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Did Gates Fib About H1-B Salaries?
netbuzz writes "While in Washington last year lobbying for higher H1-B visa limits, Bill Gates told David Broder of the Washington Post that Microsoft starts such workers at about $100,000. An analysis by one offshoring critic suggests that's not true. If his analysis is correct, it would undermine part of the case for lifting H1-B ceilings.
He meets politicians and tells them whatever his acolytes ask him to tell them. He would go to India and tell exactly the opposite story. Go look at Indian websites oooohing aaahhing his compliments and how much he is going to invest in India and how important R&D done in India is to Microsoft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The issue is absolutely finding enough qualified people for the jobs that are available.
If that's the issue- and I hate to sound like a broken record, but I've posted this in EVERY freakin' H-1b story on slashdot- why not take UNQUALIFIED PEOPLE, and then pay for their traing so that they can fill the jobs that are available? Wouldn't that be cheaper than getting people from half a world away?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
To Bill Gates' point - H1B's that get hired by U.S. companies are required to pay the prevailing wage for the profession the H1B is being hired in, for the region they reside in. I immigrated into the U.S. via the H1B route (I'm a citizen now and I also did my undergraduate in CS here), and have been able to verify that the prevailing wage was indeed paid to me while I was an H1B.
;) (for now).
There is also another law that states that no more than 15% of your workforce can be H1-B based. This law is meant to protect U.S. citizens from being displaced by H1-B's and to assure that only really critical roles can be filled with H1-B workers. No one is going to hire an HR person on an H-1B (well unless they are super critical in an HR-kind of way to the company).
Another noteworthy thing to mention is, prevailing wage != FMV (fair market value) wage, at least in my experience. This difference between the two may amount to _some_ savings, but I doubt it is as significant as, let's say, hiring a foreign Indian worker in India at 1/2 or less the salary.
Speaking of hiring offshore - this may or may not prove to be a value added proposition - if you have some seriously senior, super-technical project managers who can divvy up a project into many well-defined/well-bounded specific tasks (e.g. write code for login/logout procedures for a webapp based on Tomcat, using JAAS as the authentication/mechanism, task #2, integrate JAAS with Active Directory on Windows Server, etc.), delegating these tasks to off-shore people, it could work. But this only works in a mature environment like Microsoft probably. It could work in smaller companies too, but it's much riskier, and it could inhibit the company's growth.
Offshoring is overrated. Hiring local, U.S. talent as well as H1B is much better value. Well, that's my opinion anyway, and I'm sticking to it
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Supply and demand says that you are just simply not offering enough to make it worth someone's while. Offer the right amount and you will have absolutely no problem finding the people locally. All you are doing here is increasing the supply to dilute the value of the job. I can't blame you for wanting to do so, but it would be nice if you would least acknowledge the fact instead of trying to pass the blame on to the workers who you aren't willing to compensate.
What the hell?
So instead of looking for the best talent globally, a company should *pay* for a worker who may not have the inclination or drive to master his profession?
I'm no Republican, but if that's not the road to a stagnant country where entitlements are expected then I don't know what is.
My girlfriend is on an h1b for architecture; she's from Japan. She's also the hardest, most driven worker her company has, and they offered her ridiculous amounts of money (for architecture) during her review because she's such an asset. They didn't hire her because she's cheaper, they hired her because she's good.
I can't think of a faster way to torpedo the American character than the parent's idea.
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Get back to me when my brain starts working.
No, the GP is right. The fact that you pay native workers the same means that you are reducing US worker salary to the H1B level. But either way, you're paying the H1B less than you'd pay an American if the program didn't exist.
There's no such thing as "not enough qualified people". There's only "not enough qualified people for the amount we wish to pay." If you raised what you offered, you get the people you ned. If you competitors did the same, more people would enter/stay in the profession.
But only if you discount offshoring...
Once you factor offshoring into the mix, the question becomes whether the jobs move overseas until the US salaries drop to the overseas salaries plus transaction costs.
So -- the CEOs are right: we do need and H1B program. But not for the reasons they state. Politically, they can't say "give us this program or we'll move our jobs to India," politically it would be seen as blackmail. Tariffs and taxes would be up overnight.
This is not just an academic distinction. The rationale you have determines the kind of program you create. If you want to depress salaries, you have a program like what we have now. Invite 'em over for a few years, then kick them out of the country when they've achieved seniority, creating knowledge transfer to places with lower salaries ripe for offshoring.
If you want to prevent jobs going overseas, you invite people over here and encourage them to stay as long as they want; you just don't let in more new inexperienced workers and kick the experienced ones out.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.