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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.
Wouldn't it be easier for microsft to move to India than to move India here?
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Face facts: To Bill Gates, 10K a year IS pretty close to 100K. Sheerest poverty.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Of course Bill wants to import workers so he can pay them the same money he'd have to pay native-born workers. Duh!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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
What's not said in the article is that market rates change. Typically market rates go up (and I'd argue that they are up quite a bit right now). The greencard application process takes some time, and rates likely change in that time. If the greencard takes 2 years to apply for, and it's in process, then those H1-Bs don't want to change jobs and restart the application process. These aren't typical highly-mobile employees: they don't want to change jobs because the application process starts all over again. So, salaries of H1-B employees are likely to be considerably lower than current market rates.
From another perspective, Gates is saying that current market rates are ~100k. This is about right for mid-level software engineers with 2-4 years of experience, in that area.
It's not the same as looking at H1-B applications and trying to figure current rates, as they will reflect market conditions from 1-4 years ago (depending on when the H1-B process started for that individual).
Also, TFA cites green card applications, not green card grants.
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I know it's completely against the bizarro-world mentality you folks have to even consider this, but wasn't the original quote related by a third party? I know...crazy.
No kidding. I'm shocked -- shocked that Microsoft execs would lie about anything like this.
;)
Now I wonder about Vista - will it really rock my world? Is it really more secure than Linux? Now I'm not so sure Microsoft was telling the truth about that either.
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"Now I wonder about Vista - will it really rock my world?"
If by 'rock' you mean a short form of 'rock and roll' which was a euphamism for sex, then yeah, you're f**ked
When I first read that, I was as outraged as the rest of you, but if you think about it from his perpective, he's probably right.
When he says $100K, he's probably thinking salary+ health care + 401K + taxes. When you add that up on an average individual employee, you get to $100K pretty easily.
The difference is that when we read $100K, we assume salary only. I know lots of people working at MSFT, none of whom are making that much even after 5+ years there. Unless they are paying their H1-B's more, he's either thinking in terms of total compensation package or...he's just plain lying.
Honestly though, he may not actually know -- why would he care about an operational detail like that at this point in his career?
Bill Gates told David Broder of the Washington Post that Microsoft starts such workers at about $100,000
/year. The agency then takes 60% of this as commission, and the H1-B applicant gets the remaining $40,000.
The supply agency charges a company like Microsoft an hourly rate equivalent of $100,000
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So, as hard as it might be for some of you to stomach, Gates is telling the truth. These are not Janitors Microsoft is hiring, but highly trained, highly sought after individuals, regardless of country of origin.
Deal with it.
Bill Gates responded by saying, "I always tell the truth... even when I lie."
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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
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I and other H-1B's get paid exactly the same, if not better, than my American citizen counterparts.
While the base salary isn't breaking $100k a lot of the time, Microsoft gives everyone (H-1B or otherwise) a bucketload of benefits that would easily push the cost to MS well over $100k.
Add into the mix the fact that Microsoft has to pay shiteloads of money for legal services, filing fees, premium processing, etc. just to keep us in the country, and you realize that it costs MS a decent amount more to keep H-1Bs in the country. Plus, the stupid Americans like to randomly tear up your visas from time to time if you come from a "suspicious" country, and let me tell you, those are expensive battles.
And here's how this works, folks. They go to Eastern Europe and elsewhere and hire cream of the crop to entry level positions. You see, Microsoft has a system of "levels" according to which salaries and benefits are allocated. Typical starting level is 59. You can hire an average US college grad to that level (good ones go to Google these days), or you can go to, say, Moscow and hire a highly qualified, top notch software engineer with a few years of experience who has no opportunity to interview with Google first and whose negotiation skills equate to those of a squirrel. Who would you rather hire for your $70K? And you can keep L59 foreigner at 59 for much longer than a native, because his H1B process will only _start_ a year after he begins his employment and will take a few years (6 years and counting for some folks), during which moves are risky.
Now the thing is, both US college grad and experienced H1-B will be at the same starting level and will be paid the same wage. This DOES NOT mean they'll be doing the same job. There's a shortage of experienced folks, so the guy with experience will be doing things that require experience, when college grad will be doing something else. H1-B is therefore paid below the market wage for what he's doing (but not for his level). This, coupled with slower promotion rate puts him at a huge disadvantage. Given that promotion velocity is capped no matter how hard you bust your ass, you may never reach higher levels because you started lower and were promoted slower.
This is fully within the constraints of law, and not everyone ends up like this. I was in this situation and so were many of my H1-B coworkers.
Attending law school doesn't automatically mean you want to help people. It can mean a few things, sorted from most common to least:
1. You like money, or are a controlling asshole
2. Your father is a lawyer (and a controlling asshole)
3. You're really smart and think you can use the law to make a difference in the world. Oh by the way, you could dedicate your whole life to a single cause and maybe get the wheels turning. Then some guy with a bomb strapped to his chest will cause a bigger change overnight.
The fundamental problem with humanity is we're a bunch of selfish lazy assholes. Most people think of their career in terms of income, and vice versa. If janitors earned 150k a year and doctors earned only 20k, then everyone would want to be a janitor.. then someone would invent Janitor University, and govenrment would pass a law forcing people to get their 7 years of reeducation before being issued a license to wave a mop. And you'd see a lot more doctors robbing liquor stores.
I live in the government capital of Canada, lots of office jobs here. Some people grow up and they want to become doctors, psychologists, engineers... that's great, but for everyone else the common attitude is "I'm gonna get a cushy office job." What the hell kind of life goal is that ? They don't care what they actually do, as long as it's done in an office, with a disproportionate salary and nice benefits. Sure, some of them are highly skilled and would be useful if they weren't suffocated by the sheer number of imbeciles standing in their way. They do it for a few years, start to lose their mind then go on stress leave (paid, of course) because they hate their job and have no sense of self-worth. Some stronger types might choose to travel up the career ladder, until they're under so much pressure they just crack. What's worse is that most people go in with at least some qualities, but the homogenous nature of the office setting quickly breaks them into conformant drones.
Well what do you do when you're unhappy in your job ? You make changes to be happier, right ? What if all the jobs suck ass... what then ? You go get more money, to try and compensate for your misery. Eventually this cycle leads to fraudulent behavior, and that is why governments are corrupt. A perfectly happy public servant wouldn't dare consider any illegal activity that could jeopardize their career, but those people are greatly outnumbered by bitter wage slaves.
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