13 ms·

Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

110 points by known 10y ago

theparanoid 10y ago
Matloff has written about this in many other places over the years, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html. He was my CS professor as an undergrad.
webmaven 10y ago
As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh." However, the HN version of the headline omits "Trump is Right:", which I suppose is attention grabbing, especially from an outlet like HuffPo.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  > As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh." Well, whenever something isn't being done about X, that implies headlines saying "X!" probably aren't quite "duh" enough.
  - webmaven 10y ago
    Not really... "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair And also... "News Flash: Water is Wet! Government Has No Plan To Deal With Issue, Forms Committee."
guard-of-terra 10y ago
My co-workers raised a note that H1B no longer relevant so much for the purpose described in headline. It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible. As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and relocate to Canada, then after a year they make L visa for you and toss over the border to Redmond.
- Fazilka 10y ago
  No more cheap labor for SV to exploit.
- jordanb 10y ago
  L visas are abused like crazy but there are important differences, namely that a company has to employ you for a certain amount of time offshore and that you can not work offsite in the USA. The first rule means they're only available for international companies and the second means they don't work for outsourcing firms. Usually when people talk about the "H1b" debate they're talking about the whole constellation of skilled temporary worker visas (H1, L1, OPT, etc).
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    We're in XXI century, so I think it's trivial to make your company international if you ever have something to gain from it. > can not work offsite Can you elaborate what's officially permitted and what is not? Because wikipedia is unclear on the subject and refers to legalese that I have no hope of understanding.
- wdcgu 10y ago
  Don't forget the TN visa. Those Canadians are stealing American jobs. Really surprised that everyone likes to complain about the H1B/L1 but not the TN visa.
  - mavelikara 10y ago
    Or the E-3 visa [1], which give citizens of Australia 10,500 indefinitely renewable visas each year. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa
  - calvinbhai 10y ago
    Totally agree with you. H1b visa combined with the green card backlogs are meant to systematically keep immigration of Indians and Chinese citizens disproportionately low. Many countries have agreements with US that allow their citizens to work without the hassle of h-1b Sadly, because of the clout Indian outsourcing firms have in filing the number of h1b applications, most people think Indian outsourcing firms are steeling jobs.
oculusthrift 10y ago
Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.
- digitalzombie 10y ago
  > Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's. Because H-1B visa is broken. Just cause there's a good side to it doesn't mean we can ignore the broken parts. Take the good parts and fix the bad one. Worker exploitation is not going to help native workers nor helped international workers. > They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's. Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.
  - mavelikara 10y ago
    > Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before. Nitpick - if you meant the "no cold call agreement" case, the defendants were Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay. Microsoft was not accused.
- pluma 10y ago
  > Sure, the Pasta/Murderbot may routinely kill innocent people, but it makes the best Al Forno in town.
scdoshi 10y ago
Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non employment based visa. However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic. The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this: - high salary - high rate of patent production - Ph.D. dissertation awards - doctorate earned at a top-ranked university - employment in R&D Because of issues with the employment based visa, he himself argues earlier in the article that immigrant employees end up with a lower salary. Top ranked universities don't always admit people based on merit. Being in the country when applying to school and speaking the language have huge advantages. A lot of graduate admissions are on a case by case basis, and getting an in person meeting with the professor can make all the difference. Also, top graduate schools tend to be a lot more expensive. Employment is R&D is also hampered by the fact that immigrants don't have comparatively fewer choices when looking for a job, again because of issues with employment based visas. This is especially true is you want to do research in aerospace or materials because of security clearances. Overall, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his other analyses. Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant, so I'm not without my biases here.
- jordanb 10y ago
  The argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers. The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to abuse.
  - scdoshi 10y ago
