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Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure. Every time we had a layoff some portion would be replaced with H1B. Every H1B that shared

Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure. Every time we had a layoff some portion would be replaced with H1B. Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid. I know its anecdotal but sharing to see if anyone has seen similar.

foxtrot8672 12d ago
yep. I see the same thing. Trump isn't wrong to hike fees for H1-B. For companies that shift development overseas they should face tariffs as well.
- toomuchtodo 12d ago
  Call your congressional rep. The HIRE Act: 25% tax on outsourcing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 - September 2025 Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2976 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/297...
  - throwawalien 12d ago
    is 25% enough to move the needle?
    - toomuchtodo 12d ago
      I don't know. Have to implement to find out and iterate. The number can go up until the preferred amount of offshoring has been drained from the system.
    - techpression 12d ago
      Also curious about loopholes, could said company start another company out of state that was the outsourcing entity and then the parent company paid that company. You're theoretically hiring from within the US, because I assume said policy doesn't go all the way to sub-contractors etc?
  - tuesdaynight 12d ago
    If you open an office in another country and hire people there, is that outsourcing? If so, would big tech have to close their "international" offices if they don't want to pay the 25% tax? I ask that because I'm seeing these offices opening a lot in the last 3 years
  - vidarh 12d ago
    So you'd move companies overseas and buy services instead of outsourcing work. It's really hard to do this in a way that won't be trivial to work around, and often in ways where you're likely to like the work around even less.
    - toomuchtodo 12d ago
      The US can tariff those out of country services if needed (through a combination of mandatory tax reporting and payment rails monitoring). An example of this today is SaaS taxes [1]. Please provide a non US service as an example and I'll propose how to rapidly replace it domestically. Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed. The US government could sponsor tokens to US entities who employee US workers to clone these offshore or out of country businesses. Can overseas companies outrun the token dispenser and tax code disadvantages? You have to remember that outsourcing is primarily used by US businesses to arbitrage labor while having the US regulatory capture advantage. They want access to the US market without paying US labor costs. This is what laws are for. "You can just do things." > It's really hard to do this in a way that won't be trivial to work around, and often in ways where you're likely to like the work around even less. So is collecting taxes, you just have a government funded entity grind tirelessly to keep closing the gaps. You make it economically burdensome to attempt to workaround. There will always be some leakage. "Work is hard." We know the labor exists in the US. We know offshoring is used to improve profit margins and to disempower workers to get more out of them. It is worth the effort, imho, if you want to keep the capital in the US versus sending it overseas and prioritize domestic workers over someone else's profits. [1] https://stripe.com/guides/introduction-to-saas-taxability-in-the-us https://stripe.com/guides/introduction-to-saas-taxability-in...
      - gamessucknow 12d ago
        > This is what laws are for. "You can just do things." “China” “National Security” And with that, you’re argument is dead in the water.
      - vidarh 12d ago
        "SaaS taxes" are just sales taxes. They would apply if you create a SaaS for the stuff you want to outsource, sure. Except for it to be expensive enough to make outsourcing services unattractive you'd have to make them many times higher than they are today. > Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed. Good luck cloning services whose endpoints are unavailable and documentation non-existent and that there would be no customers for, as they're built as a means of working around taxation of outsourcing.
- cogman10 12d ago
  Yeah, I'm generally pretty pro-immigration and I'm very anti-H1B. It's very abusive to the workers hired as H1-B and it's designed for wage suppression. You can stay an H1-B for years. If you lose your job, you'll face deportation. It gives your employer a VERY large amount of leverage over your life. It's supposed to be about bringing expertise when local expertise isn't available, but in practice it's companies saying "Oh, we can't find someone who will work for $50k as a software dev so we need to hire H1-Bs." Either the program needs to end or the minimum salary needs to be raised to something like $300k to compensate for the leverage the employer has.
  - emodendroket 12d ago
    They’re doing the opposite and floating the idea of making the program more coercive by ending the grace period to find a new job, so that essentially ICE could wait outside an office after layoffs and start cuffing people. This is because “protecting workers” is a pretext and not their actual goal.
    - xhkkffbf 12d ago
      No. The fees definitely slow down the companies from trying to hire cheap replacements. Yes, the end of a grace period does make things tougher for people in a bad job, but I think the goal is really to end these bad jobs.
      - emodendroket 12d ago
        Well then it’s not working; they’re just hiring people abroad. That outcome would be a disaster if your goal is helping American workers but a success if your goal is just reducing the number of foreigners in the country without regard for American workers. Between the results of the policies they’ve chosen and the types of rants they go on television or social media to make that interpretation suggests itself.
  - thayne 12d ago
    I don't think raising the fee fixes the abuse problems. Unless maybe most of the fee goes into eacrow and is paid back to the employee if the employer terminates employment (maybe without a good, documented cause?). But that could produce its own misaligned incentives. I think the best way to solve it is to remove or reduce the restrictions on staying in the country after they have worked here for some number of years.
- ben_w 12d ago
  Rest of us really ought to put tariffs on US software. Not to bring in jobs or money (tariffs don't do that); just to push us away from your companies.
- alistairSH 12d ago
  How do you determine the "correct" location of a job? My employer sells software internationally - are you claiming any international job should be subject to some sort of fine simply because the company is HQed in the US? I suppose we could try slicing revenue or profit by sales region and comparing against headcount expense per region? But with salaries abroad being a fraction of in the US, that math might still work out in favor of keeping international employees. EDIT - I dislike the H1B system overall. Just not sure "fine companies that operate overseas" is something we should consider as a replacement.
