"The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, America’s five biggest tech firms—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft—submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of $117,000."
None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn. Indeed.com quotes the average SD salary in Seattle (think Amazon and Microsoft) as 126,000 and San Francisco at 134,000. Companies sponsoring H1B need to be held to the letter of the law -- the salaries must be competitive. The demand for H1B visas would fall if the imported labor was paid fairly.
You're comparing the average salary of all H-1B jobs (developer, accountant, analyst, etc.) to the salary of a developer. Instead, look at the average salaries for H-1B software engineers in 2016:
Facebook @ Menlo Park: $152k
Google @ Mountain View: $130k
Apple @ Cupertino: $154k
Amazon @ Seattle: $124k
Microsoft @ Redmond: $120
So comparing base salary alone, these companies are definitely not underpaying their H-1B hires.
To see salaries for yourself, you can go here and filter by year to see the latest data:
So by "these companies" you mean Facebook, Google, etc, because they are paying the going rate by paying $152k.
That just confirms the OPs first point, that TCS, Wipro and Infosys, with their 30,000 Visas avg. ~$70k, are massively abusing the system.
Its about time these companies were prosecuted for lying to the government:
Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 makes it a crime to: 1) knowingly and willfully; 2) make any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation; 3) in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch of the United States.
>That just confirms the OPs first point, that TCS, Wipro and Infosys, with their 30,000 Visas avg. ~$70k, are massively abusing the system.
>Its about time these companies were prosecuted for lying to the government:
while they obviously abuse the system, i doubt they do it in immediately clear criminal ways - instead i suppose they use various loopholes like bringing people into some cattle grazing mid-states where $70K is prevailing wage (and where is real shortage of programmers, at least if you try to hire couple hundred or thousand of them in a short time, so technically these companies do follow the law here to the letter) and "bodyshopping" the people from there.
lets say a person sent to work on a 3-4 month project in CA, another such project in WA, and another such in NY while officially living with the other 30 like him in a little house on the prairie. What government can do here? Specifically how it can be clearly identified as illegal? It is like with various other technical loopholes (like say taxes of many rich people, like that one American President who was able to show a loss of $1B once and write it down for many years after that - interesting that his opponents had practically mental breakdown over that absolutely legal write-off while missing the point of how one can show such a big loss, i mean actually losing $1B is obviously the least preferable way of doing it (especially considering the hard requirement that one has to be at least $1B wealthy to do it that way) while various technically interesting plays with valuations and transfers of various classes of assets can possibly get you there too :)
I am not a lawyer. But I'd be willing to guess that the difference is that you're a US citizen, attempting to get work wherever you can find it. While you're in that state, you abide by the laws of that state (you pay taxes to that state for income earned there, for example), while also following the laws of your home state (you also file tax there).
And while I imagine accenture's argument will be similar to yours, though much more nuanced, the argument against Accenture will be that those individuals were chosen and use specifically with the intent to bypass local wage laws.
In short, trying to find loopholes in the law, while knowingly violating the purpose of a law, does not result in innocence. Whatever Hollywood says.
I imagine the argument would be along the lines of:
Accenture - Yes, we frequently bus Mexican developers throughout the American southwest. This is because accenture uses many Mexican development shops, and occasionally our clients are interested in having our developers work on site to promote synergy, for small periods of time.
Legal Team - You bussed over a team of 50 devs to Client X, every day, for 2 years. They live in hotels, start on Monday, and end on Friday. This is not a case of the occasional developer meeting with a client as part of a business trip. This is an organized conspiracy to replace the American workforce.
Accenture - While we do run weekly bus services over the border, you will find that in your example, the same individuals do not go every week. Instead, a different 50 were located at Client A on a monthly basis. If there are 200 people working on the project, each 50 will meet for a month. That's four months of busing across the border, while the majority of the time, the team is actually operating from Mexico. We do this to promote synergy across the entire team, not just a select few individuals.
Legal Team - Your honor, we have testimony that when those individuals are in Mexico, their time is split between 20 other projects. When they are in the US, their time is dedicated solely to the client. In short, their claim that they have not somehow intentionally replaced jobs, because they continuously hire and fire different people for the position is patently absurd..
...
