The thing you're "missing" is that it absolutely is, in practice, about laundering low-wage foreign labor. It's not actually complicated. It's obfuscation of exploitation. Same as it ever was. You're just not supposed to believe that your country is doing that.
A lion's share of H-1Bs go to big tech companies where people make $250k a year or more. And where total comp of $400k+ is common for senior roles, with no regard for visa status.
Yes, it alters market dynamics and the whole reason it's done is that the same skills are not available domestically for that price (or at all) - but talking about "low-wage labor" and "exploitation" as the whole point of the program is pretty rich.
I'm going to disagree here. Looking just at tech, it's possible to have huge compensation and still exploitative working conditions, like unofficial expectations of unlimited overtime and being available 24/7 and putting up with abuse from others in the company.
Rachelbythebay wrote about this in 2018: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/09/08/visa/ if your company decides they don't want you anymore, you have _ten days_ to get a new sponsored job or be out of the country. If you're being bullied or harassed or otherwise treated badly and your employer knows full well they can have you kicked out of the country in under two weeks, would you really speak up?
For an extreme example, see Susan J Fowler's https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on... . Fowler had the luck to be a US citizen, so she could go public without being deported. (She also says she got another job offer less than a week later.) Would the next person in this situation, but on a H-1B visa be able to do the same?
> A lion's share of H-1Bs go to big tech companies where people make $250k a year or more. And where total comp of $400k+ is common for senior roles, with no regard for visa status.
Since you're apparently so acquainted with the stats, please enlighten us outsiders: what percentage of H-1B employees make $250K a year or more, and what percentage of H-1B employees make $400K+?
Considering US DOL didn’t count stock comp for prevailing wage (at least last i checked) it would not surprise me if over 50% do in fact clear 250k in total gross comp
Not being hyperbolic, ALL of H1B friends I personally know makes 250+ total comp. Many makes around that in base salary. ( most my friends are late 20 and early 30s )
Several reasons come to mind including better laborers. But also politics, culturalism, tax incentives, racism, bribery. Employment law has a large share of the legal market, keeping with litigation. We should have no expectation that companies are only hiring for company profit. Employees and managers appear to be, often times, doing what's best for themselves.
Some healthy subset of companies just want to hire the best people they can get that will accept their offer, and sponsoring an h1b is a small part of the overall costs.
As another commenter mentioned you may or may not consider my experience as selection bias. So with that out of the way:
- all H1B friends I know obviously are from work; I used to work at one of the FAANGs
- these friends are in late 20s and above, so at least SDE 2 if not more senior
- you can verify at levels.fyi that 250+ TC is normal for these roles
I'm interviewing a lot for my company and I recall in the height of the hiring boom that peaked around 21, we really are throwing out 200-300 TCs for fresh graduates, Americans or not
H1B salaries are public, but with the caveat that it only includes the base salary. So if you see someone getting paid $170k at Amazon, they actually make $170k + bonus at their level + equity that is almost as big as their salary. You can look at the public salaries, and compare them to the base of what people at their level get at the company they work for using levels.fyi to figure out how much they get paid.
In my area the top H1 salaries are mostly doctors and radiologists in the $200k to $500k range, but a huge chunk of the overall H1s go to teachers making sub $50k/yr. Along with random stuff like aircraft mechanics (also sub $50k) and postdocs (sub $60k). But a lot of random ones seem like scams - school district has a computer lab technician at $36k, for example.
Without any claim to the accuracy of the data, there is no incentive to list a salary on the LCA that is higher than required. You can always pay more, never less, so it only limits future flexibility. I have certainly paid higher salaries to individuals than what's listed on their LCA, not to mention total packages which aren't stated on the LCA.
