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H1B Salaries in the US

smokinn.com

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#11
looks like there was a minor error there. The prevailing wage is not the wage offered to the H1B visa recipient, so it's not necessarily how much is being spent. That field is a required field for filing the application and is itself a statistic generated by a third party. it's a nice analysis though.

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#12
post #3

would you be able to provide the average programmer salary for the biggest visa spenders

If you mean for example the average of all programmers inside Microsoft compared to the average of those on H1B, no I can't since that data isn't public.

The H1B database is public and you're required by law to register every H1B hire in it. That's the data source I was looking at. Companies don't typically advertise what salaries they pay employees if they don't have to.

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#13

It must really suck to be a senior software engineer making less than 95k knowing that there are probably some new grads that get an initial offer of more than that. Wait, really? By "some" we're talking "very, very few" right? Surely salaries haven't come that far since when I graduated.

[deleted]

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#14

It must really suck to be a senior software engineer making less than 95k knowing that there are probably some new grads that get an initial offer of more than that. Wait, really? By "some" we're talking "very, very few" right? Surely salaries haven't come that far since when I graduated.

The number has been anecdotally creeping up. It was less than a year ago that I was reading a really good software dev could expect to make a little over 80k straight out of college.

Either the competition for good programmers really did get that fierce, or HN's collective estimation of a good programmer salary has been undergoing self-inflation.

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#15
post #5

Its interesting how the top H1B companies are IT consultancy companies. There are far too many enterprise I.T. consultants and I'm all for B2B adoption of software. I question how much value these consultants add sometimes. I hear so many stories of failed deployments and spending millions on projects a few competent individuals could of accomplished.

Outsourcing companies have lower salaries on average.

Google salary http://www.salarylist.com/company/Google-Salary.htm?order=1 Microsoft salary http://www.salarylist.com/company/Microsoft-Salary.htm?order...

vs Wipro http://www.salarylist.com/company/Wipro-Salary.htm?order=1 Accenture http://www.salarylist.com/company/Accenture-Salary.htm?order...

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#16

looks like there was a minor error there. The prevailing wage is not the wage offered to the H1B visa recipient, so it's not necessarily how much is being spent. That field is a required field for filing the application and is itself a statistic generated by a third party. it's a nice analysis though.

Ouch, you're right.. I really screwed up there. There's a wage_rate column and a prevailing_wage_rate and I should have used the former.. I'll try to fix this up asap.

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#17

looks like there was a minor error there. The prevailing wage is not the wage offered to the H1B visa recipient, so it's not necessarily how much is being spent. That field is a required field for filing the application and is itself a statistic generated by a third party. it's a nice analysis though.

That's right. The prevailing wage comes from the Dept of Labor. Companies are required to pay at least the prevailing wage.

I know when I was on H1-B, I was paid a good 50% more than the prevailing wage.

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#18
Some context/theorizing about Edison, NJ. Edison is a largely Indian town. In particular, it attracts many people who don't want personal exposure to the US or non-Indians - such a lifestyle would be difficult anywhere besides Edison or Jersey City. They are only in the US to earn USD.

My theory as to why Edison wages are so low: most of the Edison companies are low end bodyshops - if you need a warm body with J2EE, they will give you a warm body. Their competitive advantage is that the Edison guys they hire never talk to non-Indians [1] and never discover they are ridiculously underpaid.

Incidentally, the food in Edison is fantastic. Jersey City also has good low end food (e.g., dosas), though nothing great at the higher end.

[1] It's not even an Indian nationalism thing - many of them avoid socializing with Indians from a different state/ethnicity. I get dirty looks when they see me with an Indian girl.

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#19

It must really suck to be a senior software engineer making less than 95k knowing that there are probably some new grads that get an initial offer of more than that. Wait, really? By "some" we're talking "very, very few" right? Surely salaries haven't come that far since when I graduated.

[deleted]

Re: H1B Salaries in the US

#20
post #16

looks like there was a minor error there. The prevailing wage is not the wage offered to the H1B visa recipient, so it's not necessarily how much is being spent. That field is a required field for filing the application and is itself a statistic generated by a third party. it's a nice analysis though.

Ouch, you're right.. I really screwed up there. There's a wage_rate column and a prevailing_wage_rate and I should have used the former.. I'll try to fix this up asap.

statistics is hard. There is a good field description list out there... also it might be interesting to look at the status of applications.

For example are there any applications where the wage rate was below the prevailing wage and were accepted?

What is the relationship between % over prevailing wage and acceptance of the application? That might lead to a useful model.

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