for it to be worth it. Increasing restrictions helps american tech workers as much as Trump adding a tariff on mexican imports. It hurts consumers, it hurts companies, and it gives americans a small benefit. I can understand american steel workers wanting protectionism , but i cant understand why people that work creating products world-wide like google, facebook, apple, amazon and microsoft, can find it consistent to believe in protectionism.
  • argv_empty 10y ago
    Honestly, tying the qualification of H1B to salary only works as some sort of state-sponsored unionization. It's not unionization. It's a simple case of letting the market decide who's got rare and valuable skills. If you don't command an unusually high salary, your skills aren't that rare or aren't so essential to the company.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • conanbatt 10y ago
      > It's a simple case of letting the market decide who's got rare and valuable skills. With company-tied commitments, high transaction costs, lotteries, field of expertise limitations? Markets gone wild! > If you don't command an unusually high salary, your skills aren't that rare or aren't so essential to the company. This is a union-style wage argument. If the company would like to hire you below what the union makes, the company should not be able to and you would not qualify to work in this field.
  • 10y ago
• CurtHagenlocher 10y ago
  H1Bs hired by companies like Amazon and Microsoft tend to be near the beginning of their careers, so a direct comparison to an average salary can be misleading. At least at Microsoft, the company helps H1Bs become permanent residents which would totally eliminate any ability the company has to underpay them. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.
  • arcticbull 10y ago
    Apple does the same.
• tootie 10y ago
  Probably true, but there's plenty of firms that are not hiring top talent and/or not in major metro areas where salaries are lower. Places that need 50 warm bodies to code back-office systems in a Pennsylvania suburb are not going to be paying $150K to anyone.
  • bonzini 10y ago
    And why do they need an H1B visa for the employee then?
    • steevenwee 10y ago
      Because they won't be able to get domestic forces for that money. I'm not saying that it is the way to go, but there might be businesses that can only exist on h1bs. So we should definitely reform this, but be cautious. Execution should not be the same as the ban, rolled out without any kind of consideration or preparation.
      • sumedh 10y ago
        > Because they won't be able to get domestic forces for that money. The problem is many companies who can afford to pay good money to Americans dont hire Americans when they can just hire H1Bs at a lower salary.
• bjornsing 10y ago
  So isn't the obvious solution to move the allocation strategy from lottery to "auction" (highest payed employees get their visas first)?
  • anarcticpuffin 10y ago
    There are a few solutions sloshing around at the moment. This article covers some of the levers in play: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/fixing-h-1b-visa-loophole/509639/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/fixing-...
  • harichinnan 10y ago
    That would essentially mean only silicon valley and NYC employers would get H1B employees. The entire South would face a skills shortage. The economist article actually provides a better solution. Visas shouldn't be tied to a particular employer. The employee should be able to transition to a new employer without a new visa application. There could be minimal paperwork to determine when a foreign worker is and whether they pay prevailing wages. Also the limit on visa numbers actually make the problem worse. Instead of say Apple getting engineers they need, their visa applications now have to compete with TCS' low paying applications. Apple in this case would then be forced to subcontract TCS employees so they can work onntheir projects. Also visas are once a year thing. So employers are forced into subcontracting if they have say a 6 month project. The solution would be to eliminate cap on visa numbers and to raise the prevailing wages labor department provides on a given city and to consolidate the multitude of job titles available for visa applications. For example there are Application Engineers, UI Engineers and Software Engineers all having different prevailing wages as per labor department.
    • lostboys67 10y ago
      So that is how the free market works your not one of those gosh darned socialists are you :-) And I suspect that for a "brown" skinned persons the south is not exactly a welcoming environment.