    Okay, but he's basing this argument on his paper, where he sets out to show that immigrants are in fact, not exceptional. However, if you believe my reasoning, then he isn't really measuring anything. So, we don't know if immigrants are exceptional or ordinary or worse. Or at least not based on his paper.
  - 10y ago
lazaroclapp 10y ago
The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most people immigrate when they are young and without kids. If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers are skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program. Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).
- neltnerb 10y ago
  Is your concern about the talent/bidding argument, or the "limited number" part? Because it seems to me that if you relax the latter, the prior is much less an issue. I dunno, I say the more the merrier. There's lots of problems to solve, may as well solve them here.
  - lazaroclapp 10y ago
    The limited number mostly. I think H-1B reform was a good idea under the previous administration, and that better rules for green card processes, salaries, etc. could make it fairer on both foreign-born and U.S.-born employees, and remove the incentives for employers to strongly prefer one over the other all else being equal (which, btw, implicitly favors people already here, but not overwhelmingly so). But I also feel that right now the U.S. political climate is headed towards pretty strong xenophobia as state policy and that re-examining the H-1B program right now will likely lead to it being quite hostile to foreign-born employees and might end up not even benefiting local employees either on the long run.
daveFNbuck 10y ago
It's a bit weird that the article takes several paragraphs at the start explaining how H1-B visas are a problem largely because they prevent job mobility, but says nothing about how this is supposed to be addressed by the executive order.
amarant 10y ago
if companies was only after cheap labor, why not move software production overseas? it's not like officespace is cheaper in the valley than in ex. India.....don't think this article makes a whole lot of sense tbh
- angry_napkin 10y ago
  Because being in the Valley is magical for your company, or something.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Or: live in California, hire from Calcutta.
wdcgu 10y ago
As usual, these rants treat "Silicon Valley" as a single entity. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx There are some companies that underpay, while other pay quite well. Conflating the two is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.
- StreamBright 10y ago
  Typical Huffpost clickbait without any merit.
- mpoloton 10y ago
  The statistical expectation from the dataset that you link to is $86,328.67 [1]. I no nothing about US salaries, but I don't consider this value a competitive salary. Therefore, I believe the premise of the article is statically correct. Citing a few example with large salaries (Apple, Google, ...) is misleading. 1- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgDdStoo0qC_DDCrfHJa_YV4hs/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgD...
  - jpgvm 10y ago
    The main issue is that all of the stats are brought down by TCS/TechM/Infosys and other body shops that pay just over the 60k cutoff. The average for H1-B actual software engineers is likely around $100k in SV, maybe a tad higher as you usually don't relocate people from abroad unless they are really good.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    86K may not be a competitive salary in heart of SV but it's damn competitive in the US, and around the world. Unless you are living in NYC/SV your cost of living in the US is lower, you tax burden is lower. 86K$ is more than the vast majority of highly paid developers in Europe get. I don't understand why Amazon/Google paying 50-60K Euros in Germany or even lower than that in other EU countries with a tax burden of nearly 50% of income is fine by some guy from India coming and working for 85K+ in the US is somehow exploitation. Do companies take advantage of the fact that they relocate people from effectively developing nations and pay them below market rates, sure, that's business but honestly do you think anyone complains? The average indian developer with 5-10 years of experience earns between 350-500K RS a year, with the 350-400K being more common this is about 5500-6000$. If you think that the cost of living in India is so low that it can offset the discrepancy in income then you clearly haven't spent much time in India. Some employers might abuse H1B too much, some might even do illegal things with it, but that's the case those things are illegal, just offering a lower than average salary isn't illegal, it's not even amoral.
Ceezy 10y ago
I'm glad that here the comments section is not full of Trump trolls like it is in huffingtonpost. First it's true that HB1 visa holder are not free agent and can't contest for the best wages. But I trully don't understand how can ANYBODY say that, tech in general is NOT in shortage of ingineers. Median wage in SF for dev is around 110 000. But even outside SF buble it's around 70 000$. With no downward pressure, How can you complain that foreign worker is taking your job?
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > ingineers Is this an indian pun? In any case: > How can you complain that foreign worker is taking your job? maybe you can't, but this is a straw-man; you can complain your wages are lower than they should be. No one in the Techtopus scandal was likely 'low' page, but it was still wage theft.
- geebee 10y ago
