H-1B Visa Most Used for 'Software Engineer,' 'Software Developer' Roles

https://insights.dice.com/2019/08/19/h-1b-job-titles-software-engineer/

by SunTzu9087 • 7 years ago

63 85 7 years ago

insights.dice.com

The unfortunate part is that these visas are being used for cheap labor rather than not being able to fund talent.

crb0022• 7 years ago

If I were a VC I would invest huge in Mexico City talent development. Far more under-trained talent there and same time zone so remote from MC is temporally seamless.

commandlinefan• 7 years ago

Harder to find English speakers there, though. Plus, Mexico's government is a lot more uncertain than India's.

crb0022• 7 years ago

Limited resource maximizing the price by the market selecting higher paying jobs to use it on.

IMHO we need Federalism. The States should be given an allotment of work visas. Let them decide how many and who to give them out to.

merpnderp• 7 years ago

Federalism would solve a lot of the country's problems.

henvic8• 7 years ago

No. Federalism creates most of the problems in the US: drug wars, invasions overseas, absurd military expending, reduced comparative advantages between states, the evil patents system, expensive medical care, etc.

The more concentrated the state apparatus, the more powerful the government and the less free and poor the people are.

-- correction: I meant centralized power, not federalism.

jimbob45• 7 years ago

I might previously have argued that H-1Bs were causing a domino effect on the rest of US employment - their complete inability to negotiate higher salaries spilled over into the rest of the industry.

However, I see now that such an argument is shortsighted. There is no evidence outside of my own conjecture to support such a thing and my frustration with my own experiences in the industry is causing me to scapegoat H-1Bs instead of taking an objective look at the problems in our industry. While I still may not agree with H-1Bs, it is because I believe that there are qualified Americans that could take those jobs, not because they're harming our industry as a whole.

tkahnoski• 7 years ago

Have you had first experience with H1-B employees?

There definitely is inertia on moving companies for higher wage. However in my experience the public posting of title and salary has lifted net wages as it provides transparency on wages that otherwise would be kept hidden from employees.

henvic8• 7 years ago

Immigrants are what built the US recently (after the real Americans... the native ones). Why close the gates now? Please don't use them (or us; though I'm not in the US) as scapegoats; this is not just.

No one should have a privilege to employment. You and your potential employer shall have the right to associate freely.

They should be seen just as regular competitors [with really hard barriers of entry]. If anything, blame the state agencies for making their lives worse and yours more unpredictable because by the blink of an eye, they can make the market go one direction or another, unjustly.

We should end these artificial barriers. Not blame the victims (that includes not only the immigrants but also locals who can't figure out the real market forces both to plan their careers and to make hiring decisions).

bumby8• 7 years ago

What other artificial employment barriers do you advocate removing? They may not all be just or implemented particularly well, but I think there are some (e.g., child labour, work-health standards, etc.) that make sure the economy is serving society and not the other way around.

NCG_Mike2• 7 years ago

As someone who worked in the US with a H1-B, in my case it was because you'd not find someone with my particular skill at that point in time. I was also paid more than the employees at the company I was contracted to work at - because of my particular skill and I'd taken a pay cut to move to the US.

This is what the H1-B is/was supposed to be like. It does seem that it has been abused.

cptskippy4• 7 years ago

in my case it was because you'd not find someone with my particular skill at that point in time.

That's how the program is sold and it's incredibly easy to game. Require 10 years of Swift experience and suddenly the candidate pool is dry. Generally most, if not all, IT job postings list an unrealistic and fictitious skill set.

I was also paid more than the employees at the company I was contracted to work at

The cost of a Full-time Employee is usually something like 140-160% of their salary. So a contractor making 120% more than an FTE is still cheaper for the employer.

ccffph• 7 years ago

You were the only person in America that could do that exact task? What were you doing?

whatshisface3• 7 years ago

There is no evidence outside of my own conjecture to support such a thing

Every economist believes in supply and demand curves. If there are any H1Bs being awarded to replaceable programmers (as opposed to specialized programmers with no American counterparts, as was the intended use of the system), then wages are being depressed. It's practically a law of physics.

noego2• 7 years ago

Economists also believe in the lump of labor fallacy, which your comment perfectly exemplifies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

thatfrenchguy4• 7 years ago

Except supply and demand for employment is not elastic at all, so it’s not really a fair comparaison.

geebee3• 7 years ago

I think it's a little more complicated than that. A pool of 1000 workers won't necessarily earn less than a pool of 100 workers. With higher specialization, they may well earn far more.