But it doesn't matter, because none of those developers are going to bring the suit, at least avanade doesn't hire US developers anymore, and the last few administrations simply haven't been prosecuting US businesses for labor infractions at a historic rate, so I somehow doubt this case would ever occur.
You are winning an argument against strawman. Accenture will not claim "occasionally our clients are interested in having our developers work on site".
Their business is outsourcing and their clients always want their consultants 100% on-site. If on-site presence is not required, why acquire an H1-B and cover travel expenses instead of just sending the project details directly to India (as I'm sure Accenture does for projects that do not require direct on-site involvement).
Many people I've worked with came to the US on H1-B's sponsored by the big outsourcing firms, then they move to one of the above mentioned companes. Presumably they move to those companies for better pay and working hours. And they have processes in place to handle the H1-B transfers. There is a lot of prestige with landing a job at those companies too. It's not everyone who can do that though, these folks are the upper end of the talent pool.
An argument I've heard for the lower paying jobs at the outsourcing companies is that they can communicate with the offshore teams in the local language. One on-site lead is gathering requirements and funneling work to 20 offshore devs. They work a full day during US hours then spend their evenings on calls with the offshore team. There is a huge supply of people overseas wanting those jobs so that they can get their foot into the US and then find something better. Supply and demand would naturally drive down the wages for those types of jobs.
Another path is to transfer from the bigger outsourcing firms to smaller US based consulting and staffing companies to do contracting work.
At this moment it seems that many companies have frozen their H1-B hiring with all of the US visa uncertainty. This is putting people in tough situations where they can't find work and have families to support that they brought with them to the US.
> huge supply of people overseas wanting those jobs so that they can get their foot into the US and then find something better
That's not really a good justification of claiming that the US Supply is more than what the current market holds. With that same arguement, a business could claim: Banana processing in Costa Rica costs $0.5/hr, so that means that we should have that as a ceiling in the US for the same job. It's apples and oranges.
There is a huge amount of people that would like to emigrate for financial improvement. But, at the end of the day they live there you live here. Want to take advantage of the supply that you're referring to, open up a location there. (And find out why they don't already have that organization there)
I interpreted it a different way, not a justification but rather one interpretation of the scenarios that are happening.
> But, at the end of the day they live there you live here. Want to take advantage of the supply that you're referring to, open up a location there. (And find out why they don't already have that organization there)
You are omitting the fact that the labor of 20 ofshore devs is being imported to the US through the one on-site leads. The location is already opened up offshore where the cheaper labor exists. Global markets do not exist in isolation, and the issuing of work visas affects the supply of labor in the market.
There is not a line of US citizens with CS backgrounds looking to work 1.5 shifts a day, and learn multiple languages to be able to communicate effectively with the offshore team. There is plenty of supply on the offshore side, hoping for a shot to make it to the US.
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, it's just one reality of the H1-B system.
Would be fascinating to see how many people from TCS, Wipro and Infosys ended up moving to Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft after a few years in the US.
Some of the larger product companies employ contractors from those firms. I know quite a few people employed by TCS who work at Apple, and some of them plan to stay with TCS for 10 years or more. Those big companies are still taking advantage of these cheap visas even if they're not employing the people directly, and that definitely impacts wages in our field.
I guarantee all of the countries on this list, both the Valley tech firms, and the Indian IT firms, have in-house counsel specially versed in this, making the process largely boilerplate.
When I moved to the US (to work for one of the companies on that list of tech firms), their attitude was "Do you need a visa?" (I didn't, as it happened) "Just let us know, we'll get you a H-1B". There wasn't any shadow of a doubt in their mind that it was much more than a formality.
It still about $6000 in filing fees and premium processing fees on top of the legal fees and meeting any other requirements the business has to meet to be in a place to sponsor them in the first place.
My experience with a large multi-national was that they outsourced all of the immigration work to outside legal firms. This firm hired a lot of immigrants, but I don't think it makes sense to hire full time legal immigration experts.
I don't think anyone is complaining about companies like Facebook and Google, who, by many accounts in this thread, are paying market rate for H-1B holders. These guys are not abusing the system. People are complaining about those outsourcing consultant companies who are abusing the system by paying far below market rate to H1B holders.
