Live data from Hacker News

US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

theregister.com

21–30 of 67 posts

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#21
post #5
post #2

What are the implications of this should Trump be reelected tomorrow?

I think you meant to say "Trump NOT be re-elected tomorrow". If Biden comes in would he cow-tow to the tech companies and undo this?

It’s likely. $200k goes well above market rate so it wouldn’t be that politically unpopular.

Also, one usually doesn’t involve cows when kowtowing.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#22
> The reality is that some H-1B workers such as an IT analyst would need a starting salary of $208,000 to be eligible – a massive jump over the previous requirement.

> An entry-level programmer would need to make $111,946 instead of the previous $78,125.

The title is kind of misleading and inaccurate.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#24
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah - you could see in prior years how most h1bs were allocated to WITCH companies. https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe... Since h1b is a lottery system, these companies flooding the system with their applicants at lower salaries was directly impacting the chances of employees at other companies. I anecdotally knew a coworker at a FAANG who failed to get his h1b consecutively for two years i…

You are mixing that up with the Greencard, which is a lottery system. H1B must not be a lottery system, and it must not be a way to offload expensive domestic labor to cheap imported labor. Which the well-known Indian H1B cheating companies did. The minimal wage is mandatory to exclude those abusers of the H1B system, so they it is not overloaded anymore. But 200k is definitely too high for the rest of the US, which…

H1b is a lottery.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#25
post #14

This is such a terrible idea. Ensures only people on H1 are techies in FAANG in the Bay Area. Forget about doctors and nurses in rural areas

Not a matter of rural vs urban for doctors. It's a matter of resident vs. attending doctor.

Resident doctors gets paid 50k/yr to work 80 hr weeks.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#26
post #18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic economics would predict that H1B visas drive wages down. Anything different would be surprising, and would require extraordinary evidence.

It is not so simple. We do not act in a world with perfect information to predict the supply and demand curve. There are only 65,000 H1B in a year of which 20,000 are prioritized for people with a masters degree in US. Given the economy of size of US and the kind of roles being filled by H1B, it is doubtful that they have any meaningful impact on wages. There are bad actors who take advantage of H1B to get people to…

> do not see the same talk about H2 (agricultural workers) coming in to work in US and people arguing that they are making the farm wages depressed.

That’s just because people affected by that policy are not able (or educated enough) to make their argument in any forum you might be reading, and have long resigned to the idea that they are shit jobs anyway so might as well leave them to the poorest of the Earth — particularly when it means everyone benefits from low food prices.

The same happens in the UK (and other wealthy European countries). Society as a whole has accepted that seasonal rural work should be left to a transient workforce from poorer areas in order to keep food prices down. Locals wouldn’t be bothered with those jobs without a significant wage increase, which would push prices up quite dramatically. Even in the context of an isolationist and xenophobic wave, it was always assumed the UK agri sector would be exempted by migration restrictions - and effectively it has been. In many ways, it’s a more honest and frank argument than in other sectors, in its brutality.

I’m a migrant myself but I’ve long come to the conclusion that we should be a bit more honest in this particular debate. Yes, we do keep salaries down, which increases profitability and competitiveness for companies, keeping the supply-side of the economy well-lubricated in the age of global competition. This is largely necessary, unless you want to stagnate like early-00s Japan. It just has to be compensated with higher corporate taxes and more quality services / low prices for everyone, to keep society fair.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#27

Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression. There is plenty of tech talent pipeline inside the country. Just look at the eager undergrads looking for employment and other US citizens looking to step into tech field via boot camps. Increasing the threshold for the wages to paid for “specialty occupa…

> Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression. Not really, Big Tech pays H1Bs competitive salaries ( https://insights.dice.com/2020/05/19/google-apple-amazon-oth... ). What this mostly affects is IT consulting firms like Tata and Infosys.

Does it though? Prior discussions on this made me aware that H1B is mostly not profitable for the consulting firms. It’s the offshore work where they can severely underpay. So long as a US company can get offshore workers via the consulting firms (their preferred business model), all is well.

But ya, we don’t need to import someone doing JavaScript over to America anymore (which, believe it or not, is what I’ve witnessed). There’s no rhyme or reason to it, we have a solid home grown talent pool for that.

A lot of full stack web dev work can be saturated by Americans because there’s enough people crossing industries to take it on.

I’ll let the other types of developers chime in on what kind of shortage they are seeing, because I see zero in web development. It’s nothing personal to my immigrant friends, but believe it or not our industry is pretty crowded at the moment to justify opening up to foreign workers. We can easily drive prices down amongst ourselves at the rate we’re going at.

I support this policy through and through, and I’m a Democrat.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#28
post #21
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you meant to say "Trump NOT be re-elected tomorrow". If Biden comes in would he cow-tow to the tech companies and undo this?

It’s likely. $200k goes well above market rate so it wouldn’t be that politically unpopular. Also, one usually doesn’t involve cows when kowtowing.

> An entry-level programmer would need to make $111,946 instead of the previous $78,125. I find the $200k in title is very misleading, as always.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#29
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you meant to say "Trump NOT be re-elected tomorrow". If Biden comes in would he cow-tow to the tech companies and undo this?

What makes you think the big tech companies didn't lobby for this? It conveniently kills many of the startups that can challenge big tech. It will continue no matter who's elected.

Big companies are dependent on small companies for much of the innovation in computer engineering and information services.
Post reply on HN