However, this assumes that employment is fluid, and that people are allowed to choose a profession or trade that aligns with market signals and their own personal interests and preferences. In short, every citizen who considers becoming a developer int he valley is also free to become a plumber in Duluth or a lawyer in New York City. Or open a scented candle shop, or a surfboard shaping business.

The point of the H1B visa is to create a system where visa restrictions and sunk costs create a pool of workers who aren't allowed to make those choices, and are limited to a few fields where Silicon Valley CEOs have declared a "shortage".

And, astonishingly, many people talk about this shortage without discussing wages, work conditions, career stability, and the other options available to highly skilled people who can choose other professions (you know, those pesky free folk who just won't become developers in the valley at the rates tech CEOs have decided they should).

The US has a really grim history of creating non-free worker classes in order to undermine free labor markets. This is another installment of it, though the H1-B abuses, clearly documented and really bad, are nonetheless minor compared to some of these historical horrors.

bryanlarsen• 7 years ago

Supply and demand for labour is spectacularly difficult to model accurately.

JamesSchriver• 7 years ago

The reality that is not going to be well received by people here is that you don't seem to understand that the H1B visa is not some exercise in globalist altruism for foreigners over native people in their own homes; it is a ruse, a scam to masquerade the wealth pillage by the ruling class from their own nature middle and working class, by driving down wages and salaries, while also using it to cover up the reality that they are utterly illegitimate and incompetent rulers that did not adequately mange the country and resources to produce the supply of workers they would have needed to meet the demand domestically.

What that translates to the H1B loving crowd here, is that the second the H1B visa and all the other ponzi scheme tactics are no longer profitable to the ruling elite, like if the cost of an H1B were doubled and tripled, as they should be (e.g., must pay the H1B holder triple what a domestic employee would receive, and tax the employee at double the going tax rate, while also paying a $200,000 employment tax along with $200,000 annual visa maintenance costs), you would not see any H1Bs or any immigration. The ruling class are pillaging the working and middle class USA through a kind of leveraged buyout type of con job where they are getting their own people to finance and support their own pillage. It's why the ruling class is so in support of "immigration" because "immigration" makes the ruling class wealthier and more powerful as a matter of marginal increase through every "immigrant" that is imported to pillage wealth and opportunities from the native population.

But I get it, as long as people here are largely benefiting and getting wealthy from the exploitation, the exploitation is invisible to most. Not even to mention the detrimental effects of skill concentration by extracting and draining the most driven and motivated and educated from their respective countries, whether they are Nicaragua or France. All but the centralizing power are degraded by immigration and no rationalization or delusion will change that reality.

thatfrenchguy4• 7 years ago

every "immigrant" that is imported to pillage wealth and opportunities from the native population.

You realize the « native population » of the US was victim of a genocide right ?

momokoko• 7 years ago

I agree that when you look at the total number of H-1Bs being awarded vs the size of the total labor market in sofware engineering, it seems unlikely it is having a massive effect.

And if you look at the massive absusers of the system(Toptal, Wipro etc), that use it to lower pay, I feel as though many of those jobs would have instead been outsourced oversees anyway. So at the very least, for a US perspective, the taxes and consumer spending are still partly captured in the US as opposed to another country.

arugulum• 7 years ago

Here's a quick immigration quiz:

- An international student graduates at the top of their class in Stanford in CS, and goes to work for a tech company. What visa do they use?

The correct answer is F1 (OPT) for one year, with OPT STEM extension for 2 extra years, while they apply for H-1B. If they weren't a STEM major, regardless of their actual role, they have a single year to apply for H-1B, with a ~30% chance of success, before being asked to leave the country. Regardless of their qualifications.

We all know the H-1B is susceptible to abuse. But it is also the main feasible channel for any international to work in the United States. (Excluding country-specific visas, transfers.)

But shouldn't qualified H-1B applicants be supportive of immigration reform?

I would, if I had any confidence that it would be done well. As things are, changes almost always end up hurting the applicants. See: the recent flood of RFEs. See: the suspension of H-1B premium processing.

The entire lives and livelihoods of immigrant workers, even exceptionally high-skilled ones, hinge upon delicate archaic bureaucracy and paperwork, not to mention politics (see: the fear of the government unilaterally suspending the OPT STEM extension). Introducing further uncertainty to the process almost always makes things worse, and that's why many of us are nervous about any proposed changes.

petilon3• 7 years ago

This article is comparing the average salary of junior engineers (because H-1B employees tend to be junior, they move off of H-1B into green cards after a few years) with the average salary of software engineers as a whole.

