I've been recruited by different FAANGs, and was also actively recruiting people at them. Your suspicions are wrong.

Bar is the same (of course, there will some bias from specific people, but those are one-offs). Even more - hiring H1Bs is harder than hiring a citizen and it's more costly to the company (immigration sucks). If they could, they wouldn't hire H1Bs.

Equation is different at sweatshops, where you don't hire specific people, that meet specific bars you have. They have no bars - they just need code/ops/qa monkeys. They apply for as many visas as you can, and get whoever they can get as a result. As long as they got enough people, they're happy.

You are over simplifying a bit. Yes it may cost more to hire a H1B due to legal costs but only a small amount more at companies of this size. They have teams of people who handle that.

H1B workers are often paid less that citizens. In the long run it is probably cheaper to hire H1B workers even after the legal costs.

> H1B workers are often paid less that citizens

At sweatshops. Not at FAANGs.

It is more fair at fang but that isnt 100% true. I see a lot of fang offers and they are often lower.

The majority of H-1B employees at FAANG come on L-1 visas first. There’s no direct comparison because they join the company in a different country and a different market. The bar is not the same as the number of open positions in one market vs the other is not the same.

Why would this be? Citizens and residents get the same pay and benefits. If anything, employing a noncitizen is more work because you have to manage the whole immigration process.

What's in it for the company?

Not really, if they aren’t attracting domestic talent when they post a job at $xyz but would have if they would pay $qrs, but instead of increasing their offers they go find an H1b that will take $xyz then it’s suppressing wages and cheaper for the company in the long run

It would also be illegal.