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:

http://h1bpay.com/companies/Facebook/cities/Menlo%20Park-CA/...

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.

> None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn.

>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.

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.

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).

No, that was the article's point. OP's contribution was that everybody is underpaying, which isn't true.

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.

These are my own observations.

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)

> 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.

And here I thought it was bananas all along.

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.

$325 base + $1500 AICWA + $500 fraud protection fee + [potential $4000 Public Law 114-113 fee] + [optional $1125 premium processing fee] = $6325 + [optional $1125].

Legal fees vary from $500 to $3000 on top of that.

[1] http://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-2017-filing-fee-summary/

But regardless, also add the non-salary benefits, of course: non-discretionary bonuses, stock grants, etc.

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 system is being rampantly abused.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13521791

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13525766

[3] - http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/theyll-sponsor-america...

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.

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.

I know that's an extreme case, but it's pretty bizarre when you start seeing literally identical content on different resumes.

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.

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.

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.

Getting employed at these companies has nothing to do with "going to the right school and learning the right language".

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 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.

It's a fairly common practice, though again, not sure if it happens this way at google.

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.

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.

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.

Also being a new grad != employable at one of these companies, and no, training isn't going to help them either.

  a) Aren't qualified as the best and brightest since they're still inexperienced

  b) Took a university seat from an American citizen

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?

Apologies, this is lightly edited as it's long-winded and during work hours.

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.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

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.

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.

How's lottery status quo a better deal?

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.

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.

And I suspect that for a "brown" skinned persons the south is not exactly a welcoming environment.

Source: Lived in Dallas and Austin for 7 years.

That's very ignorant.

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.

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.

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.

Which Indian IT company (outsourcing or a product) based pays overtime in India?

2. Masters students with specialized skills and possible prior experience before their Masters.

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!

Australia also has a working visa which is tied to the employer.

> Indeed.com quotes the average SD salary in Seattle (think Amazon and Microsoft) as 126,000 and San Francisco at 134,000.

You cannot compare a median salary with an average salary. Salaries are going to have a long tail of large numbers.

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.

The funny thing is comparing salaries isn't even fair, because total compensation at these top companies is much larger than just salary.

The problem is many companies who can afford to pay good money to Americans dont hire Americans when they can just hire H1Bs at a lower salary.

Example: Infosys 25k visas vs Google 4k, Apple 1.6k etc.

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.