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The article concludes that it pays H-1B employees fairly, but the data shows that the median H-1B engineer at IBM makes below the median salary for Software Eng

The article concludes that it pays H-1B employees fairly, but the data shows that the median H-1B engineer at IBM makes below the median salary for Software Engineers in the US. Clearly if IBM can't find enough US talent, it's because they aren't willing to pay the market rate. H-1B is supposed to be for highly skilled employees. You don't pay highly skilled employees less than average.

tbyehl 7y ago
It's more interesting to sort the source data by salary, ascending. IBM has quite a few more "developer" titles than Software Engineer and Software Developer, and many of them pay quite poorly. The median for "Application Developer" is $77K with a low of $48.5K. https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=IBM&job=&city=&year=2019 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=IBM&job=&city=&year=2019
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  I can tell you exactly where that low is, because that's what they offered my Canadian cousin in Baton Rouge with an American CS degree before he told them to pound sand and went back to Canada to get his MSCS in Alberta. He has a much better job with Warner Music in Toronto now.
RonaldDR 7y ago
I realize this is not exactly a community that is friendly to being called out, but I have to simply say that it is inherently immoral to not only pay H1-B holders the same, tax them the same, let alone not make corporations that want to hire H1-Bs to sabotage indigenous populations in order to profit more, not pay massive penalties that only increase over time for the privilege of hiring a foreign national they poach away from another society, in order to compensate for systemic and fundamental mismanagement and failure at national governance at every single level.
- belltaco 7y ago
  >tax them the same What? They are taxed the same. In fact, they are taxed more. They pay for Social Security and Medicare even if they never get to use them. They also have to pay state unemployment insurance but they cannot claim the benefits from it. Not to mention the food stamp program etc. I am confused with your wording and the use of double negatives, are you saying they shouldn't be charged for things they won't use?
  - ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
    Correct. Majority of the social security is never used by h1b. Also need your own insurance, cannot claim any benefits, have to leave the country in 24 hours if h1b lose the job, cannot claim business expenses...
    - screye 7y ago
      just saying, h1b usually have about 2 months of unemployment since being fired. Not great, but not a single day either. your statement about social welfare is reality for Indian h1bs. They will never be able to get a green card, and yet pay all the taxes for them. 8% of your salary is pretty steep for something you can't touch, ever.
      - belltaco 7y ago
        It's 16%. Employers have to match it, so it's an additional 8% on top of the 8% that the employee pays.
      - ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
        It probably changed with the Obama administration but when I was on H1b it was said that we had to leave as soon as possible. Maybe you are right because we could never find a legal source of truth for this info. The point is, we have to leave everything. If you have kids, car, school for kids, house everything goes out.
    - RonaldDR 7y ago
      Social security is not a tax, my friend. It is essentially an involuntary benefits payment to others. It's why they hide it and obscure the language about it. And if you had to, e.g,. write two checks every month; one to a government bureaucrat and another to some social security recipient, then you would get it … which is exactly why they don't want that. SS you pay today is used to pay for the SS check someone else gets today. It's literally a passthrough while a whole stable of bureaucrats takes a massive portion off the top. It's one of the many reasons why SS meets the criteria of a Ponzi scheme. There is no SS that you put aside that will be available to you in the future, what you paid today is gone, paid, poof, zero, null, it does not exist and is not available to you once you pay it. If you want to call it something more accurate than a tax, call it proportional enslavement. And that in an even more direct manner than general taxation that involuntary serves individual interests instead of common ones, let alone only pays for core functions of government. When you have taxes taken from you under threat of violence (jail) to support others' lives and lifestyles that benefits them and only them, that is nothing but slavery, regardless of whether it is only 30% slavery while having to pay for your own wellbeing and upkeep, instead of 80% slavery while living on a socialist paradise of a plantation where everything is "free".
mfer 7y ago
It is really useful to compare a company to itself. If the company as a whole pays less than others and they are self consistent that says two notable things.
wikiman 7y ago
Depends on your definition of highly-skilled. Compared to an au pair? Very highly skilled. An H-1B requires application of specialized knowledge and a bachelor's degree or the equivalent of work experience. So it's all a matter of perspective, but the highly skilled formulation talks about the skills required to do the job, not the competency within that specialization. Beyond that, I agree though, that visa status is a despicable reason to pay people less than what they're worth
x0f1a 7y ago
The simplest and effective way to solve the immigration problem is to give H-1B full job mobility and rights. This would benefit them and very quickly would bring the correct market value for everybody’s work. On the top side there will more genuine visa applications for real talent.
- Richard_East 7y ago
  That will still put immense downward pressure on American wages. The simplest way to solve the H1B problem is to scrap it and allow open immigration for skilled professionals from the top 20 most developed countries. The reality is that someone from India will accept much lower wages and poorer conditions than someone born in Australia, Sweden or Switzerland.
  - belltaco 7y ago
    And watch as IT companies move entire offices offshore, to Canada and India, resulting in mass layoffs in the US.
  - xoail 7y ago
    > The reality is that someone from India will accept much lower wages and poorer conditions than someone born in Australia, Sweden or Switzerland. People on H1-B live in the US and maintain a good standard of living as per the city they are in and hence end up demanding for the same market salary as locals. This has been proven every-time people brought up cheap labor issue. The likely issue (for American jobs) here is when whole IT/Software teams shift to India or China through outsourcing companies and American workers are laid off as cost measures. This happens a lot in non-tech companies very easily where they want to stay ahead in tech but not take the ownership of it.
  - ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
    >top 20 most developed countries Which 20 "developed" countries? Why would they come to US? If they could they already would as US pays much more than even "developed" countries. Australia has 23 million people (almost half of California) and almost zero IT. Sweden, Switzerland: Really? Not everyone's ideal destination is US. It's funny how most Americans think the world is falling over their head to move to a country where gun nuts have the right to mow down people but you don't have the right to get medical for it.

tbyehl 7y ago

It's more interesting to sort the source data by salary, ascending. IBM has quite a few more "developer" titles than Software Engineer and Software Developer, and many of them pay quite poorly. The median for "Application Developer" is $77K with a low of $48.5K. https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=IBM&job=&city=&year=2019 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=IBM&job=&city=&year=2019

selimthegrim 7y ago
I can tell you exactly where that low is, because that's what they offered my Canadian cousin in Baton Rouge with an American CS degree before he told them to pound sand and went back to Canada to get his MSCS in Alberta. He has a much better job with Warner Music in Toronto now.