  - throwawalien 12d ago
    devil's advocate - if they are HQ'd in the US, is hiring US citizens that big of an ask? why do they need cheap overseas labor?
    - lokar 12d ago
      IME it’s not cheaper, it’s the only way to find enough qualified people
      - throwawalien 12d ago
        IME at my org we have 3 contractors out of SE Asia to every 1 US FT role. They make less than a third of a FT US employee.
        lokar 12d ago
        Yes, there is a ton of abuse that drives down pay for many people. We should find way to improve the system.
      - alistairSH 12d ago
        Meh, not sure I really buy that argument. I've never had a problem hiring in the US. And this is for a mid-tier, mid-size software company that most people have never heard of, not located in SV, and PE-owned (not much in the way of big bonuses and no stock options).
- schnitzelstoat 12d ago
  Given that a lot of the 'offshoring' comes here to Europe (due to our much lower salaries) if the US starts encouraging their firms to cut jobs here via tariffs then the EU should absolutely respond - if this is how the US treats it's allies then perhaps closer relations with China are warranted?
  - lampeli 12d ago
    the year of the linux desktop is going to come faster than the year of Europeans not behaving like vassals to US interests
- abhiyerra 12d ago
  I don’t think people consider the negative ramifications for this on the other side. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have a ton of H1B. Take India, as an example, since that is where a majority of H1Bs come from. It has been pretty lenient in allowing American tech into the country. Everyone uses Google, YouTube, Windows, WhatsApp and Amazon. All of those are profits that go to America. If H1Bs are dropped or Indian workers are tariffed I believe you will start seeing a reciprocal tariffs, fines or calls for domestication. H1B started off with the right idea, but has essentially become gamed to hell. It has created a new white collar slave class that companies exploit.
adrr 12d ago
H1B should have never been a lottery. It should be a stack rank by salary to deal with the over subscription.
- cogman10 12d ago
  Oh that's a really good way to handle it that would actually follow the intent of the program. You can't find someone to do a job? Then you need to compete on wage with other companies to bring someone in. Or, you know, raise your salary for local employees.
  - winstonp 12d ago
    the salary weighted lottery today is a good step in the right direction IMO.
    - lokar 12d ago
      I think it has to be by industry and role. Software, mechanical engineering, teaching, medicine, etc are all very different
      - rbanffy 12d ago
        It needs to compensate for country and position.
  - lokar 12d ago
    A simple stack rank and cut has the problem of where to draw the line. Also, how to value pre-ipo stock There are other good options as well (an auction, etc). They all have problems, but there are mitigations. It could be vastly improved even if it’s not perfect. It’s just the will to do it.
    - schnitzelstoat 12d ago
      But at the moment there are quotas right? So it's basically the same - there are N visas to give out so you rank by salary and pick the top N.
cromka 12d ago
Same experience. NYC location of a high street investment bank.
heywintermute 12d ago
Been pretty much my exact experience
ransom1538 12d ago
Wait? People do not know this? This war was lost a decade ago. Google employs more than 4,100 H-1B visa holders.
- kccqzy 12d ago
  Google doesn’t underpay H-1B holders. In my experience any difference in actual pay is more likely caused by the H-1B people having worse salary negotiation skills than native born people.
lokar 12d ago
Not my experience in big tech and HFT. We spent a ton of time and effort trying to find anyone to our standards, never able to find enough. H1B (and other work visas) were generally better and more Sr compared to locals we found. They got paid as much or more than everyone else. When we had great people we could not get here we would instead build a team overseas, taking a bunch of other jobs with them.
- andrewla 12d ago
  I can't speak to your particular situation, but in my experience this has been two factors; one is location -- it is sometimes hard in some locations to find senior talent whereas H1Bs are (naturally) more amenable to moving. The other is pricing, which is echoing the GP's point. Senior talent is expensive and you can get it at (apparently) considerably lower cost by looking for H1B applicants.
  - lokar 12d ago
    I found that once you are paying mid to high 6 figures the company is not trying to save by hiring a foreigner.
    - sokoloff 12d ago
      How many H1-B or non-H1-B jobs are “high 6 figures”? That’s a tiny, tiny minority of the tech employment market and one which would readily shrug off a one-time $100K expense. (That would be less than 2 months’ salary for a high-6-figure position.)
      - lokar 12d ago
        Most of my friends and colleagues ended up in that range (or higher). It’s more common then people think
        sokoloff 12d ago
        $600K+ is around 1% of the US tech market and tends to run in clusters (so your circle is more likely to have people near you in comp than a random selection). I'm not doubting your first statement. For your second statement, I think people probably estimate it reasonably accurately as "rare, but not extraordinarily rare nor unheard of".
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paulddraper 12d ago
> Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure. > Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid. Yes.
deleted 12d ago
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deleted 12d ago
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da_chicken 12d ago
I have definitely seen job postings that were so detailed and narrow that they couldn't possibly find anyone "qualified". They were clearly making it so that it would be easier to claim that nobody in the country was qualified. But I will say that the only people I have met that are here on H1-B have been uniquely qualified for their position. Such as, they invented a way to scale a given chemical manufacturing process, and they were developing it further. But I got the impression that they were not particularly well paid like I would expect an American in the same position to be.
- peezd 12d ago
  It definitely varies a ton. I've observed more that H1B's keep employee mobility lower, so employees on H1Bs tended to be paid less due to the natural bumps that come out of switching jobs every few years, especially going from an associate to senior/staff level where often the company throws a small raise with promotions that don't keep up with market rates. One other factor that I experienced is when I was in senior leadership we absolutely tracked 'flight risk' that factored in to retention programs for top talent, and H1Bs were by the nature of it viewed as lower flight risks so less likely to fall into these programs.