  The median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is also about $110,000 a year. That salary level qualifies for direct housing subsidies for a family of 4 in San Francisco. So why are we taking claims of a desperate shortage of developers more seriously than claims of a desperate shortage of dental hygienists? Just to be clear, immigrants should be welcome to become devs. And dental hygienists, drywall installers, real estate agents, and sandwich shop owners. What I don't welcome is a program that specifically uses the immigration system to increase the number of developers relative to other professions. That should be left to the market and freedom of choice for the individuals who participate in it. I just see absolutely no reason whatsoever to give tech employers the power to determine who is allowed to come to the US, what jobs they are allowed to work, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain in the US. This is immensely harmful, and doesn't have much to do with immigration. It has to do with corporate control over the immigration system.
  - Ceezy 10y ago
    I agree with you, i think immigration should be controled more by communities, neither central government or companies.
alextheparrot 10y ago
Does anyone else consider immigration a significant part of US foreign policy? Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? The global power struggles of today, I believe, will be won by countries who can dictate the technology that refocuses which resources are needed.
- shard972 10y ago
  > Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? I haven't seen H1B visa's used like this in my personal experience. At the last company I worked for they were mostly used to fill our testing team with people from India. Maybe they were all guinness, the problem was all but one of them could speak/write english fluently. I can also look at my boyfriend's current employer who recently took a trip to india in order to hire a team of indians "on the cheap" only to fire all but 1 within a month after they didn't really get anything productive done.
  - alextheparrot 10y ago
    I largely agree with both your observations and opinions. The comment was in response to a lot of "citizens first, immigrants only if they don't hurt our current citizens at all" arguments here. By proposing that visas may be, or at least could be, a form of foreign policy I believe helps to dispute that point in general, highlighting higher goals than plugging talent shortages that may or may not exist.
  - mildbow 10y ago
    Guinness? Are you calling them stout? :) Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled. Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter. It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious abusers. Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of the company, rather than being under contract through a third party? [0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.
ungzd 10y ago
Is it really bad? Usually immigrants anyway get much better wages than in their hometown and escape from repressive regimes.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  Yes, it is bad. It lowers the wages of Americans and makes finding an entry level tech position for Americans a lot harder. The purpose of the H-1B visa program was to bring highly specialized workers to the US, not cheap labor.
  - wdcgu 10y ago
    Too bad they're better than you and can work for less.
    - dukeluke 10y ago
      In a time where company profits are higher than ever before and worker wages are remaining stagnant, I think it's a valid concern to raise. We do live in the richest country in the world, after all. Why shouldn't everyone living in it prosper?
      - wdcgu 10y ago
        Why do you feel entitled by the basis of your nationality to be hired when someone better and cheaper is available?
        dukeluke 10y ago
        America has an advanced economy, with a GDP per capita of over $50k. As such, the cost of living is much higher than many other countries. You need a vehicle to work almost everywhere, healthcare costs are the highest in the world, housing is becoming more and more expensive, and one must go tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree. This was alright when incomes were more equal and rising, because these costs could be recognized as a cost of living in such a good country. Due to globalization, however, the lower class has been gutted due to corporations exploiting the fact that other places have lower costs of living and lower workplace standards. I could argue that this destabilization of the lower class is a large part of why Trump was elected. And now globalization is affecting the middle class(particularly among IT workers) enough to risk destabilizing the only few remaining good jobs left, all while the stock market is doing better than ever. This loss of good paying jobs with the cost of living remaining high means the quality of life for most of the country will go down while the rich get richer faster. When the overall economy is growing, why SHOULDN'T the country overall benefit?
rodionos 10y ago
The numbers you're seeing maybe somewhat inflated because of how the average salary is calculated for this report: Sometimes the visa sponsors(employers) does not enter a specific salary, but a salary range. Our algorithm uses the middle point of the range to calculate the average salary.
nostrademons 10y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226