Yup. I've said it before[1][2] and people just kept replying "Oh but we hire them for their talent, therefore everyone does."
I work at a run of the mill SaaS company. We have 60% H-1Bs devs here as contractors from a certain contracting company (more in QA). They live paycheck to paycheck. I get paid, literally, twice as much (I've seen the H-1B Labor Condition Applications for ones we hire directly--The contracting companies pay likely about as much but take some 20% of their salary).
We don't hire them because they are particularly talented. I've been on interview calls with ones from the contracting companies, all their resumes are the same [3]. They are just code monkeys. Our company does it to save costs, period. Upper management knows nothing of the mythical man-month.
"The contracting companies pay likely about as much but take some 20% of their salary)."
Having worked as a contractor, I've seen that number typically between 33% and 50%. Staff Augmentation is a horrible, horrible business. The firms also end up stuffing the hiring managers inbox with a bunch of resumes of unqualified candidates to box out other competing firms. No one wins except the abusers of what could be a positive program.
My bill rate vs what I accepted from my firm in comp (salary+benefits) was roughly a 35% markup in Washington, DC between 2011 and 2013. I was working as a software dev in mostly Python and Javascript on web properties.
"I've been on interview calls with ones from the contracting companies, all their resumes are the same"
That's starting to drive me nuts. We have to work with a limited set of contracting companies. Whenever we post a new job we get 20 of the same resumes. I usually immediately delete the ones that say "used try/catch statements" but other than that there is no way to distinguish between them.
It was a weird moment for me when I first tried searching a candidate's objective statement. I found ~10 other resumes indexed online with the same objective statement, followed by the job-tips site from which they had copied the sample word-for-word.
I know that's an extreme case, but it's pretty bizarre when you start seeing literally identical content on different resumes.
So these contracting companies themselves send out resume to job post a companies makes? For example, received 20 CV for a job posted and all of them could have been sent from the same contracting company?
That does happen, but I don't think it was the case here. I think this was just about people cribbing off the same tips sites and one another's resumes because they came through similar spheres.
I dislike poor working and visa condition as much as, if not more than, anyone else. But other than that I don't really see the problem. You're saying that the people you're hiring aren't particularly talented and get payed less. Not everyone can go to the right school, learn the right languages and get accepted to companies that pay $100k with perks.
It sound like, other than fixing some of the things with H-1B, what really should happen is some sort of easier O (-1A) visa with mainly a salary requirement.
> You're saying that the people you're hiring aren't particularly talented and get payed less.
No I'm saying a citizen fresh grad dev starts at 60-80k at my company, but a H1-B via a contracting company with "5 years experience" (which is a crapshoot but they usually have some experience) gets paid 40-50k. They do the same work.
Considering other factors that is still a fairly small adjustment. I meant what I said that the conditions should be fixed. It should, for instance, be easier for people to change jobs and find jobs on the open market. That would make salaries somewhat more competitive.
But that doesn't mean everyone are going to make the same salaries. Foreigners are always going to be more willing to pay their dues, be less knowledgeable of the local market and have more variable skillets.
People are talking about fixing H-1B by things like salary requirements. That isn't so much fixing it as excluding one set of people and giving preference to another set of people.
Of course it does? It's getting better, but companies like Google have been very honest with that they (at least in the past) preferred hiring from top schools. The "right language" is of course a bit simplified, but some experiences are definitely seen as more favorable although it's not clear they are. Often more academic or community knowledge over practical or enterprise. As far as I know it's much easier to get hired by such a company early with based on your academic record and "culture fit" than it is later in life trough experience, as the median age also indicates. What are you basing your opinion on?
> None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn. Indeed.com quotes the average SD salary in Seattle (think Amazon and Microsoft) as 126,000 and San Francisco at 134,000.
I'm not sure that comparison works fully. I don't think the ages of the average H1B applicant are made public, but a great many are college graduates - IIRC, a foreign citizen who graduates from a US university is given a one year visa, but has to find their own way after that. So H1Bs represent a lot of people at the start of their careers, wheras the average you've found represents all developers.
One clear improvement would be to allow university graduates to stay in the US much more easily. We've just spent an awful lot of time educating them to a US standard after all - why not keep them?
