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H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

economist.com

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Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that is how the free market works your not one of those gosh darned socialists are you :-) And I suspect that for a "brown" skinned persons the south is not exactly a welcoming environment.

>And I suspect that for a "brown" skinned persons the south is not exactly a welcoming environment. That's very ignorant.

How so? The south is extremely hostile (in general; exceptions exist in pockets) to non-whites.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#302
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing the average salary of all H-1B jobs (developer, accountant, analyst, etc.) to the salary of a developer. Instead, look at the average salaries for H-1B software engineers in 2016: Facebook @ Menlo Park: $152k Google @ Mountain View: $130k Apple @ Cupertino: $154k Amazon @ Seattle: $124k Microsoft @ Redmond: $120 So comparing base salary alone, these companies are definitely not underpaying their H-1B…

So by "these companies" you mean Facebook, Google, etc, because they are paying the going rate by paying $152k. That just confirms the OPs first point, that TCS, Wipro and Infosys, with their 30,000 Visas avg. ~$70k, are massively abusing the system. Its about time these companies were prosecuted for lying to the government: Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 makes it a crime to: 1) knowingly and willfully; 2…

And it disproves OP's other point (the one he even highlighted in italics):

> None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I've been on interview calls with ones from the contracting companies, all their resumes are the same" That's starting to drive me nuts. We have to work with a limited set of contracting companies. Whenever we post a new job we get 20 of the same resumes. I usually immediately delete the ones that say "used try/catch statements" but other than that there is no way to distinguish between them.

It was a weird moment for me when I first tried searching a candidate's objective statement. I found ~10 other resumes indexed online with the same objective statement, followed by the job-tips site from which they had copied the sample word-for-word. I know that's an extreme case, but it's pretty bizarre when you start seeing literally identical content on different resumes.

So these contracting companies themselves send out resume to job post a companies makes? For example, received 20 CV for a job posted and all of them could have been sent from the same contracting company?

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#304
Ex-TCS employee here: Seen this every year during my tenure at TCS. Every year in February / January project teams are requested by HR to send "list of eligible candidates" to apply for H1-B visa. The eligibility is weirdly composed, like they keep out graduates who have CS background and senior associates out of it. This is to ensure the associates stick longer with the company once they move to US.

Finally the list comprises of 1000's of applicants for whom the Job Position is either falsely certified by Labour Department (LCA). (Dont understand why the Labour department never carries out an investigation).

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#305

(EU citizen point of view) I'd never consider a role in US that pays less than 150k (outside SV) $200k (SV/NY). H-1B is really bad because the holder has limited bargaining power vs US citizens hence he's forced to accept a lower salary when competing for jobs. There's also no clean way to allow talent to move around the world. A fair solution would be to agree on visa free movement of specialists earning above certa…

Once in the US, an H1-B auth holder can move at will to another company without informing the current employer. If the H1 transfer fails, it is a silent failure, Bargaining power is an illusion once the employee is in the US.

Yes and no. Most H1B's are stuck on that visa for a long time [more than 6 years] because they are waiting for their green card. Because green card is restricted by country, folks from India/China/Mexico have to wait much much longer to get a green card. If you change company when your green card is being processed, the whole process will have to restart. So most people just stick to their company and wait it out.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#306
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother is an electrician and makes worse money than I've seen administrative assistants make in tech shops. Partly, many of those trades have ceilings. Your salary doesn't always scale with skill and ambition like it can in IT.

I don't see how that is possible unless you work for someone else perhaps. If you are a licensed, bonded electrician and work for yourself (which a sizable portion of trade workers do) your earning potential is only limited by the amount of work you are willing to do. Stay busy and you make a lot, work one day a week and you starve. YMMV.

> The middle 50 percent of Electricians earn between $17.00 and $29.88 per hour, for an average annual income ranging between $35,360 and $62,150.20.

...that's a living, but it's not "damn good money" or "only limited by the amount of work you are willing to do". It's not even very competitive with entry-level salaries for IT jobs. It's competitive with "support" roles in those organizations. Like admins, entry-level HR jobs, etc.

That being said, I have a lot of respect for people with "dirty jobs" (my family and I have had them myself), and likewise, I have a lot of respect for Mike Rowe and his message. I'd be very happy if there were a newfound respect for those roles.

...but the money, work conditions, and career advancement prospects are certainly better for STEM degrees.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#307

Well it takes The Economist to point of this fact which I've been telling about it for ages. None of them believed that it was Indian who are favored to get H1B compared to other nationality. Indian take so much pride with Indian worker in these large tech firms and other places instead of realizing the fact they are favored. Why not give other nationality a chance to see what is going on? I've seen it happen with fi…

That is total nonsense. As an Indian, I can assure you that the bias is usually other way around. Of course, I have no data to prove. A more accurate way to look at why Indians are all over the place in technical companies is to go look at different engineering courses in American Universities. Indians/Chinese usually make up 50% or more of any grad class in most Universities.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also don't forget to add the ~$10-$20k in legal fees for sponsoring an H1b on top of that.

I guarantee all of the countries on this list, both the Valley tech firms, and the Indian IT firms, have in-house counsel specially versed in this, making the process largely boilerplate. When I moved to the US (to work for one of the companies on that list of tech firms), their attitude was "Do you need a visa?" (I didn't, as it happened) "Just let us know, we'll get you a H-1B". There wasn't any shadow of a doubt i…

It still about $6000 in filing fees and premium processing fees on top of the legal fees and meeting any other requirements the business has to meet to be in a place to sponsor them in the first place.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#309
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing the average salary of all H-1B jobs (developer, accountant, analyst, etc.) to the salary of a developer. Instead, look at the average salaries for H-1B software engineers in 2016: Facebook @ Menlo Park: $152k Google @ Mountain View: $130k Apple @ Cupertino: $154k Amazon @ Seattle: $124k Microsoft @ Redmond: $120 So comparing base salary alone, these companies are definitely not underpaying their H-1B…

Also don't forget to add the ~$10-$20k in legal fees for sponsoring an H1b on top of that.

The obligation for h1-bs is to pay a competitive salary, not a competitive salary sans legal fees for obtaining visa sponsorship.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#310
post #103

This one sentence says it all: "The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, America’s five biggest tech firms—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft—submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of…

H1Bs hired by companies like Amazon and Microsoft tend to be near the beginning of their careers, so a direct comparison to an average salary can be misleading. At least at Microsoft, the company helps H1Bs become permanent residents which would totally eliminate any ability the company has to underpay them. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

Apple does the same.
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