RonaldDR 7y ago

I realize this is not exactly a community that is friendly to being called out, but I have to simply say that it is inherently immoral to not only pay H1-B holders the same, tax them the same, let alone not make corporations that want to hire H1-Bs to sabotage indigenous populations in order to profit more, not pay massive penalties that only increase over time for the privilege of hiring a foreign national they poach away from another society, in order to compensate for systemic and fundamental mismanagement and failure at national governance at every single level.

belltaco 7y ago
>tax them the same What? They are taxed the same. In fact, they are taxed more. They pay for Social Security and Medicare even if they never get to use them. They also have to pay state unemployment insurance but they cannot claim the benefits from it. Not to mention the food stamp program etc. I am confused with your wording and the use of double negatives, are you saying they shouldn't be charged for things they won't use?
- ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
  Correct. Majority of the social security is never used by h1b. Also need your own insurance, cannot claim any benefits, have to leave the country in 24 hours if h1b lose the job, cannot claim business expenses...
  - screye 7y ago
    just saying, h1b usually have about 2 months of unemployment since being fired. Not great, but not a single day either. your statement about social welfare is reality for Indian h1bs. They will never be able to get a green card, and yet pay all the taxes for them. 8% of your salary is pretty steep for something you can't touch, ever.
    - belltaco 7y ago
      It's 16%. Employers have to match it, so it's an additional 8% on top of the 8% that the employee pays.
    - ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
      It probably changed with the Obama administration but when I was on H1b it was said that we had to leave as soon as possible. Maybe you are right because we could never find a legal source of truth for this info. The point is, we have to leave everything. If you have kids, car, school for kids, house everything goes out.
  - RonaldDR 7y ago
    Social security is not a tax, my friend. It is essentially an involuntary benefits payment to others. It's why they hide it and obscure the language about it. And if you had to, e.g,. write two checks every month; one to a government bureaucrat and another to some social security recipient, then you would get it … which is exactly why they don't want that. SS you pay today is used to pay for the SS check someone else gets today. It's literally a passthrough while a whole stable of bureaucrats takes a massive portion off the top. It's one of the many reasons why SS meets the criteria of a Ponzi scheme. There is no SS that you put aside that will be available to you in the future, what you paid today is gone, paid, poof, zero, null, it does not exist and is not available to you once you pay it. If you want to call it something more accurate than a tax, call it proportional enslavement. And that in an even more direct manner than general taxation that involuntary serves individual interests instead of common ones, let alone only pays for core functions of government. When you have taxes taken from you under threat of violence (jail) to support others' lives and lifestyles that benefits them and only them, that is nothing but slavery, regardless of whether it is only 30% slavery while having to pay for your own wellbeing and upkeep, instead of 80% slavery while living on a socialist paradise of a plantation where everything is "free".

mfer 7y ago

It is really useful to compare a company to itself. If the company as a whole pays less than others and they are self consistent that says two notable things.

wikiman 7y ago

Depends on your definition of highly-skilled. Compared to an au pair? Very highly skilled. An H-1B requires application of specialized knowledge and a bachelor's degree or the equivalent of work experience. So it's all a matter of perspective, but the highly skilled formulation talks about the skills required to do the job, not the competency within that specialization. Beyond that, I agree though, that visa status is a despicable reason to pay people less than what they're worth

x0f1a 7y ago

The simplest and effective way to solve the immigration problem is to give H-1B full job mobility and rights. This would benefit them and very quickly would bring the correct market value for everybody’s work. On the top side there will more genuine visa applications for real talent.

Richard_East 7y ago
That will still put immense downward pressure on American wages. The simplest way to solve the H1B problem is to scrap it and allow open immigration for skilled professionals from the top 20 most developed countries. The reality is that someone from India will accept much lower wages and poorer conditions than someone born in Australia, Sweden or Switzerland.
- belltaco 7y ago
  And watch as IT companies move entire offices offshore, to Canada and India, resulting in mass layoffs in the US.
- xoail 7y ago
  > The reality is that someone from India will accept much lower wages and poorer conditions than someone born in Australia, Sweden or Switzerland. People on H1-B live in the US and maintain a good standard of living as per the city they are in and hence end up demanding for the same market salary as locals. This has been proven every-time people brought up cheap labor issue. The likely issue (for American jobs) here is when whole IT/Software teams shift to India or China through outsourcing companies and American workers are laid off as cost measures. This happens a lot in non-tech companies very easily where they want to stay ahead in tech but not take the ownership of it.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
  >top 20 most developed countries Which 20 "developed" countries? Why would they come to US? If they could they already would as US pays much more than even "developed" countries. Australia has 23 million people (almost half of California) and almost zero IT. Sweden, Switzerland: Really? Not everyone's ideal destination is US. It's funny how most Americans think the world is falling over their head to move to a country where gun nuts have the right to mow down people but you don't have the right to get medical for it.