_verandaguy• 7 years ago

H-1B employees tend to be junior

Junior in the industry, or junior to doing work in the US on a visa?

I'm nearly a decade into my career and considering taking up work in the US coming from Canada -- is there a better way of starting work in the US as a dev?

petilon3• 7 years ago

Yes, the TN-1 visa.

cptskippy4• 7 years ago

they move off of H-1B into green cards after a few years

In theory, not in practice.

petilon3• 7 years ago

In practice if they can't or decided not to apply for a green card they leave after 6 years.

thatfrenchguy4• 7 years ago

We could just fix that by having employees apply for green cards instead of the company sponsoring them.

uasm4• 7 years ago

"H-1B employees tend to be junior"

You do realize that this generalization can't possibly be true?

H-1B are reserved for "highly skilled immigrants" carrying out skilled work. You won't find kitchen staff, taxi drivers or librarians on H-1Bs. As a company, junior engineers simply aren't worth the time and effort that comes with sponsoring H-1Bs. Software isn't an "ass in seat" industry - sponsoring juniors simply isn't worth it.

kevin_thibedeau3• 7 years ago

You do realize that the "highly skilled" part has been systematically ignored for a couple decades now?

tomschlick2• 7 years ago

IMO, H1Bs should be given out via action style based on salary where the highest bidders (companies that need to fill the positions) get them. That's the only simple way to make sure they are not trying to replace higher cost US workers with lower cost H1B workers who are beholden to their employers every whim over threat of being kicked out.

thatfrenchguy4• 7 years ago

But how do you fix the fact that large consulting companies could be paying more than say, a startup ?

tomschlick2• 7 years ago

You don't. If startups want H1B workers they compete on the same level as everyone else. Special treatment is what creates loopholes and leads us down our current path.

camelNotation• 7 years ago

No. Loopholes.

The system we have now is nothing short of slavery in some instances.

goatinaboat• 7 years ago

The only reason large “consulting” companies do it is to undercut wages. So there is no risk of that happening in an auction system.

cletus• 7 years ago

Average salary? Yawn. Now go and break it down by Indian IT oursourcing companies vs everyone else, with and without visa, and then get back to me.

The inability or unwillingness to see H1B visa abuse by these companies in particular is mind-boggling at this point.

ivl• 7 years ago

And when we compare the job titles to earnings, it appears companies really are simply using the visa program to save a bit of money on contracted tech professionals.

This seems like the lump of labour fallacy being applied here. It's not like there are many devs really struggling to find work in the US. Rather, the opposite program exists: there are almost no software shops that aren't hiring.

rollingdeep3• 7 years ago

Not sure how you jump to “lump of labour fallacy” here when the article was discussing wage suppression. This trope is beyond tired and misused. Please stop spreading misinformation.

geebee3• 7 years ago

I'm generally suspicious of the H1-B program, mainly because I don't like programs that empower corporations to decide who is or isn't allowed to enter and work in the United States. That's bad. And I despise programs that allow corporations to determine the circumstances under which would be immigrants are allowed to remain in the US. This highly coercive relationship undermines almost everything that needs to work about a free market economy.

If I don't like a company's technical test, they can decide I won't become an employee. The should not decide that I won't get to live and work in the US. If I don't like a company's mandatory implicit bias training program of, they can decide I will no longer be an employee. I They should not decide that I will no longer be allowed to live in the US and must leave within a few weeks or jeopardize my future right to return. If I don't like my company's donations to the trump administration or position against same sex marriage, I should be able to leave the company without jeopardizing my right to remain in the US. The same goes for raises, telecommuting, open offices. I actually think that some of this gets rammed down our throats because a substantial percentage of software developers are negotiating with an employer who control their application for green cards and can have them deported if they get too uppity.

Ideally, we would have an immigration system that is independent of employer control. All citizens or residents are free and full members of the workforce, free to choose their career and life path according to their own interests and abilities. If someone decides becoming a developer in the Valley isn't a good deal, they can become a plumber in Duluth. You know, like, freedom.