I work at Google on an H1-B. I can confirm that Google pays foreign workers exactly the same as American employees on the same level, which is above market.
I suspect that the number quoted is only base salary, includes lower cost locations in the US and professions other than Software Engineers.
Another thing is that this number is the salary when the person got hired, but any other number you can find will be current salary.
I also work at Google on an H1-B (Formerly TN-1). I can also confirm that Google pays foreign workers exactly the same (Salary, stock, bonus, vacation, benefits) as Americans.
I'm not sure how this works at google, but often, when a company replaces positions with H1B visa workers, they often contract out the work. As a result, the H1B who is doing work for google wouldn't be considered a google employee.
It's a fairly common practice, though again, not sure if it happens this way at google.
Correct, this is how H1Bs are abused. But companies like Amafaceooglesoft are hiring H1Bs directly and pay wages, bonuses, and benefits that are equal to their US counterparts, thus, using the system as intended. They are also far more likely to sponsor their H1Bs for Green Card status. I personally work on a team at one of Amafaceooglesoft. On that team are 7 people where 2 are former H1Bs and are now Green Card holders and 1 current H1B who is going through the Green Card process.
I guess the question I'd ask is, do amafaceooglesoft contract out IT work to companies that use the H1B visa, and were any of these roles previously handled in-house.
I'm not sure of the answer, but it could be that these companies make use of both paths. If you're hired directly by these companies, you are paid the same, but a job that is eliminated and replaced through one of the body shops wouldn't be.
For instance, the workers eliminated at Disney aren't technically getting replaced by H1Bs, through a slight of hand. Disney is eliminating the positions, and then hiring a consulting company to provide that work. This way, it can be made to look like the H1Bs hired by Disney are paid the same as their American counterparts- by ensuring that jobs replaced that don't pay the same are no longer considered Disney employees.
Again, not sure if google and other companies do this, but all your data tells me is that developers who are formally hired by google are paid the same. If google eliminates a 150k a year position, and then contracts that job function out to a consulting company paying 75k a year, that wouldn't show up in google's numbers.
> None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn.
As a new grad interviewing for software engineering positions at FB, Google, Etc., I make exactly the same amount as my U.S. peers who have also received offers.
Moreover, how do you know that the SE level of the H1B hires is exactly that of the pool from which Indeed.com calculates their averages? What if the H1B program was taking in a huge amount of new grads right now and not as many senior positions? Then the H1B average would be different than the Indeed one.
Moreover (again), as I make the same amount of money as a U.S new grad, my company would pay for Visa sponsorship, and even pays more to fly me in to interview. Not only that, they put me through more interviews, costing more engineers time.
> What if the H1B program was taking in a huge amount of new grads right now and not as many senior positions?
Then the program in turn wouldn't be abiding by the idea of the H1B program in the first place, which is to bring in people who have skills that can't be found in the US. You can hire new grads from the US just as easily as abroad, just maybe not at the artificially low prices that you want to pay them.
This gets to the crux of the issue with the H1B system as it relates to age discrimination. Why are we hiring fresh grads on a "best and brightest" visa? If the college degree from a US institution made them the best and brightest, why wasn't a citizen in that classroom seat? If they are truly geniuses why are they paid at entry level wages?
The "best and brightest" visa is the O-1. The H-1B visa is a "specialty occupation" visa, defined roughly as an occupation that requires a Bachelor's degree in a particular field of study.
One of the arguments I see repeated here against hiring H1-B junior developers is that they:
a) Aren't qualified as the best and brightest since they're still inexperienced
b) Took a university seat from an American citizen
[1] Firstly, my response to these is going to treat the $65k/year as a soon-to-be-solved problem. It's making the whole program look bad at the expense of talented people and the American economy, and luckily has bi-partisan support for reform.
I want to offer a thought. As a country, we want the world's greatest minds to reside here. Those minds generate ideas, make local companies stronger and, at the most basic level, generate tax revenue greater than the average citizen. Creating a pipeline to bring in the best minds in the world is a net benefit for US citizens. Giving up /some/ university seats to attract the brightest from other countries makes sense. Giving up /some/ entry level roles to retaining those minds in the country, to which we've already lent our world-leading educational institutions to, also makes sense.