      • 10y ago
• 0xfeba 10y ago
  Yup. I've said it before[1][2] and people just kept replying "Oh but we hire them for their talent, therefore everyone does." I work at a run of the mill SaaS company. We have 60% H-1Bs devs here as contractors from a certain contracting company (more in QA). They live paycheck to paycheck. I get paid, literally, twice as much (I've seen the H-1B Labor Condition Applications for ones we hire directly--The contracting companies pay likely about as much but take some 20% of their salary). We don't hire them because they are particularly talented. I've been on interview calls with ones from the contracting companies, all their resumes are the same [3]. They are just code monkeys. Our company does it to save costs, period. Upper management knows nothing of the mythical man-month. The system is being rampantly abused. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13521791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13521791 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13525766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13525766 [3] - http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/theyll-sponsor-american-dream-might-cost-soul/ http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/theyll-sponsor-america...
  • maxxxxx 10y ago
    "I've been on interview calls with ones from the contracting companies, all their resumes are the same" That's starting to drive me nuts. We have to work with a limited set of contracting companies. Whenever we post a new job we get 20 of the same resumes. I usually immediately delete the ones that say "used try/catch statements" but other than that there is no way to distinguish between them.
    • Bartweiss 10y ago
      It was a weird moment for me when I first tried searching a candidate's objective statement. I found ~10 other resumes indexed online with the same objective statement, followed by the job-tips site from which they had copied the sample word-for-word. I know that's an extreme case, but it's pretty bizarre when you start seeing literally identical content on different resumes.
      • mattfrommars 10y ago
        So these contracting companies themselves send out resume to job post a companies makes? For example, received 20 CV for a job posted and all of them could have been sent from the same contracting company?
• Eridrus 10y ago
  Before you get all indignant, note that you're comparing a median and average, and for income distributions like these the average will skew higher. Also, Google, etc, also hire non software people from overseas, you can see them in the H-1B salary data, making less than software engineers.
  • fjdlwlv 10y ago
    Anyone have a good summary chart that shows what roles are earning how much?
    • harichinnan 10y ago
      http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Google+Inc&job=Software+Engineer&city=&year=2016 http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Google+Inc&job=Software+Eng...
    • Technophilis 10y ago
      Here is a list of roles at Google in Mountain View http://h1bpay.com/salaries?company=Google&city=Mountain+View%2C+CA&job-title= http://h1bpay.com/salaries?company=Google&city=Mountain+View...
• harichinnan 10y ago
  The bare minimum salary requirement for a position comes from the labor department. The first step on an H1B process is to determine prevaling wages in the city for that kind of position. For programmers, there are a multitude of titles available irrespective of what the actual job description is. So there could be an easy fix by investigating how prevailing wages are set and by bringing in industry experts to consolidate the list of titles and salaries required. Also companies list the bare minimum salary they would pay on a visa application instead of the actual salaries they would pay. This is especially true for consulting companies that share profit with their employees. Smaller consulting companies often don't pay the full salary when employees have a downtime in between projects. Also vacation time(extended month long) usually goes unpaid or less paid. The lower bid on the visa applications helps them stay in status in such situations.
• untog 10y ago
  > None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn. Indeed.com quotes the average SD salary in Seattle (think Amazon and Microsoft) as 126,000 and San Francisco at 134,000. I'm not sure that comparison works fully. I don't think the ages of the average H1B applicant are made public, but a great many are college graduates - IIRC, a foreign citizen who graduates from a US university is given a one year visa, but has to find their own way after that. So H1Bs represent a lot of people at the start of their careers, wheras the average you've found represents all developers. One clear improvement would be to allow university graduates to stay in the US much more easily. We've just spent an awful lot of time educating them to a US standard after all - why not keep them?
• ma2rten 10y ago
  I work at Google on an H1-B. I can confirm that Google pays foreign workers exactly the same as American employees on the same level, which is above market. I suspect that the number quoted is only base salary, includes lower cost locations in the US and professions other than Software Engineers. Another thing is that this number is the salary when the person got hired, but any other number you can find will be current salary.
  • vkou 10y ago
    I also work at Google on an H1-B (Formerly TN-1). I can also confirm that Google pays foreign workers exactly the same (Salary, stock, bonus, vacation, benefits) as Americans.