foxtrot8672 12d ago

yep. I see the same thing. Trump isn't wrong to hike fees for H1-B. For companies that shift development overseas they should face tariffs as well.

toomuchtodo 12d ago
Call your congressional rep. The HIRE Act: 25% tax on outsourcing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 - September 2025 Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2976 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/297...
- throwawalien 12d ago
  is 25% enough to move the needle?
  - toomuchtodo 12d ago
    I don't know. Have to implement to find out and iterate. The number can go up until the preferred amount of offshoring has been drained from the system.
  - techpression 12d ago
    Also curious about loopholes, could said company start another company out of state that was the outsourcing entity and then the parent company paid that company. You're theoretically hiring from within the US, because I assume said policy doesn't go all the way to sub-contractors etc?
- tuesdaynight 12d ago
  If you open an office in another country and hire people there, is that outsourcing? If so, would big tech have to close their "international" offices if they don't want to pay the 25% tax? I ask that because I'm seeing these offices opening a lot in the last 3 years
- vidarh 12d ago
  So you'd move companies overseas and buy services instead of outsourcing work. It's really hard to do this in a way that won't be trivial to work around, and often in ways where you're likely to like the work around even less.
  - toomuchtodo 12d ago
    The US can tariff those out of country services if needed (through a combination of mandatory tax reporting and payment rails monitoring). An example of this today is SaaS taxes [1]. Please provide a non US service as an example and I'll propose how to rapidly replace it domestically. Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed. The US government could sponsor tokens to US entities who employee US workers to clone these offshore or out of country businesses. Can overseas companies outrun the token dispenser and tax code disadvantages? You have to remember that outsourcing is primarily used by US businesses to arbitrage labor while having the US regulatory capture advantage. They want access to the US market without paying US labor costs. This is what laws are for. "You can just do things." > It's really hard to do this in a way that won't be trivial to work around, and often in ways where you're likely to like the work around even less. So is collecting taxes, you just have a government funded entity grind tirelessly to keep closing the gaps. You make it economically burdensome to attempt to workaround. There will always be some leakage. "Work is hard." We know the labor exists in the US. We know offshoring is used to improve profit margins and to disempower workers to get more out of them. It is worth the effort, imho, if you want to keep the capital in the US versus sending it overseas and prioritize domestic workers over someone else's profits. [1] https://stripe.com/guides/introduction-to-saas-taxability-in-the-us https://stripe.com/guides/introduction-to-saas-taxability-in...
    - gamessucknow 12d ago
      > This is what laws are for. "You can just do things." “China” “National Security” And with that, you’re argument is dead in the water.
    - vidarh 12d ago
      "SaaS taxes" are just sales taxes. They would apply if you create a SaaS for the stuff you want to outsource, sure. Except for it to be expensive enough to make outsourcing services unattractive you'd have to make them many times higher than they are today. > Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed. Good luck cloning services whose endpoints are unavailable and documentation non-existent and that there would be no customers for, as they're built as a means of working around taxation of outsourcing.
cogman10 12d ago
Yeah, I'm generally pretty pro-immigration and I'm very anti-H1B. It's very abusive to the workers hired as H1-B and it's designed for wage suppression. You can stay an H1-B for years. If you lose your job, you'll face deportation. It gives your employer a VERY large amount of leverage over your life. It's supposed to be about bringing expertise when local expertise isn't available, but in practice it's companies saying "Oh, we can't find someone who will work for $50k as a software dev so we need to hire H1-Bs." Either the program needs to end or the minimum salary needs to be raised to something like $300k to compensate for the leverage the employer has.
