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A Tool For Analyzing H-1B Visa Applications Reveals Tech Salary Secrets
Tekla Perry writes: The golden age of engineers is not over,' says a French software engineer who developed a tool for mining U.S. Department of Labor visa application data, but, he says, salaries appear to be leveling off. Indeed, salary inflation for software engineers and other technical professionals at Google and Facebook has slowed dramatically, according to his database, and Airbnb and Dropbox pay is down a little, though Netflix pay is through the roof. The data also shows that some large companies appear to be playing games with titles to deflate salaries, and Microsoft is finally offering technology professionals comparable salaries to Apple and Google. There's a lot more to be discovered in this interactive database, and researchers are getting ready to mine it.
These are all companies based in cities with astronomically high costs of living.
Of course there's a lot of people who are highly paid. Chances are that those people are highly skilled, or at least have highly specialized skills as well.
Put another way: if you get a degree in computer science, or you are self-taught using common resources, you probably have a skill set that reflects that reflects the bare minimum that a company will accept and you have a skill set that the market is flooded with. Either way, you are unlikely to receive a good salary and you are probably going to face a lot of competition to get a job.
On the other hand, those who specialize may enter disciplines with less demand but they are also entering disciplines with far less competition for jobs. If that discipline offers a good return for the investment for a business, those people will frequently garner better salaries. Likewise, if you have that computer science degree but consistently put in the effort to perform beyond expectations chances are that you'll have more opportunities and reap better rewards.
I'm not going to say that it'll work for everyone. Motivation in the workplace and soft skills count too. Too many people hold themselves back due to psychological rather than intellectual reasons. On the other hand, if you prepare yourself to be a low paid cog you will almost certainly end up being a low paid cog.
Looks like there are a lot of highly skilled and highly paid people in the companies I looked... the opposite of the Slashdot narrative of indentured servants working on minimum wage.
And then there's this from TFA:
In Négri’s opinion, that could be a trick to bring in a technically skilled worker at a lower cost: “If the title says software engineer, you pay a lot” to stay in compliance with the H-1B laws that require immigrants to be paid the prevailing wage, he says. “If the title says ‘consultant’, instead of $130,000 you might pay $60,000, the gap is that big.” He pointed to a “technology lead” for Infosys in Sunnyvale, Calif., listed in the database as having a salary of $87,000. “That’s not much for Silicon Valley,” Négri says.
While it may not be minimum wage or indentured servitude, the point about wage suppression still has merit.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Looks like there are a lot of highly skilled and highly paid people in the companies I looked... the opposite of the Slashdot narrative of indentured servants working on minimum wage.
And then there's this from TFA:
In Négri’s opinion, that could be a trick to bring in a technically skilled worker at a lower cost: “If the title says software engineer, you pay a lot” to stay in compliance with the H-1B laws that require immigrants to be paid the prevailing wage, he says. “If the title says ‘consultant’, instead of $130,000 you might pay $60,000, the gap is that big.” He pointed to a “technology lead” for Infosys in Sunnyvale, Calif., listed in the database as having a salary of $87,000. “That’s not much for Silicon Valley,” Négri says.
While it may not be minimum wage or indentured servitude, the point about wage suppression still has merit.
Companies do play games with the titles. Another way that wages are suppressed is by bringing in a foreign worker at the prevailing local rate. Take a look at the numbers for Accenture. The vast majority of their H1-B hires are just barely more than the prevailing rate. In most cases, within $100.
I have also heard that it is very common for a company to claim on H1-B applications a higher salary than was actually paid to the employee.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.