I've been in a hiring position with a Global 500 company that considers H1-B applicants. At no point during any of my conversations with other hiring managers did we ever consider "Oh, let's take that applicant, they'll cost less because of their Visa." If anything, some folks might hold off because they don't want to deal with the uncertainty of losing a key employee because of a lottery. If companies wanted cheap labor, they'd just use outsourcing. So it's possible H1-B applicants (excepting cheap consultants, see [1]) have a higher bar to clear than citizen/resident candidates.
The interesting point here, is that there's 3 types of nationalism in this discussion and I find it funny that we're not self aware about it (apologies, my bias is apparent in my descriptions):
1) Protectionist nationalism - "This is America and AMERICAN people born [or naturalized] here deserve our companies' jobs."
2) Opportunist nationalism - "America and its citizens as a whole are better off with more high-skilled H1-B immigrants because we can take the skilled horsepower other countries would otherwise possess."
3) Anti-nationalism - I don't see this one mentioned much, but what happens to the countries America is soaking up talent /from/? Is it a good thing that one country attracts the brightest from all around the world, rather than distributing skill evenly?
My personal opinions have hovered around type 2 (opportunist nationalism). I've considered type 3 and think it deserves more consideration. Does anyone have data on what happens to the countries America sources talent from? Is this one of those magic win-win scenarios, or the more intuitive win-lose?
Apologies, this is lightly edited as it's long-winded and during work hours.
There is most certainly a huge brain drain from China and India to the west. And it isn't limited to Technology: some of the best doctors and healthcare professionals, Biotech researchers etc. are all attracted to the well paying jobs and well-funded research opportunities offered by the US. It has always been a sticking point in India.
> As a country, we want the world's greatest minds to reside here.
I'd say, rather, that as a country we (should) want the world's greatest minds to become American, not just reside here. I don't just mean in terms of legal citizenship, but rather in terms of mindset and culture. I don't think it's good for us to import smart people whose ideals are opposed to our own.
H1Bs hired by companies like Amazon and Microsoft tend to be near the beginning of their careers, so a direct comparison to an average salary can be misleading. At least at Microsoft, the company helps H1Bs become permanent residents which would totally eliminate any ability the company has to underpay them.
Before you get all indignant, note that you're comparing a median and average, and for income distributions like these the average will skew higher. Also, Google, etc, also hire non software people from overseas, you can see them in the H-1B salary data, making less than software engineers.
That would essentially mean only silicon valley and NYC employers would get H1B employees. The entire South would face a skills shortage. The economist article actually provides a better solution. Visas shouldn't be tied to a particular employer. The employee should be able to transition to a new employer without a new visa application. There could be minimal paperwork to determine when a foreign worker is and whether they pay prevailing wages. Also the limit on visa numbers actually make the problem worse. Instead of say Apple getting engineers they need, their visa applications now have to compete with TCS' low paying applications. Apple in this case would then be forced to subcontract TCS employees so they can work onntheir projects. Also visas are once a year thing. So employers are forced into subcontracting if they have say a 6 month project. The solution would be to eliminate cap on visa numbers and to raise the prevailing wages labor department provides on a given city and to consolidate the multitude of job titles available for visa applications. For example there are Application Engineers, UI Engineers and Software Engineers all having different prevailing wages as per labor department.
Maybe the "entire South" should increase their rates if they want to compete on talent. I have no sympathy for a company that can't find talent because "we don't pay SV rates because we're not in SV".
It's amusing how "cost of living" is somehow seen as a reasonable consideration for determining salary but not what rates a customer is charged for the products.
> Maybe the "entire South" should increase their rates if they want to compete on talent. I have no sympathy for a company that can't find talent because "we don't pay SV rates because we're not in SV".
Then the "entire South" is going to start charging you and me SV rates for their products and services. Probably not what you had in mind.
That's not the real issue. The real issue is that tech workers are not the only one's coming here on H1B, and those professions don't pay nearly what an SDE gets paid.
The premise of my post was a change to an auction-style H1B program.
Let's assume there is a $FooCorp in Alabama looking for a SysAdmin but not having much luck. They'd like to spend $70k and enter the H1B lottery under our current system. Maybe they win, maybe they lose but can hire an H1B for $80k from $OutsourcingFirm. Under an auction system, let's examine what happens instead.