- emodendroket 12d ago
  They’re doing the opposite and floating the idea of making the program more coercive by ending the grace period to find a new job, so that essentially ICE could wait outside an office after layoffs and start cuffing people. This is because “protecting workers” is a pretext and not their actual goal.
  - xhkkffbf 12d ago
    No. The fees definitely slow down the companies from trying to hire cheap replacements. Yes, the end of a grace period does make things tougher for people in a bad job, but I think the goal is really to end these bad jobs.
    - emodendroket 12d ago
      Well then it’s not working; they’re just hiring people abroad. That outcome would be a disaster if your goal is helping American workers but a success if your goal is just reducing the number of foreigners in the country without regard for American workers. Between the results of the policies they’ve chosen and the types of rants they go on television or social media to make that interpretation suggests itself.
- thayne 12d ago
  I don't think raising the fee fixes the abuse problems. Unless maybe most of the fee goes into eacrow and is paid back to the employee if the employer terminates employment (maybe without a good, documented cause?). But that could produce its own misaligned incentives. I think the best way to solve it is to remove or reduce the restrictions on staying in the country after they have worked here for some number of years.
ben_w 12d ago
Rest of us really ought to put tariffs on US software. Not to bring in jobs or money (tariffs don't do that); just to push us away from your companies.
alistairSH 12d ago
How do you determine the "correct" location of a job? My employer sells software internationally - are you claiming any international job should be subject to some sort of fine simply because the company is HQed in the US? I suppose we could try slicing revenue or profit by sales region and comparing against headcount expense per region? But with salaries abroad being a fraction of in the US, that math might still work out in favor of keeping international employees. EDIT - I dislike the H1B system overall. Just not sure "fine companies that operate overseas" is something we should consider as a replacement.
- throwawalien 12d ago
  devil's advocate - if they are HQ'd in the US, is hiring US citizens that big of an ask? why do they need cheap overseas labor?
  - lokar 12d ago
    IME it’s not cheaper, it’s the only way to find enough qualified people
    - throwawalien 12d ago
      IME at my org we have 3 contractors out of SE Asia to every 1 US FT role. They make less than a third of a FT US employee.
      - lokar 12d ago
        Yes, there is a ton of abuse that drives down pay for many people. We should find way to improve the system.
    - alistairSH 12d ago
      Meh, not sure I really buy that argument. I've never had a problem hiring in the US. And this is for a mid-tier, mid-size software company that most people have never heard of, not located in SV, and PE-owned (not much in the way of big bonuses and no stock options).
schnitzelstoat 12d ago
Given that a lot of the 'offshoring' comes here to Europe (due to our much lower salaries) if the US starts encouraging their firms to cut jobs here via tariffs then the EU should absolutely respond - if this is how the US treats it's allies then perhaps closer relations with China are warranted?
- lampeli 12d ago
  the year of the linux desktop is going to come faster than the year of Europeans not behaving like vassals to US interests
abhiyerra 12d ago
I don’t think people consider the negative ramifications for this on the other side. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have a ton of H1B. Take India, as an example, since that is where a majority of H1Bs come from. It has been pretty lenient in allowing American tech into the country. Everyone uses Google, YouTube, Windows, WhatsApp and Amazon. All of those are profits that go to America. If H1Bs are dropped or Indian workers are tariffed I believe you will start seeing a reciprocal tariffs, fines or calls for domestication. H1B started off with the right idea, but has essentially become gamed to hell. It has created a new white collar slave class that companies exploit.