110 points by known 10y ago

Matloff has written about this in many other places over the years, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html. He was my CS professor as an undergrad.

webmaven 10y ago

As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh." However, the HN version of the headline omits "Trump is Right:", which I suppose is attention grabbing, especially from an outlet like HuffPo.

Terr_ 10y ago
> As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh." Well, whenever something isn't being done about X, that implies headlines saying "X!" probably aren't quite "duh" enough.
- webmaven 10y ago
  Not really... "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair And also... "News Flash: Water is Wet! Government Has No Plan To Deal With Issue, Forms Committee."

guard-of-terra 10y ago

My co-workers raised a note that H1B no longer relevant so much for the purpose described in headline. It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible. As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and relocate to Canada, then after a year they make L visa for you and toss over the border to Redmond.

Fazilka 10y ago
No more cheap labor for SV to exploit.
jordanb 10y ago
L visas are abused like crazy but there are important differences, namely that a company has to employ you for a certain amount of time offshore and that you can not work offsite in the USA. The first rule means they're only available for international companies and the second means they don't work for outsourcing firms. Usually when people talk about the "H1b" debate they're talking about the whole constellation of skilled temporary worker visas (H1, L1, OPT, etc).
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  We're in XXI century, so I think it's trivial to make your company international if you ever have something to gain from it. > can not work offsite Can you elaborate what's officially permitted and what is not? Because wikipedia is unclear on the subject and refers to legalese that I have no hope of understanding.
wdcgu 10y ago
Don't forget the TN visa. Those Canadians are stealing American jobs. Really surprised that everyone likes to complain about the H1B/L1 but not the TN visa.
- mavelikara 10y ago
  Or the E-3 visa [1], which give citizens of Australia 10,500 indefinitely renewable visas each year. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa
- calvinbhai 10y ago
  Totally agree with you. H1b visa combined with the green card backlogs are meant to systematically keep immigration of Indians and Chinese citizens disproportionately low. Many countries have agreements with US that allow their citizens to work without the hassle of h-1b Sadly, because of the clout Indian outsourcing firms have in filing the number of h1b applications, most people think Indian outsourcing firms are steeling jobs.

oculusthrift 10y ago

Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.

digitalzombie 10y ago
> Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's. Because H-1B visa is broken. Just cause there's a good side to it doesn't mean we can ignore the broken parts. Take the good parts and fix the bad one. Worker exploitation is not going to help native workers nor helped international workers. > They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's. Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.
- mavelikara 10y ago
  > Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before. Nitpick - if you meant the "no cold call agreement" case, the defendants were Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay. Microsoft was not accused.
pluma 10y ago
> Sure, the Pasta/Murderbot may routinely kill innocent people, but it makes the best Al Forno in town.

scdoshi 10y ago

Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non employment based visa. However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic. The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this: - high salary - high rate of patent production - Ph.D. dissertation awards - doctorate earned at a top-ranked university - employment in R&D Because of issues with the employment based visa, he himself argues earlier in the article that immigrant employees end up with a lower salary. Top ranked universities don't always admit people based on merit. Being in the country when applying to school and speaking the language have huge advantages. A lot of graduate admissions are on a case by case basis, and getting an in person meeting with the professor can make all the difference. Also, top graduate schools tend to be a lot more expensive. Employment is R&D is also hampered by the fact that immigrants don't have comparatively fewer choices when looking for a job, again because of issues with employment based visas. This is especially true is you want to do research in aerospace or materials because of security clearances. Overall, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his other analyses. Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant, so I'm not without my biases here.

jordanb 10y ago
The argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers. The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to abuse.
- scdoshi 10y ago
  Okay, but he's basing this argument on his paper, where he sets out to show that immigrants are in fact, not exceptional. However, if you believe my reasoning, then he isn't really measuring anything. So, we don't know if immigrants are exceptional or ordinary or worse. Or at least not based on his paper.
- 10y ago

lazaroclapp 10y ago

The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most people immigrate when they are young and without kids. If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers are skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program. Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).

