Interesting to note the "developer" position salary in Illinois is slowly getting lower year by year.
Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
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Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#22I would like to see the 'value' taken from the point of view of the employer; how much is an H1B visa worth in terms of cost savings over a local employee?
Well, it's hard to quantify, but I'm guessing most of these employers derive tremendous value from having an employee they can basically own, and not have to worry about them leaving for a better company for a number of years. Obviously companies like Google and Facebook treat their employees well, but many of these visas are going to companies which are not Google or Facebook.
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Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#23This gets to the rub of prevailing wage. You are hiring a developer, do you call her an engineer where the prevailing wage is 87k or do you call her a programmer where the prevailing wage is 61k? This type of fraud is difficult to prove and there probably isn't even anyone responsible in the government to verify or investigate issues. EDIT: forgot to mention that the prevailing wage can be determined by salary survey…
I have known plenty of developers who may be great at coding a task but fall flat when architecting the same systems. There are often tradeoffs that must be made for business or technology purposes. These tradeoffs are generally product or engineering decisions that i would hesitate having a developer make.
There are just functional differences between developing software and engineering it. The sooner the software industry recognizes these differences, the better served we will all be.
Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#24It'd be interesting to see how H1B salaries compare to normal salaries, but that data probably isn't publicly available, right?
Exactly, I was kind of surprised that the H1B data was public in the first place. But private companies usually don't release their salary info. I don't even think public companies do.
LCA declarations filed for H1B does have salary data. It is there to stop people from exploiting immigrant workers. At least that is the official stance.
I am not sure how accurate the numbers are but this site seems to have extracted info from the H1B applications:
http://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-sponsors/
searchable by city.
Looking up menlo park tells me, FB was the largest sponsor with median salary of 133k.
Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#25FYI: the visualization doesn't load if you're using adblock or uBlock.
Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#26I would like to see the 'value' taken from the point of view of the employer; how much is an H1B visa worth in terms of cost savings over a local employee?
Well, it's hard to quantify, but I'm guessing most of these employers derive tremendous value from having an employee they can basically own, and not have to worry about them leaving for a better company for a number of years. Obviously companies like Google and Facebook treat their employees well, but many of these visas are going to companies which are not Google or Facebook.
You should read about H1B transfers.
Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#27I would like to see the 'value' taken from the point of view of the employer; how much is an H1B visa worth in terms of cost savings over a local employee?
At least in our limited experience we aren't saving any money, and that's not the driving factor. When the best person for the job needs a visa, that's what we do. It typically costs us $5k+/year in filing and legal fees on top of salary actually, so we pay MORE for H1B employees.
Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#28"The best city for software managers was Vancouver with an average salary of $183,500"
Is it because it's in Canadian dollars?
Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#29This gets to the rub of prevailing wage. You are hiring a developer, do you call her an engineer where the prevailing wage is 87k or do you call her a programmer where the prevailing wage is 61k? This type of fraud is difficult to prove and there probably isn't even anyone responsible in the government to verify or investigate issues. EDIT: forgot to mention that the prevailing wage can be determined by salary survey…
I have known plenty of developers who may be great at coding a task but fall flat when architecting the same systems. There are often tradeoffs that must be made for business or technology purposes. These tradeoffs are generally product or engineering decisions that i would hesitate having a developer make. There are just functional differences between developing software and engineering it. The sooner the software i…
> I have known plenty of developers who may be great at coding a task but fall flat when architecting the same systems.
AFAIK, the whole reason for the role title "software developer" is to indicate a breadth that goes beyond mere coding and subsumes system design and requirements analysis.
So a software developer shouldn't fall down on that task.
Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
#30"The best city for software managers was Vancouver with an average salary of $183,500" Is it because it's in Canadian dollars?
even if it was, that's still $145,970