Comment by bitpush
7 hours ago
> paying them much less to do the same damn job.
That isnt true. A SWE engineer working at the same level at Redmond gets paid the same band irrespective of visa status.
7 hours ago
> paying them much less to do the same damn job.
That isnt true. A SWE engineer working at the same level at Redmond gets paid the same band irrespective of visa status.
sure, but there's the obvious counterfactual: if those engineers were scarcer, that level would likely be paid more
But it wouldn't result in more domestic workers being hired. Those companies would just have smaller workforces in the US and larger ones abroad.
Big Tech has hired functionally every domestic worker interested in and capable of doing the job. They pay so much already.
this is just not true. the market for new grads is extremely bad. Microsoft could easily invest in more early career people, instead they're hiring more senior H1-Bs.
4 replies →
> sure, but there's the obvious counterfactual: if those engineers were scarcer, that level would likely be paid more
There's another option: without a sufficient workforce, the projects just happen somewhere else. Then the local market stagnates, and you end up with very little competition between employers. And the salaries go down to match.
This is not a conjecture. The European tech sector is experiencing exactly this phenomenon. Even in large tech companies, the salaries for the same positions are about 50-100% higher in the US.
Correct!
Employers benefit from regulations that exist to benefit employers. We should have completely open borders or actually do what's best for citizen workers.
Employers would have to pay more competitive wages if the candidate pool was smaller. Then there is the free legal services given to some workers and not others, that leaves less budget overall for compensation.
How about the contractors working for Microsoft?
You can't work as a contractor on H1b. You need to be employed full-time.
They would be employed by another company, and contracted to Microsoft. This is the arrangement for the majority of H1-B employees in general, but I do not know if Microsoft does this.
Tech companies do not generally do this for their product teams, but may do it for their internal IT and reporting systems.
and how much pressure do they feel to raise the band over time when theres a constant stream of people coming in form another country who accept anything presented because its still higher than back home