$Hooli (and other SV companies) are offering $135k for SDEs. Because $135k > $70k no H1Bs can be imported as SysAdmins for $70k. This raises the cost of SysAdmin work across the country for employers. The new baseline is now somewhere above $70k which is the price it takes to attract citizens (or otherwise eligible residents) to $FooCorp.
Under an auction system, $FooCorp still needs a SysAdmin and they have 3 options:
(1) do without a SysAdmin
(2) pay more than $70K to attract an already eligible to work SysAdmin to Alabama
(3) pay more for a SysAdmin than SV pays SDEs in order to hire an H1B
Let's look at those options. If they need a SysAdmin, the first option isn't really feasible. If the role is optional, this might be a situation where they decide to do without. That means there are two options left, and the rational decision depends on what the true market value of a SysAdmin currently is. If $FooCorp can pay a citizen $100k to move to Alabama, there isn't a skills shortage. If $FooCorp can't find anyone to move to Alabama to be a SysAdmin for less than $135k, there might be a legitimate skills shortage and then the H1B program is attractive again.
It's worth noting that if $FooCorp can't find a SysAdmin for less than a SDE to move to Alabama, the true value of a SysAdmin is at least $135k (in this example). Under the current system, SysAdmins are being short-changed, both H1Bs and other eligible SysAdmins in our workforce.
There is no such thing as a skills shortage. There are only greedy employers looking to abuse a system to underpay all workers, whether they are H1Bs or otherwise authorized to work. Anyone who tells you there is a skills shortage is making money off telling you that. Don't be a sucker.
>> The economist article actually provides a better solution. Visas shouldn't be tied to a particular employer. The employee should be able to transition to a new employer without a new visa application.
I'm surprised by the level of expertise, demonstrated by the economist, given the fact that current H1B system already works EXACTLY THAT WAY. H1B visa holder can transfer to a new employer any time, if new employer is willing to fill in the papers, even without notifying the current employer.
L1B visa is tied to a particular employer (because it just intracompany transfer), not H1B.
Well, if you remove the limit on the number of H1B visas then all is of course fine and dandy for employers and potential H1B visa holders like myself, but I do think you have to respect the fact that American workers have a legitimate interest in restricting the number of visas...
Any loophole created for this scenario would be immediately exploited by outsourcing companies headquartering themselves in the South, sponsoring H1's and then immediately arbitraging a freshly arrived employee to a Silicon Valley or NYC client.
> The employee should be able to transition to a new employer without a new visa application.
That is such a great idea that it's always been part of the H1 visa. New employer just needs to initiate an H1 transfer.
I'd rather live in a liberal area where I can be myself, than have boring/inconsequential/fake/superficial conversations about BBQ, football, weather etc.
I was poking around in an H1-B lookup system that was posted here last year (2015 maybe?) that enabled me to check into another realm where I had a suspicion the H1-B program is also depressing wages:
Bench Science at Universities.
Mostly PhDs. Post-Doctoral Fellows. The numbers - state by state, institution by institution - are staggering in my opinion. It's a snake eating itself in how these Universities prepare US students (ahem, expensive via loans more often than not) then when it's time to get a job, funding is so competitive (different problem) that labor prices are forced into the gutter. Enter the H1-B labor force.
The idea that the US isn't capable of meeting real STEM demand is utter bullshit. The demand would be met if there was a living wage. A quality of life. People in the US still have faint memories of pride and not being over-worked and over-debt riddled, and still cling to just the last threads. That's why PhDs aren't lining up to spend $250,000, then take several years (if lucky) to get a $52,000 a year job with limited security.
> That's why PhDs aren't lining up to spend $250,000, then take several years (if lucky) to get a $52,000 a year job with limited security.
In many fields, often fields that don't pay well, the PhD students are mostly American. In my engineering program, the vast majority were Indian and East Asian. They have all gone on to get very good paying jobs.
And it makes a lot of sense for them. Most probably wouldn't be getting a high paying tech job back home, so the opportunity cost of spending 5 years in a PhD program is low, and it opens up a lot of doors. By comparison, a U.S. citizen with an engineering B.S. might get paid $65k-$115k year out of college. A 5-year PhD will then cost them $250k-$500k in lost earnings.
