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.

Comments

former H1B here...

[BalkanBoy]

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.

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 ;) (for now).

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

These include people don't want to work for MS, don't want to relocate, don't like job, don't like salary, etc.

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.

Re:Well duh

[InferiorFloater]

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.