    • geebee 10y ago
      I'm not sure how this works at google, but often, when a company replaces positions with H1B visa workers, they often contract out the work. As a result, the H1B who is doing work for google wouldn't be considered a google employee. It's a fairly common practice, though again, not sure if it happens this way at google.
      • dlp211 10y ago
        Correct, this is how H1Bs are abused. But companies like Amafaceooglesoft are hiring H1Bs directly and pay wages, bonuses, and benefits that are equal to their US counterparts, thus, using the system as intended. They are also far more likely to sponsor their H1Bs for Green Card status. I personally work on a team at one of Amafaceooglesoft. On that team are 7 people where 2 are former H1Bs and are now Green Card holders and 1 current H1B who is going through the Green Card process.
        • geebee 10y ago
          I guess the question I'd ask is, do amafaceooglesoft contract out IT work to companies that use the H1B visa, and were any of these roles previously handled in-house. I'm not sure of the answer, but it could be that these companies make use of both paths. If you're hired directly by these companies, you are paid the same, but a job that is eliminated and replaced through one of the body shops wouldn't be. For instance, the workers eliminated at Disney aren't technically getting replaced by H1Bs, through a slight of hand. Disney is eliminating the positions, and then hiring a consulting company to provide that work. This way, it can be made to look like the H1Bs hired by Disney are paid the same as their American counterparts- by ensuring that jobs replaced that don't pay the same are no longer considered Disney employees. Again, not sure if google and other companies do this, but all your data tells me is that developers who are formally hired by google are paid the same. If google eliminates a 150k a year position, and then contracts that job function out to a consulting company paying 75k a year, that wouldn't show up in google's numbers.
• dvndvn 10y ago
  Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are hugely profitable corporations they pay top dollar to any talent, whether its domestic or international. So the argument Indian outsourcing firms should pay similar salaries to every employee is like, asking every US company to pay on par with Google/Microsoft employees, I guess. There is something to be done to the US working class for sure. But when US wants to be the world leader selling high value goods in every country, can it afford to isolate itself from the world's talent?
  • ryanhuff 10y ago
    H1B's should go for talent that you cannot reasonably find domestically. What you describe seems to imply that price should also be a consideration, i.e. Talent that you cannot reasonably find domestically for the price you are willing to pay. To me, that is abusing the system.
  • bonzini 10y ago
    The question is why do the outsourcing companies need to hire so many foreigners---other than to pay them nothing and screw up the H1B lottery for everyone else, of course.
• shas3 10y ago
  Uh? SD is a super-generic title. H1B pool can include disproportionate number of fresh graduates (BS or MS) because OPT program gives them the flexibility to wait till April comes around to file for H1B. It is almost impossible (with exceptions for researchers and multinational managers/ O1/O2/L1) to hire experienced people from outside the US via H1B. Thus this skewing happens: more jobs for fresh graduates probably go to foreigners than do jobs for people experienced and established in their fields.
  • oh_sigh 10y ago
    Why would we need H1Bs for fresh graduates, unless they are graduates in some very niche speciality (maybe machine learning?). Aren't H1Bs for skilled workers where they can't find an American equivalent? Is it really the case that there aren't enough fresh American grads graduating every year?
    • shas3 10y ago
      1. Undergrads who are exceptional in one field: Imagine applying this "undergrads aren't skilled workers" to Linus Trovalds in 1990. 2. Masters students with specialized skills and possible prior experience before their Masters.