Some people argue that we should award green cards directly. This would solve some of the problems, but it would still allow employers to demand a high sunk cost prior to immigrating. Someone might prefer to be a lawyer, journalist, or scented candle boutique owner, but if we attach immigration rights to studying STEM and perhaps getting a grad degree, the sunk costs do limit life freedom choices. So better would be to simply determine a level of immigration (I'm ok with a high one, I am not shocked by the concept of limits, and I think this issue is orthogonal to whether corporate HR departments or investors control the choice of who is allowed to enter).

Now, on a practical level... I get it. We're all in competition for the world's skilled workers, some types of immigrants do place a burden on government services (elderly people coming from poverty may place costs on the health care system and never pay a dime in). Canada, a country lauded by progressives, clearly favors younger, skilled, educated people fluent in French or English (I'm 48, I'd get zero points for age on their migration skills assessment).

So, as a practical matter, I do think that the US should have a skilled immigration preference, and I do think that this will please corporations and investors and universities. Ok. But watch out. Anyone who has watched the way universities treat grad students in STEM, anyone who has watched how companies abused the H1-B, anyone who has paid attention must know that you absolutely can not trust these organizations to do the right thing.

As a practical matter, there will be limits on people who are at risk of becoming a burden on the state, and preferences for the kind of people Zuckerburg wants to hire and feels he's paying too much for (and a bias against the sort of people who would compete with lawmakers - i.e., foreign lawyers). For example, Obama is a lawyer, and when he came on out to Silicon Valley, he met with CEOs. They're going to work out something nice for everyone at the table. Let's not be naive, an element of this is is what we're going to get.

But whatever the plan is, it is absolutely essential to preserve the personal freedom that underlies all properly functioning labor markets. For now, the H1-B fails that test miserably, absolutely miserably.

LordFast• 7 years ago

Agreed. Letting companies bind workers' abilities to remain in the country they'd like to live in is painfully similar to letting dictatorships bind people into indentured servitude.

geebee3• 7 years ago

There is a big difference though in that H1B workers do have a right of exit from the US. They can seek employment in their home country or other places with skilled immigration programs.

I’m fairly confident people who read my above comment will see the context for this qualification and know that I see this program as abusive. It does mean a workers right to leave an employer is very limited. It is possible to find a new sponsor and remain the us (though frankly that kind of talk makes me a little ill, the notion that to leave a job a worker needs a new corporation’s permission to remain, and choose from a restricted range of employers and job titles).

But that right of exit does help avoid some of the really horrifying violations of basic human rights that accompanied earlier incarnations of suppression of free labor mobility.

whenanother2• 7 years ago

one common and huge mistake people make when talking about salary is that people assume these are typical pre-tax US based salaries. in reality the salaries that you see here and those that are posted all over the news are probably the pay given to a contracting firm. sometimes they provide the pay given to the contractors. nobody is making it clear what salary is being referred to. it's most likely the money being paid to a contracting firm. this means that you need divide the number by 1/2 to get the money paid to the contractor. then you need to factor out health insurance, pension, and other expenses related to being a contractor before you can even start comparing it to the salary of a US citizen.

These contractors typically comes from a country that have social programs that will provide them with a pension and medical coverage if they ever get sick or retire. so they can severely undercut their US counterpart who needs to earn more to cover up for the lack of public social programs in the US.

ahmadss• 7 years ago

H1-B is a form of servitude. As a product manager who lead a team of primarily H1-B engineers at a large bank in DC area, the most challenging thing I saw from my H1-B colleagues was how the H1-B visa essentially forces really talented and amazing engineers from venturing off to more interesting opportunities at smaller companies who do not have the money or legal team to support H1-B employees.

My former colleagues are all limited by their employment opportunities and could really only go to a handful of very very large firms that would sponsor their visa's. It limits their employment opportunities and it limits their mobility.

whenanother2• 7 years ago

this whole program requires that the h1b visa worker is at the level or above the level of their US counterpart. this creates a very disturbing incentive with regards to the US educational system. the decline of the us public educational system coincides with the advent of this whole program. plus I don't believe there's a limit on student visas which are being abused in the same way to fill academia with cheap foreign labor.

the other thing the program incentivize is over inflating unemployment numbers and other economic indicators. you can't justify the hiring of h1b or the expansion of the program if the unemployment numbers are high. of course the recent low unemployment numbers turned out to be a sham considering how the fed fund rates were lowered and inversion of the yield curve.

sys_64738• 7 years ago

H1B visas have their place but all software and IT related positions should not be specialty occupations that are allowed to apply for H1Bs. That would hopefully reduce the abuse.

H-1B Visa Most Used for 'Software Engineer,' 'Software Developer' Roles

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