Re:Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
by ulfw on Monday August 11, 2014 @06:05AM
(#8162684)
But that's the thing. Labour budgets ARE smaller at smaller companies. Hence your salary at a startup will most of the time be lower than what you could make at a similar position at a big corp. They make up for it by handing out more equity.
Whereas a large company can make a better case for paying say $100K on a visa for a $200K/year job, this is much harder for a startup paying e.g. $100K+1% equity for said job. If I have only $1MM or so in funding as a startup I am limited to what I can pay and couldn't reasonably waste a year's worth of salary on a visa, whereas a $50,000MM revenue company might have more leeway. No?
If your small company wants to employ someone then you have to be willing to pay as much as a big company will for the same employee. And that goes whether you're just paying salary or paying salary plus visa price.
The only disadvantage I can see to small companies is that a big company could afford to buy visas in bulk at the start of the year and figure out what to do with them later, while a small company wouldn't buy visas until it had a specific employee in mind. So I'd make the auction monthly, not annual.