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

How do I get an H1B certification?

[Anonymous Coward]

My CS professor said you can only get a CS job these days with one of them, but I can't find any information on what I have to do to get certified.

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.

I have an H1-B employee

[Anonymous Coward]

He started on a TN visa, recruited from an engineering school in Mexico. After a year he was transitioned to an H1-B visa, where he still is.

You know, there may be unemployed citizens or green card holders with engineering degrees, but anyone as good as this employee would already be employed. He's imaginative, driven, and skilled. I wish the process to get him (and his wife, who was allowed to move here but isn't allowed to work) a green card wasn't so arduous.

The H1-B debate seems to be about "hiring Americans who need jobs over foreigners". I don't want to work with someone hired to fill a quota, whether that quota is "unemployable American who managed to get an engineering degree" or otherwise. There are plenty of engineering jobs out there for the competent, with room to spare for those who need visas.

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:I have an H1-B employee

[FerociousFerret]

Not sure about getting abused, but it certainly drives down the earning potential in the field. I have full time position, but was applying for a new opportunity. The position was listed with high requirements and experience. I fit the job description almost perfectly. When it came to discussing salary, they were offering $40k less than I currently make and without the high level of benefits I currently have. After I expressed disappointment in the salary for what was advertised as a highly experienced position, the recruiter said that their client was hoping to get an H1B visa person and the rate they quoted me was the going rate.

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.

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

Canadians

[iONiUM]

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."

As a Canadian, I've been offered over the years 2 separate jobs in the US with the offer to do it through a H1-B visa. Many of my ex-co-workers took up this offer at one point and have since moved to the US. I have no idea if they'll ever move back.

The salary offered through both of my offers were very competitive, and I only turned them down because I disagree with a lot of the way the US is run and prefer Canada, and the extra amount offered wasn't enough to make me want to leave.

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".

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.

Re:H-1B Visas Proving Awful For Americans

[Penguinisto]

I think it's even worse than that. The survey likely doesn't show what the individuals who got their H1-B's through Tata and Infosys actually get paid, instead showing what the tech corp paid agencies like Infosys or Tata instead for a given individual. Contractors are contractors, after all - the rate paid to the contracting agency for a guy is way more than the guy himself will ever see. A corp can pay a rate of $50/hr to the agency (be it US or foreign), but the guy in the seat is lucky to see $30/hr of that, before taxes. Tata and Infosys devour the majority of H1-B visas, so it stands to reason that maybe they should be more specific on who they're surveying.

TL;DR: I may be wrong, but I suspect that the survey is bullshit, and that the reality is that the individual more often than not gets paid slave wages, while the tech company can still happily report paying "industry standard", since they pay that "average" rate to the agency.

I could be wrong, but given greed...