Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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).
I am a Microsoft manager. The salaries paid for H1-B employees is exactly the same as those paid anyone else. It is not legal to do otherwise. For every H1-B employee I hire, I have to provide a salary comparison against non H1-B employees at that same skill/job level for the government that shows we are not underpaying the H1-B employees. The issue is absolutely finding enough qualified people for the jobs that are available. There are a number of reasons that jobs cannot be filled without the H1-B visas. These include people don't want to work for MS, don't want to relocate, don't like job, don't like salary, etc.
Gates may not have the exact salary numbers (I'd say the average today is more like $90k base, definitely > $100k w/ bonus). The alternative (which is happening as well) is to hire the employees in their home countries and pay them 1/3 as much and not have that money returned to the local US economy.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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.
---------
Get back to me when my brain starts working.
I was the best programmer in my graduating undergrad class
The tallest midget in the circus is still a midget.
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.