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I think that both you and the grandparent comment are correct at the same time. It feels like there is a strong dichotomy between how H1B visa is treated across

by filoleg 13d ago

I think that both you and the grandparent comment are correct at the same time. It feels like there is a strong dichotomy between how H1B visa is treated across different realms of tech. I have been working in big tech for a decade, and have a few friends working in the more technical financial firms (think more TwoSigma/HRT/Citadel, not JPM/GS), and my experience matches yours. Every H1B I knew at the companies I worked at was absolutely not hired as a cost-cutting measure. It was just simply difficult to find people who could qualify. And god knows we tried, I remember my team interviewing roughly 50 people just to fill a position of just a baseline decent dev (not a rockstar math olympics winner with multiple groundbreaking publications; though that would've been nice). And absolutely none of them were underpaid either, they were on the exact same comp range for the level, with plenty of them topping out the range. In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else). Meanwhile, I have a lot of acquaintances from undergrad working as devs at tech consultancy firms and more "general/traditional finance" companies. The stories I hear from them about H1B at their workplaces are pretty much exactly what the grandparent comment describes, and even worse.

lokar 13d ago
Re: cost Also, very expensive relocation packages
wegwerper 13d ago
> In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else). I mean, you were actually underpaying the local workers if this was the case? If you offered the fully loaded salary to the local workers they might have accepted. Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?).
- Ajedi32 13d ago
  > Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?). Yeah, by definition this is pretty much always true, no? No matter how scarce local workers are, if you were willing to offer double the market rate you could probably find someone. Scarcity and price are two sides of the same coin, that's how markets work. Bringing in labor from another country when local talent is scarce both reduces costs/wages and reduces scarcity.
- zimzam 13d ago
  Workers on an H1B are more abusable though - if they lose the job they have something like 30 days to find another one or they have to leave the country entirely. So you talk a good game about work life balance and then after you hire an H1B worker and bring them to the country you can spring 60 hour weeks doing tedius things and many won't be in a position to say no. The salary might also seem higher to somebody who doesn't understand the cost of living in the US (and how many things are not paid for via taxes like healthcare).
  - lokar 13d ago
    At all of my jobs everyone was treated the same.
    - filoleg 12d ago
      Yep, and that is also an explicit requirement for interviewers at every company I worked at. I had to do interview training myself at one of them, and the guidelines were fairly specific and clear about this. We neither knew about the immigration status of the candidate nor were we allowed to ask/note/talk about it at all. Same as with age/marital status/etc.
- triceratops 13d ago
  > Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay Whenever someone says "But then the locals making $400k would make $500k" I have to ask: where are all these qualified locals for whom $400k isn't enough money already? Shouldn't all the laid-off people be champing at the bit for these jobs? At some price point you genuinely do run out of local talent. At that point it's just a question of whether the work goes abroad or foreign workers come in.
  - lokar 13d ago
    IME we had very few people turn down offers, and even the it was rarely about the comp. It’s hard to get people to even interview, or find them in the first place.
- filoleg 12d ago
  > Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?). Nope, immigration fees/lawyer expenses are simply just a negligible cost in the grand scheme of things. When you hire someone earning $350k+ in annual TC, an extra $10-20k one-time cost of immigration-related expenses is a nothingburger for big tech companies. Along the same line of reasoning: relocation expenses for candidates within the US. Big tech companies don't stress over a one-time $10k relocation package cost (for a candidate that passed the interviews and accepted the offer, but just happened to be from another state).
  - lokar 12d ago
    International relocation is much more, I’ve had close to 50k for just domestic. But I never had the impression they cared about the amount very much.

by filoleg 13d ago

lokar 13d ago

Re: cost Also, very expensive relocation packages

wegwerper 13d ago

> In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else). I mean, you were actually underpaying the local workers if this was the case? If you offered the fully loaded salary to the local workers they might have accepted. Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?).

Ajedi32 13d ago
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?). Yeah, by definition this is pretty much always true, no? No matter how scarce local workers are, if you were willing to offer double the market rate you could probably find someone. Scarcity and price are two sides of the same coin, that's how markets work. Bringing in labor from another country when local talent is scarce both reduces costs/wages and reduces scarcity.
zimzam 13d ago
Workers on an H1B are more abusable though - if they lose the job they have something like 30 days to find another one or they have to leave the country entirely. So you talk a good game about work life balance and then after you hire an H1B worker and bring them to the country you can spring 60 hour weeks doing tedius things and many won't be in a position to say no. The salary might also seem higher to somebody who doesn't understand the cost of living in the US (and how many things are not paid for via taxes like healthcare).
- lokar 13d ago
  At all of my jobs everyone was treated the same.
  - filoleg 12d ago
    Yep, and that is also an explicit requirement for interviewers at every company I worked at. I had to do interview training myself at one of them, and the guidelines were fairly specific and clear about this. We neither knew about the immigration status of the candidate nor were we allowed to ask/note/talk about it at all. Same as with age/marital status/etc.
triceratops 13d ago
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay Whenever someone says "But then the locals making $400k would make $500k" I have to ask: where are all these qualified locals for whom $400k isn't enough money already? Shouldn't all the laid-off people be champing at the bit for these jobs? At some price point you genuinely do run out of local talent. At that point it's just a question of whether the work goes abroad or foreign workers come in.
- lokar 13d ago
  IME we had very few people turn down offers, and even the it was rarely about the comp. It’s hard to get people to even interview, or find them in the first place.
filoleg 12d ago
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?). Nope, immigration fees/lawyer expenses are simply just a negligible cost in the grand scheme of things. When you hire someone earning $350k+ in annual TC, an extra $10-20k one-time cost of immigration-related expenses is a nothingburger for big tech companies. Along the same line of reasoning: relocation expenses for candidates within the US. Big tech companies don't stress over a one-time $10k relocation package cost (for a candidate that passed the interviews and accepted the offer, but just happened to be from another state).
- lokar 12d ago
  International relocation is much more, I’ve had close to 50k for just domestic. But I never had the impression they cared about the amount very much.