    • vikascoder 10y ago
      This is because H1-B is the "only" way for an international fresh grad to work in the US. This is a direct result of US immigration policy which ties up the visa process with the need for an employer sponsorship and more importantly the ability to acquire permanent residence is also tied up to employer sponsorship which leads to "indentured" servitude as many folks around here point out. Compare it with let's say Germany who has a "Blue Card" visa program which gives an international (or intra european immigrant) 18 months to find a job and then if you manage you work for an employer for another 22 months (only) you get a permanent residence. This does not need any sponsorship from the employer. It's just a clock. Same is the case with Canada and Australia. All countries which attract foreign students in their universities give some sort of a time period for them to use the acquired skill and if prevailing conditions are right, to stay in the country and work. Imagine you want to move to Germany, what will you do? A) Search for an employer sitting in the US and hope they file a Blue Card for you (equivalent to getting an H1-B filed from outside the US) B) you plan to study and then stay there based on your studies (OPT leading to H1-B in the US). Now if you study at University of Erlangen and immediately after graduating you are told you pack up your bags and leave, then what do you do? You can institute such a policy saying no international students will ever get to stay in this country, then it's fine. The only thing would be a tremendous drop in in coming students who are also paying through their noses and investing dollars into the University System. That's how it works worldwide. The problem here is most of the people here do not understand what Visa options are there, how they work, what kind of extreme vetting takes place to get a student visa in the first place, most folks would have never ever applied for a visa in their lives, would have never seen the inside of a consulate, would not know how visa systems work in the rest of the world and then arrive at a conclusion which is based on shaky foundation. H1-B visas are not only for Tech, they are also for other streams of education or workers like MBAs. There are two kinds of complaints here which prop up constantly. A) H1-B applied by these "outsourcing" Indian companies which treat their employees shabbily (in fact its the US corporations which use and initiate these), so off with their heads. Sure, make H1-B attractive to maybe people who have invested and studied in the MS/PhD grad system. B) But.. now people moan about H1-B Masters and Phd getting "starting" salary lower than what they "think" should be offered to a regular US Citizen. Anyone who has ever interviewed or worked with the top Tech firms (or has managed to clear their interview rounds hahahaha) or have been part of the hiring groups would mostly say that these companies offer very competitive salaries and make NO discrimination at all in terms of talent. Which side are we debating on or are we moaning the influx of ALL immigrants as unworthy of the job market? All jobs are ours hahahaha Microsoft can't take 10 rounds of interviews anymore since there are only US citizens available for these jobs. We won!
• freyr 10y ago
  You're comparing the average salary of all H-1B jobs (developer, accountant, analyst, etc.) to the salary of a developer. Instead, look at the average salaries for H-1B software engineers in 2016: Facebook @ Menlo Park: $152k Google @ Mountain View: $130k Apple @ Cupertino: $154k Amazon @ Seattle: $124k Microsoft @ Redmond: $120 So comparing base salary alone, these companies are definitely not underpaying their H-1B hires. To see salaries for yourself, you can go here and filter by year to see the latest data: http://h1bpay.com/companies/Facebook/cities/Menlo%20Park-CA/job-titles/Software%20Engineer/salaries http://h1bpay.com/companies/Facebook/cities/Menlo%20Park-CA/...
  • rsuttongee 10y ago
    Also don't forget to add the ~$10-$20k in legal fees for sponsoring an H1b on top of that.
    • makmanalp 10y ago
      I don't know if the legal fees go that high, but it can depend on the lawyer I guess. 10k is normal, 20k seems high. But regardless, also add the non-salary benefits, of course: non-discretionary bonuses, stock grants, etc.
    • FireBeyond 10y ago
      I guarantee all of the countries on this list, both the Valley tech firms, and the Indian IT firms, have in-house counsel specially versed in this, making the process largely boilerplate. When I moved to the US (to work for one of the companies on that list of tech firms), their attitude was "Do you need a visa?" (I didn't, as it happened) "Just let us know, we'll get you a H-1B". There wasn't any shadow of a doubt in their mind that it was much more than a formality.
      • arcticbull 10y ago
        It still about $6000 in filing fees and premium processing fees on top of the legal fees and meeting any other requirements the business has to meet to be in a place to sponsor them in the first place.
