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The target candidate for these startups largely doesn't exist. Most folks accepting such a salary in the Bay Area are recently out of college and living in smal

The target candidate for these startups largely doesn't exist. Most folks accepting such a salary in the Bay Area are recently out of college and living in small apartments with roommates. When it's all said and done, most of these startups will settle for a few offshore contractors or hire remote people who live in cheaper parts of the country where $90K goes a lot further. The tried and true "solution" to this problem is to import a number of H1b visa holders from other countries who are willing to work for the lower salaries and accept the lifestyle choices that it imposes in the Bay Area. For many of them, $90K in the Valley is still an upgrade from where they are coming from. For those of us with a decade or more of experience, it's best to focus on the post Series A startups that have the money to pay. However, many of these jobs involve cleaning up code written by those inexperienced folks who accepted less pay in the early days.

codescorrectly 12y ago
Even H1's would scoff at that. The pay discrepancy is largely overstated.
im_asl 12y ago
H1's working for lower pay seems like a fallacy. Part of the visa process involves paying prevailing wages.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- hkarthik 12y ago
  Last I checked, the metrics around prevailing wages to hire an H1B are not adjusted based on the local market. So you can get away with paying an H1B the same in the Bay Area as you would in suburban Iowa.
  - geebee 12y ago
    Would you share a link? My impression was that market wages actually need to reflect the local wages, not national, but I'm not sure of this.
    - 001sky 12y ago
      well, one way to a self-fulfiling proheshy is to advertsie below market jobs in the market you are looking at.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- geebee 12y ago
  I wouldn't put too much stock in the "market wage" requirement. It's easily subverted. All it means is that the position advertised needs to pay market rate for that job title. You could hire an unusually talented senior engineer as an "analyst 1" and as long as you pay the analyst 1 market salary, you can get away with it. There's very little oversight. Also, keep in mind that if it's difficult to hire at "market rate", that tends to be a signal that market rate is too low. Suppressing wage growth is, in the long term, not really all that different from lowering wages (suppose that there is no wage growth for 10 years - "market rate" remains the same - in an inflationary economy, this means wages are much lower in real terms). This is why some people are now proposing a wage requirement considerably higher than market rate for H1Bs, to ensure that the process doesn't suppress the wage growth needed to make the field attractive to talented people.
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  Yes by law there is a prevailing wage rule, however in practice this is abused. 1) It is basically never enforced 2) The people rubber stamping the applications don't have a clue about the person, the job, or the title What happens is employers pigeon hole developers into less experienced roles with lower pay grades according to the BLS (the source of data employers must use to justify the wage) For instance you can take a person with 10 years experience and either say she is a 'Level 1 Web Developer' at 52k in SF, OR you can say she is a 'Level 4 Software Developers, Systems Software' at 134k in SF. Which would you chose as an employer? And these are extremes, you can play somewhere in the middle depending on your comfort. http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStep2.aspx?stateName=California http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStep2.aspx?stateName=C... and then I selected the BLS region as SF and you can see all of the occupations they define which sound similar and are described similarly, but have wildly different pay scales. EDIT: I'm reading the prevailing wage guidance document now[0] and employers can actually provide their own wage data surveys to determine prevailing wage. Wow! [0] http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/NPWHC_Guidance_Revised_11_2009.pdf http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/NPWHC_Guidance_Revised...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
api 12y ago
"accept the lifestyle choices that it imposes in the Bay Area" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8BDpqekENQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8BDpqekENQ

codescorrectly 12y ago

Even H1's would scoff at that. The pay discrepancy is largely overstated.

im_asl 12y ago

H1's working for lower pay seems like a fallacy. Part of the visa process involves paying prevailing wages.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hkarthik 12y ago
Last I checked, the metrics around prevailing wages to hire an H1B are not adjusted based on the local market. So you can get away with paying an H1B the same in the Bay Area as you would in suburban Iowa.
- geebee 12y ago
  Would you share a link? My impression was that market wages actually need to reflect the local wages, not national, but I'm not sure of this.
  - 001sky 12y ago
    well, one way to a self-fulfiling proheshy is to advertsie below market jobs in the market you are looking at.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
geebee 12y ago
I wouldn't put too much stock in the "market wage" requirement. It's easily subverted. All it means is that the position advertised needs to pay market rate for that job title. You could hire an unusually talented senior engineer as an "analyst 1" and as long as you pay the analyst 1 market salary, you can get away with it. There's very little oversight. Also, keep in mind that if it's difficult to hire at "market rate", that tends to be a signal that market rate is too low. Suppressing wage growth is, in the long term, not really all that different from lowering wages (suppose that there is no wage growth for 10 years - "market rate" remains the same - in an inflationary economy, this means wages are much lower in real terms). This is why some people are now proposing a wage requirement considerably higher than market rate for H1Bs, to ensure that the process doesn't suppress the wage growth needed to make the field attractive to talented people.
djb_hackernews 12y ago
Yes by law there is a prevailing wage rule, however in practice this is abused. 1) It is basically never enforced 2) The people rubber stamping the applications don't have a clue about the person, the job, or the title What happens is employers pigeon hole developers into less experienced roles with lower pay grades according to the BLS (the source of data employers must use to justify the wage) For instance you can take a person with 10 years experience and either say she is a 'Level 1 Web Developer' at 52k in SF, OR you can say she is a 'Level 4 Software Developers, Systems Software' at 134k in SF. Which would you chose as an employer? And these are extremes, you can play somewhere in the middle depending on your comfort. http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStep2.aspx?stateName=California http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStep2.aspx?stateName=C... and then I selected the BLS region as SF and you can see all of the occupations they define which sound similar and are described similarly, but have wildly different pay scales. EDIT: I'm reading the prevailing wage guidance document now[0] and employers can actually provide their own wage data surveys to determine prevailing wage. Wow! [0] http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/NPWHC_Guidance_Revised_11_2009.pdf http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/NPWHC_Guidance_Revised...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

api 12y ago

"accept the lifestyle choices that it imposes in the Bay Area" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8BDpqekENQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8BDpqekENQ