It is ridiculous that so many people support this wretched and miserable system. Anybody that has worked with these type of firms knows what is going on.
The bare minimum salary requirement for a position comes from the labor department. The first step on an H1B process is to determine prevaling wages in the city for that kind of position. For programmers, there are a multitude of titles available irrespective of what the actual job description is. So there could be an easy fix by investigating how prevailing wages are set and by bringing in industry experts to consolidate the list of titles and salaries required. Also companies list the bare minimum salary they would pay on a visa application instead of the actual salaries they would pay. This is especially true for consulting companies that share profit with their employees. Smaller consulting companies often don't pay the full salary when employees have a downtime in between projects. Also vacation time(extended month long) usually goes unpaid or less paid. The lower bid on the visa applications helps them stay in status in such situations.
Ex TCS employee here:
Not only the employees are paid meagerly, the benefits most seem to have are literally nothing.
Health and Medical Coverage are very poor. Provides only basic coverage.
No Life Insurance.
Never heard of anyone being paid overtime.
Most employees of these companies would be mostly working in odd hours to manage off shore teams.
Uh? SD is a super-generic title. H1B pool can include disproportionate number of fresh graduates (BS or MS) because OPT program gives them the flexibility to wait till April comes around to file for H1B. It is almost impossible (with exceptions for researchers and multinational managers/ O1/O2/L1) to hire experienced people from outside the US via H1B. Thus this skewing happens: more jobs for fresh graduates probably go to foreigners than do jobs for people experienced and established in their fields.
Why would we need H1Bs for fresh graduates, unless they are graduates in some very niche speciality (maybe machine learning?). Aren't H1Bs for skilled workers where they can't find an American equivalent? Is it really the case that there aren't enough fresh American grads graduating every year?
This is because H1-B is the "only" way for an international fresh grad to work in the US. This is a direct result of US immigration policy which ties up the visa process with the need for an employer sponsorship and more importantly the ability to acquire permanent residence is also tied up to employer sponsorship which leads to "indentured" servitude as many folks around here point out. Compare it with let's say Germany who has a "Blue Card" visa program which gives an international (or intra european immigrant) 18 months to find a job and then if you manage you work for an employer for another 22 months (only) you get a permanent residence. This does not need any sponsorship from the employer. It's just a clock. Same is the case with Canada and Australia.
All countries which attract foreign students in their universities give some sort of a time period for them to use the acquired skill and if prevailing conditions are right, to stay in the country and work. Imagine you want to move to Germany, what will you do? A) Search for an employer sitting in the US and hope they file a Blue Card for you (equivalent to getting an H1-B filed from outside the US) B) you plan to study and then stay there based on your studies (OPT leading to H1-B in the US). Now if you study at University of Erlangen and immediately after graduating you are told you pack up your bags and leave, then what do you do? You can institute such a policy saying no international students will ever get to stay in this country, then it's fine. The only thing would be a tremendous drop in in coming students who are also paying through their noses and investing dollars into the University System. That's how it works worldwide.
The problem here is most of the people here do not understand what Visa options are there, how they work, what kind of extreme vetting takes place to get a student visa in the first place, most folks would have never ever applied for a visa in their lives, would have never seen the inside of a consulate, would not know how visa systems work in the rest of the world and then arrive at a conclusion which is based on shaky foundation.
H1-B visas are not only for Tech, they are also for other streams of education or workers like MBAs. There are two kinds of complaints here which prop up constantly. A) H1-B applied by these "outsourcing" Indian companies which treat their employees shabbily (in fact its the US corporations which use and initiate these), so off with their heads. Sure, make H1-B attractive to maybe people who have invested and studied in the MS/PhD grad system. B) But.. now people moan about H1-B Masters and Phd getting "starting" salary lower than what they "think" should be offered to a regular US Citizen. Anyone who has ever interviewed or worked with the top Tech firms (or has managed to clear their interview rounds hahahaha) or have been part of the hiring groups would mostly say that these companies offer very competitive salaries and make NO discrimination at all in terms of talent.
Which side are we debating on or are we moaning the influx of ALL immigrants as unworthy of the job market? All jobs are ours hahahaha Microsoft can't take 10 rounds of interviews anymore since there are only US citizens available for these jobs. We won!