neltnerb 10y ago
Is your concern about the talent/bidding argument, or the "limited number" part? Because it seems to me that if you relax the latter, the prior is much less an issue. I dunno, I say the more the merrier. There's lots of problems to solve, may as well solve them here.
- lazaroclapp 10y ago
  The limited number mostly. I think H-1B reform was a good idea under the previous administration, and that better rules for green card processes, salaries, etc. could make it fairer on both foreign-born and U.S.-born employees, and remove the incentives for employers to strongly prefer one over the other all else being equal (which, btw, implicitly favors people already here, but not overwhelmingly so). But I also feel that right now the U.S. political climate is headed towards pretty strong xenophobia as state policy and that re-examining the H-1B program right now will likely lead to it being quite hostile to foreign-born employees and might end up not even benefiting local employees either on the long run.

daveFNbuck 10y ago

It's a bit weird that the article takes several paragraphs at the start explaining how H1-B visas are a problem largely because they prevent job mobility, but says nothing about how this is supposed to be addressed by the executive order.

amarant 10y ago

if companies was only after cheap labor, why not move software production overseas? it's not like officespace is cheaper in the valley than in ex. India.....don't think this article makes a whole lot of sense tbh

angry_napkin 10y ago
Because being in the Valley is magical for your company, or something.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Or: live in California, hire from Calcutta.

wdcgu 10y ago

As usual, these rants treat "Silicon Valley" as a single entity. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx There are some companies that underpay, while other pay quite well. Conflating the two is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

StreamBright 10y ago
Typical Huffpost clickbait without any merit.
mpoloton 10y ago
The statistical expectation from the dataset that you link to is $86,328.67 [1]. I no nothing about US salaries, but I don't consider this value a competitive salary. Therefore, I believe the premise of the article is statically correct. Citing a few example with large salaries (Apple, Google, ...) is misleading. 1- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgDdStoo0qC_DDCrfHJa_YV4hs/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgD...
- jpgvm 10y ago
  The main issue is that all of the stats are brought down by TCS/TechM/Infosys and other body shops that pay just over the 60k cutoff. The average for H1-B actual software engineers is likely around $100k in SV, maybe a tad higher as you usually don't relocate people from abroad unless they are really good.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  86K may not be a competitive salary in heart of SV but it's damn competitive in the US, and around the world. Unless you are living in NYC/SV your cost of living in the US is lower, you tax burden is lower. 86K$ is more than the vast majority of highly paid developers in Europe get. I don't understand why Amazon/Google paying 50-60K Euros in Germany or even lower than that in other EU countries with a tax burden of nearly 50% of income is fine by some guy from India coming and working for 85K+ in the US is somehow exploitation. Do companies take advantage of the fact that they relocate people from effectively developing nations and pay them below market rates, sure, that's business but honestly do you think anyone complains? The average indian developer with 5-10 years of experience earns between 350-500K RS a year, with the 350-400K being more common this is about 5500-6000$. If you think that the cost of living in India is so low that it can offset the discrepancy in income then you clearly haven't spent much time in India. Some employers might abuse H1B too much, some might even do illegal things with it, but that's the case those things are illegal, just offering a lower than average salary isn't illegal, it's not even amoral.

Ceezy 10y ago

I'm glad that here the comments section is not full of Trump trolls like it is in huffingtonpost. First it's true that HB1 visa holder are not free agent and can't contest for the best wages. But I trully don't understand how can ANYBODY say that, tech in general is NOT in shortage of ingineers. Median wage in SF for dev is around 110 000. But even outside SF buble it's around 70 000$. With no downward pressure, How can you complain that foreign worker is taking your job?

