H-1B Visas Proving Lucrative For Engineers, Dev Leads

Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes Ever wanted to know how much H-1B holders make per year? Developer Swizec Teller, who is about to apply for an H-1B visa, took data from the U.S. Department of Labor and visualized it in a series of graphs that break down H-1B salaries on a state-by-state basis. Teller found that the average engineer with an H-1B makes $87,000 a year, a good deal higher than developers ($74,000) and programmers ($61,000) with the same visa. ("Don't call yourself a programmer," he half-joked on Twitter.) Architects, consultants, managers, administrators, and leads with H-1Bs can likewise expect six-figure annual salaries, depending on the state and company. Teller's site is well worth checking out for the interactive graphs, which he built with React and D3.js. The debate over H-1Bs is an emotional one for many tech pros, and research into the visa's true impact on the U.S. labor market wasn't helped by the U.S. Department of Labor's recent decision to destroy H-1B records after five years. "These are the only publicly available records for researchers to analyze on the demand by employers for H-1B visas with detail information on work locations," Neil Ruiz, who researches visa issues for The Brookings Institution, told Computerworld after the new policy was announced in late 2014.

Comments

Re:H-1B Visas Proving Awful For Americans

[jedidiah]

I wouldn't even go that far. In all of the locations I looked at where I have some knowledge of the going rates, that data actually showed that the H1-Bs are on the low end of the scale.

This data doesn't appear to be anything to brag about really.

Yeah.. they can't find "engineers" in the country.

[SirGeek]

No, The real issue (I believe) is that they can't find engineers willing to work for less than other engineers (2/3rd the pay and no benefits).

I've seen when they do a postings for H1B jobs, Its tailored specifically to that person for THAT job, then its posted for just long enough to meet the legal requirement to "prove" they tried to find a qualified US engineer but nope, They didn't find any so the H1B person is kept

Re:I have an H1-B employee

[jedidiah]

No. The H1B debate is about creating an easy to exploit underclass. Even the "talented types" get abused by corporations. Corporations get a free pass to rape pillage and plunder because that's just (Ayn Rand) trendy these days.

Corporations want people that are easy to exploit. People with full legal status are harder to abuse. They also have higher expecations and higher overhead.

Re: H-1B Visas Proving Awful For Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

They chose to come here, they must play by our rules. If they don't like it, they can find a job in their home country and make a few bucks a day, living in a run down house, having to purify water before drinking it, etc. So for them, who SHOULDN'T EVEN BE HERE BECAUSE THERE ARE MANY AMERICANS WHO ARE QUALIFIED WHO CAN'T GET A TECH JOB BECAUSE OF THESE H1BS, this is luxury, even with the visa restrictions.

Re:Canadians

[Mr D from 63]

Everyone seems to imagine those holding H1-B visas to be from poor countries who are ready to work 12 hours a day as a slave to avoid being shipped "back to the slums."

My experience with H1-B engineers is that they all have very different situations. I know several that wanted a few years in the US simply for the experience and contacts, then they would go back to Asia in a better position than they left. Some Europeans want to live here for a while for the experience but eventually plan to return home, those individuals often have a lot of experience. Others have little to return to and hope for citizenship here, they tend to be younger, less experienced people.

I think there are a certain number of engineers with certain skill sets that can demand a quite high pay, skewing the average upward for "engineers".

Re:I have an H1-B employee

[RabidReindeer]

The H1-B debate seems to be about "hiring Americans who need jobs over foreigners".

Not in Southern California.

The debate there is in firing Americans in the hundreds just to replace them with cheaper H1-Bs.

Re:H-1B Visas Proving Awful For Americans

[Austerity Empowers]

Don't compare salaries for one job against salaries for another job. $87k for an (electrical/computer) engineer is exceptionally low, generally 5 years xp max. I have seen H1B justifier req's out there where they offer that salary to 10-15 year people who make almost twice that, and obviously turn it down.

This is pure FUD, of the "those people make more than me, so fuck them" variety. But H1B continues to be a huge problem and deterrent for people in the country to be in the field, and has the salary lowering effect we expect it would have.

So Cal Edison Reduces Local Headcount w/ Tata, etc

[operator_error]

Here, let me back up your point with last week's news from the LA Times:

"Michael Hiltzik of The Los Angeles Times reports that Southern California Edison, the local electrical utility, has let go of 500 IT employees by outsourcing jobs to Tata and Infosys who are top users/abusers of the U.S. H1-B visa process; 400 So Cal employees were laid off and 100 'left voluntarily', many with decades of experience. As indicative of a trend this has now become, last year Minnesota-based agribusiness behemoth Cargill said it would outsource as many as 900 IT jobs to Tata.
 
These employees perform the crucial work of installing, maintaining and managing Edison's computer hardware and software for functions as varied as payroll and billing, dispatching and electrical load management across Edison's vast power generating and electric transmission network. The workers I interviewed are in their 50s or 60s and have spent decades serving as loyal Edison employees.
 
"They told us they could replace one of us with three, four, or five Indian personnel and still save money," one laid-off Edison worker told me, recounting a group meeting with supervisors last year. "They said, 'We can get four Indian guys for cheaper than the price of you.' You could hear a pin drop in the room."
 
They're not the sort of uniquely creative engineering aces that high-tech companies say they need H-1B visas to hire from abroad, or foreign students with master's degrees or doctorates from U.S. universities who also can be employed under the H-1B program. They're experienced systems analysts and technicians for whom these jobs have been stairways from the working class to five- or six-figure middle-class incomes. Many got their training at technical institutes or from Edison itself.
 
This worker and the half-dozen others I interviewed asked to remain anonymous because their severance packages forbid them to speak disparagingly about the company."

Re:H-1B Visas Proving Awful For Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Me and my friends all have either H1-B or TN visas, we all have six figure incomes. The H1-B workers who have a low salary have it because they don't have the motivation to improve or the skills to stand out, the same as people who are not using a work visa.

I've switched jobs 3 times, and it really is no problem with the visa, in my case I just fill out a 'change of employer' form and that is it, I don't even need to leave the country.