I agree. There are only two factors that contribute to this problem- 1) Hiring at low wages to help the bottom line of a company and 2) Hiring quickly because we need "bodies" to show progress against projects.
Why would you compare the salary of top 3 companies in the world to that of 3 consultancy firms? Of course the average salary of the top 3 companies is going to be significantly higher, and of course the hiring is going to be stricter. What were you expecting?
Maybe use stats of companies that are about as good as these consultancy firms, and located in similar areas. That will put things into perspective. I'm not saying Indians aren't paid lower, but your comment is an exaggeration of the issue Americans complain about.
Probably true, but there's plenty of firms that are not hiring top talent and/or not in major metro areas where salaries are lower. Places that need 50 warm bodies to code back-office systems in a Pennsylvania suburb are not going to be paying $150K to anyone.
Because they won't be able to get domestic forces for that money. I'm not saying that it is the way to go, but there might be businesses that can only exist on h1bs.
So we should definitely reform this, but be cautious.
Execution should not be the same as the ban, rolled out without any kind of consideration or preparation.
I've seen people getting Software engineering offers from Microsoft/Amazon in the recent years, salaries were less than $117,000, but it came with a stock award vesting over 3.5 years that increased the total compensation significantly.
By people here, I mean H1B applicants but also Ivy league and top schools U.S. citizens. As soon as a H1-B employee starts, the company would start sponsoring a green card and cover all the legal fees associated with it.
The problem with H1-B at Apple/Amazon/Fb/Google/Microsoft isn't the base salary, it's the long path to green card for Indians and Chinese citizens, reducing their job mobility and career opportunities.
Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are hugely profitable corporations they pay top dollar to any talent, whether its domestic or international. So the argument Indian outsourcing firms should pay similar salaries to every employee is like, asking every US company to pay on par with Google/Microsoft employees, I guess.
There is something to be done to the US working class for sure. But when US wants to be the world leader selling high value goods in every country, can it afford to isolate itself from the world's talent?
H1B's should go for talent that you cannot reasonably find domestically. What you describe seems to imply that price should also be a consideration, i.e. Talent that you cannot reasonably find domestically for the price you are willing to pay. To me, that is abusing the system.
The question is why do the outsourcing companies need to hire so many foreigners---other than to pay them nothing and screw up the H1B lottery for everyone else, of course.
Honestly, tying the qualification of H1B to salary only works as some sort of state-sponsored unionization.
Not to mention the salaries of H1B employees are public, and that they are bound to a company meaning they have less bargaining power. And that the sampling is completely different, one is more of an homogeneous american citizen and the other is basically every country in the world, with varying degrees of knowledge,education, expertise, cultural fit,language penalties, relocation costs, etc.
EDIT: and remember, for a company to issue an H1B, it costs them many thousands of dollars, that the future employee has to be paying for it to be worth it.
Increasing restrictions helps american tech workers as much as Trump adding a tariff on mexican imports. It hurts consumers, it hurts companies, and it gives americans a small benefit.
I can understand american steel workers wanting protectionism , but i cant understand why people that work creating products world-wide like google, facebook, apple, amazon and microsoft, can find it consistent to believe in protectionism.
Honestly, tying the qualification of H1B to salary only works as some sort of state-sponsored unionization.
It's not unionization. It's a simple case of letting the market decide who's got rare and valuable skills. If you don't command an unusually high salary, your skills aren't that rare or aren't so essential to the company.
> It's a simple case of letting the market decide who's got rare and valuable skills.
With company-tied commitments, high transaction costs, lotteries, field of expertise limitations? Markets gone wild!
> If you don't command an unusually high salary, your skills aren't that rare or aren't so essential to the company.
This is a union-style wage argument. If the company would like to hire you below what the union makes, the company should not be able to and you would not qualify to work in this field.
"The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, America’s five biggest tech firms—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft—submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of $117,000."
None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn. Indeed.com quotes the average SD salary in Seattle (think Amazon and Microsoft) as 126,000 and San Francisco at 134,000. Companies sponsoring H1B need to be held to the letter of the law -- the salaries must be competitive. The demand for H1B visas would fall if the imported labor was paid fairly.