Chris2048 10y ago
> ingineers Is this an indian pun? In any case: > How can you complain that foreign worker is taking your job? maybe you can't, but this is a straw-man; you can complain your wages are lower than they should be. No one in the Techtopus scandal was likely 'low' page, but it was still wage theft.
geebee 10y ago
The median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is also about $110,000 a year. That salary level qualifies for direct housing subsidies for a family of 4 in San Francisco. So why are we taking claims of a desperate shortage of developers more seriously than claims of a desperate shortage of dental hygienists? Just to be clear, immigrants should be welcome to become devs. And dental hygienists, drywall installers, real estate agents, and sandwich shop owners. What I don't welcome is a program that specifically uses the immigration system to increase the number of developers relative to other professions. That should be left to the market and freedom of choice for the individuals who participate in it. I just see absolutely no reason whatsoever to give tech employers the power to determine who is allowed to come to the US, what jobs they are allowed to work, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain in the US. This is immensely harmful, and doesn't have much to do with immigration. It has to do with corporate control over the immigration system.
- Ceezy 10y ago
  I agree with you, i think immigration should be controled more by communities, neither central government or companies.

alextheparrot 10y ago

Does anyone else consider immigration a significant part of US foreign policy? Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? The global power struggles of today, I believe, will be won by countries who can dictate the technology that refocuses which resources are needed.

shard972 10y ago
> Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? I haven't seen H1B visa's used like this in my personal experience. At the last company I worked for they were mostly used to fill our testing team with people from India. Maybe they were all guinness, the problem was all but one of them could speak/write english fluently. I can also look at my boyfriend's current employer who recently took a trip to india in order to hire a team of indians "on the cheap" only to fire all but 1 within a month after they didn't really get anything productive done.
- alextheparrot 10y ago
  I largely agree with both your observations and opinions. The comment was in response to a lot of "citizens first, immigrants only if they don't hurt our current citizens at all" arguments here. By proposing that visas may be, or at least could be, a form of foreign policy I believe helps to dispute that point in general, highlighting higher goals than plugging talent shortages that may or may not exist.
- mildbow 10y ago
  Guinness? Are you calling them stout? :) Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled. Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter. It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious abusers. Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of the company, rather than being under contract through a third party? [0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.

ungzd 10y ago

Is it really bad? Usually immigrants anyway get much better wages than in their hometown and escape from repressive regimes.

dukeluke 10y ago
Yes, it is bad. It lowers the wages of Americans and makes finding an entry level tech position for Americans a lot harder. The purpose of the H-1B visa program was to bring highly specialized workers to the US, not cheap labor.
- wdcgu 10y ago
  Too bad they're better than you and can work for less.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    In a time where company profits are higher than ever before and worker wages are remaining stagnant, I think it's a valid concern to raise. We do live in the richest country in the world, after all. Why shouldn't everyone living in it prosper?
    - wdcgu 10y ago
      Why do you feel entitled by the basis of your nationality to be hired when someone better and cheaper is available?
      - dukeluke 10y ago
        America has an advanced economy, with a GDP per capita of over $50k. As such, the cost of living is much higher than many other countries. You need a vehicle to work almost everywhere, healthcare costs are the highest in the world, housing is becoming more and more expensive, and one must go tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree. This was alright when incomes were more equal and rising, because these costs could be recognized as a cost of living in such a good country. Due to globalization, however, the lower class has been gutted due to corporations exploiting the fact that other places have lower costs of living and lower workplace standards. I could argue that this destabilization of the lower class is a large part of why Trump was elected. And now globalization is affecting the middle class(particularly among IT workers) enough to risk destabilizing the only few remaining good jobs left, all while the stock market is doing better than ever. This loss of good paying jobs with the cost of living remaining high means the quality of life for most of the country will go down while the rich get richer faster. When the overall economy is growing, why SHOULDN'T the country overall benefit?

rodionos 10y ago

The numbers you're seeing maybe somewhat inflated because of how the average salary is calculated for this report: Sometimes the visa sponsors(employers) does not enter a specific salary, but a salary range. Our algorithm uses the middle point of the range to calculate the average salary.

nostrademons 10y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226