• 6stringmerc 10y ago
  I was poking around in an H1-B lookup system that was posted here last year (2015 maybe?) that enabled me to check into another realm where I had a suspicion the H1-B program is also depressing wages: Bench Science at Universities. Mostly PhDs. Post-Doctoral Fellows. The numbers - state by state, institution by institution - are staggering in my opinion. It's a snake eating itself in how these Universities prepare US students (ahem, expensive via loans more often than not) then when it's time to get a job, funding is so competitive (different problem) that labor prices are forced into the gutter. Enter the H1-B labor force. The idea that the US isn't capable of meeting real STEM demand is utter bullshit. The demand would be met if there was a living wage. A quality of life. People in the US still have faint memories of pride and not being over-worked and over-debt riddled, and still cling to just the last threads. That's why PhDs aren't lining up to spend $250,000, then take several years (if lucky) to get a $52,000 a year job with limited security.
  • freyr 10y ago
    > That's why PhDs aren't lining up to spend $250,000, then take several years (if lucky) to get a $52,000 a year job with limited security. In many fields, often fields that don't pay well, the PhD students are mostly American. In my engineering program, the vast majority were Indian and East Asian. They have all gone on to get very good paying jobs. And it makes a lot of sense for them. Most probably wouldn't be getting a high paying tech job back home, so the opportunity cost of spending 5 years in a PhD program is low, and it opens up a lot of doors. By comparison, a U.S. citizen with an engineering B.S. might get paid $65k-$115k year out of college. A 5-year PhD will then cost them $250k-$500k in lost earnings.
• Curious42 10y ago
  Why would you compare the salary of top 3 companies in the world to that of 3 consultancy firms? Of course the average salary of the top 3 companies is going to be significantly higher, and of course the hiring is going to be stricter. What were you expecting? Maybe use stats of companies that are about as good as these consultancy firms, and located in similar areas. That will put things into perspective. I'm not saying Indians aren't paid lower, but your comment is an exaggeration of the issue Americans complain about.
  • pedrosorio 10y ago
    "Of course the average salary of the top 3 companies is going to be significantly higher" The funny thing is comparing salaries isn't even fair, because total compensation at these top companies is much larger than just salary.
• thaw654651 10y ago
  I've seen people getting Software engineering offers from Microsoft/Amazon in the recent years, salaries were less than $117,000, but it came with a stock award vesting over 3.5 years that increased the total compensation significantly. By people here, I mean H1B applicants but also Ivy league and top schools U.S. citizens. As soon as a H1-B employee starts, the company would start sponsoring a green card and cover all the legal fees associated with it. The problem with H1-B at Apple/Amazon/Fb/Google/Microsoft isn't the base salary, it's the long path to green card for Indians and Chinese citizens, reducing their job mobility and career opportunities.
• almightykrish 10y ago
  Ex TCS employee here: Not only the employees are paid meagerly, the benefits most seem to have are literally nothing. Health and Medical Coverage are very poor. Provides only basic coverage. No Life Insurance. Never heard of anyone being paid overtime. Most employees of these companies would be mostly working in odd hours to manage off shore teams.
  • sumedh 10y ago
    > Never heard of anyone being paid overtime. Which Indian IT company (outsourcing or a product) based pays overtime in India?
• thomasahle 10y ago
  > Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft ... proposed to pay their workers a median salary of $117,000." > Indeed.com quotes the average SD salary in Seattle (think Amazon and Microsoft) as 126,000 and San Francisco at 134,000. You cannot compare a median salary with an average salary. Salaries are going to have a long tail of large numbers.
• CodeSheikh 10y ago
  Top visa recipients are these Indian companions. Just start browsing from year 2017 and backwards. This is very interesting. Numbers do not lie. Example: Infosys 25k visas vs Google 4k, Apple 1.6k etc. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
  • CodeSheikh 10y ago
    Why is this being marked down? I am not making up numbers. I am quoting a third party website.
• bedros 10y ago
  When I got my H1B visa over 15 years ago (I'm now US citizen) the visa sponsor cannot offer salary less than 85% of average salary in area was hired.