adrr 12d ago

H1B should have never been a lottery. It should be a stack rank by salary to deal with the over subscription.

cogman10 12d ago
Oh that's a really good way to handle it that would actually follow the intent of the program. You can't find someone to do a job? Then you need to compete on wage with other companies to bring someone in. Or, you know, raise your salary for local employees.
- winstonp 12d ago
  the salary weighted lottery today is a good step in the right direction IMO.
  - lokar 12d ago
    I think it has to be by industry and role. Software, mechanical engineering, teaching, medicine, etc are all very different
    - rbanffy 12d ago
      It needs to compensate for country and position.
- lokar 12d ago
  A simple stack rank and cut has the problem of where to draw the line. Also, how to value pre-ipo stock There are other good options as well (an auction, etc). They all have problems, but there are mitigations. It could be vastly improved even if it’s not perfect. It’s just the will to do it.
  - schnitzelstoat 12d ago
    But at the moment there are quotas right? So it's basically the same - there are N visas to give out so you rank by salary and pick the top N.

cromka 12d ago

Same experience. NYC location of a high street investment bank.

heywintermute 12d ago

Been pretty much my exact experience

ransom1538 12d ago

Wait? People do not know this? This war was lost a decade ago. Google employs more than 4,100 H-1B visa holders.

kccqzy 12d ago
Google doesn’t underpay H-1B holders. In my experience any difference in actual pay is more likely caused by the H-1B people having worse salary negotiation skills than native born people.

lokar 12d ago

Not my experience in big tech and HFT. We spent a ton of time and effort trying to find anyone to our standards, never able to find enough. H1B (and other work visas) were generally better and more Sr compared to locals we found. They got paid as much or more than everyone else. When we had great people we could not get here we would instead build a team overseas, taking a bunch of other jobs with them.

andrewla 12d ago
I can't speak to your particular situation, but in my experience this has been two factors; one is location -- it is sometimes hard in some locations to find senior talent whereas H1Bs are (naturally) more amenable to moving. The other is pricing, which is echoing the GP's point. Senior talent is expensive and you can get it at (apparently) considerably lower cost by looking for H1B applicants.
- lokar 12d ago
  I found that once you are paying mid to high 6 figures the company is not trying to save by hiring a foreigner.
  - sokoloff 12d ago
    How many H1-B or non-H1-B jobs are “high 6 figures”? That’s a tiny, tiny minority of the tech employment market and one which would readily shrug off a one-time $100K expense. (That would be less than 2 months’ salary for a high-6-figure position.)
    - lokar 12d ago
      Most of my friends and colleagues ended up in that range (or higher). It’s more common then people think
      - sokoloff 12d ago
        $600K+ is around 1% of the US tech market and tends to run in clusters (so your circle is more likely to have people near you in comp than a random selection). I'm not doubting your first statement. For your second statement, I think people probably estimate it reasonably accurately as "rare, but not extraordinarily rare nor unheard of".

deleted 12d ago

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paulddraper 12d ago

> Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure. > Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid. Yes.

deleted 12d ago

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da_chicken 12d ago

I have definitely seen job postings that were so detailed and narrow that they couldn't possibly find anyone "qualified". They were clearly making it so that it would be easier to claim that nobody in the country was qualified. But I will say that the only people I have met that are here on H1-B have been uniquely qualified for their position. Such as, they invented a way to scale a given chemical manufacturing process, and they were developing it further. But I got the impression that they were not particularly well paid like I would expect an American in the same position to be.

peezd 12d ago
It definitely varies a ton. I've observed more that H1B's keep employee mobility lower, so employees on H1Bs tended to be paid less due to the natural bumps that come out of switching jobs every few years, especially going from an associate to senior/staff level where often the company throws a small raise with promotions that don't keep up with market rates. One other factor that I experienced is when I was in senior leadership we absolutely tracked 'flight risk' that factored in to retention programs for top talent, and H1Bs were by the nature of it viewed as lower flight risks so less likely to fall into these programs.