

US IT Wages set to Stagnate.  Thank the Senate  - markrgamache
http://markgamache.blogspot.com/2013/02/senators-marco-rubio-orrin-hatch-amy.html

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srl
The actual title: "Senators Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch, Amy Klobuchar hate
America". Lovely.

My political views are somewhat out of the norm for this site (even on
immigration), so I'll restrain myself and just point out: if the amount the
average IT worker was payed went up, that would increase the income disparity,
not decrease it. The average IT wage is already higher than the average wage.
So the real issue here isn't "income disparity will increase" - the real issue
is "dey terk er jerbs!" A message that meshes quite nicely with the title.

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moocow01
I have to point out that this is incorrect. The simplified version is that if
the workers are paid more a smaller piece of the megacorp's pie goes to the
big whigs whether they are the shareholders or executives. In essence you have
more distributed income amongst more people rather than it going to one or a
few people. A situation where 1 person makes $20 and 9 make $1 has more income
disparity than a situation where 1 person makes $15, 2 make $4 and 6 make $1.

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daeken
Even if we multiplied the H1B count by 10, we still wouldn't have enough
developers and other professionals to meet demand. If you look at the security
industry, for instance, _everyone_ is hiring. And hiring. And hiring. There's
more work than anyone can possibly hope to meet while keeping up quality;
there simply aren't enough bodies to fill chairs.

Yes, increasing the talent pool might drop the salaries of certain positions
(competition does that), but it's not even a drop in the bucket in the grand
scheme of things.

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anonH1B
Speaking as a still-H1B techie, there are of course several shades in this
issue, it's not black-and-white and definitely not pitch-black like this blog.
In the bright side, I can assure you that my compensation at Google is above
market average; also the company immediately sponsored my GC process so very
soon I expect to be free from "H1B indenturing". Except there's no
indenturing, because my stock grant is plenty motivation to not leave the
company any time soon (not to mention amazing work etc.). I cannot speak for
every Google hire on H1B, even less for other companies like MS; just giving
my personal experience FWIW.

On the other hand, in a previous gig in the US (I first came through another
H1B sponsor), I've suffered myself the consequences of low-grade H1B/tech
hires; spent a few months in one of those Wall Street companies, sweating to
salvage some horrendous code written by Wipro people who filled whole teams of
said company. The problem of course is not their origin--I've also worked some
great engineers from India--the problem is the H1B rules and GC backlogs, many
Indians have to wait 10+ years for their GC, so they are easily victimized by
abusive sponsors. (Some of what I say here apply to Chinese too, but let's
avoid "India/China" repetition.)

To be fair, these extreme GC processing times are for EB3 (the lowest-skilled
people); it could be argued that simply denying H1B for any Indian who
wouldn't later qualify as EB1 or EB2 would make things better both for the
American job market, and for the Indian engineers who are actually high-
skilled. This solution can look unfair to others, but then again, it's hard to
find a solution that's fair to everyone. For one thing, India/China's massive
population is a problem; in a system without any per-country restrictions or
backlogs, but with global restrictions like total H1B/year quotas, these two
countries could swamp the immigration system (even more) in detriment to
people from other countries who also don't have the benefit of large companies
specialized in bringing people from your country to the US, or the network
effect of a big, existing immigrant community. But even the EB2 backlog for
Indians is long enough to often run into the 6-year H1B limit.

Another suggestion I have can sound like socialist heresy to many American
ears, but... hell, just regulate the job market a little better. Or at least
do that for people on H1B. Overtime work should be paid, with a premium rate
of 50% minimum. Certain benefits such as decent healthcare coverage should be
also mandatory. "Prevailing wage" should include average income from bonus and
equity, in jobs where these benefits are prevailing. H1B workers should be
allowed to easily transfer to another employer, with the only requirement that
the new job pays equal or better in both salary and benefits. Companies that
sponsor H1B's visa/relocation costs should be required to consider such costs
fully paid in 12 months (that's typically enough to amortize those costs, as
they typically put people to work in consulting jobs but take a fat markup on
their salaries). Rules like these mean that H1B's would be even in some _dis_
advantage competing with natives, but that's a good thing, would make the
arguments in favor of H1B true which is good for Americans. And for us
immigrants, the process wouldn't be any worse; I'll rather face the challenge
of higher requirements of qualification before moving to another country, than
the problem of moving easily just to be exploited for years and even suffer
prejudice from native workers who blame immigrants for their low wages.

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tcbawo
It all depends on whether they hire for quality or quantity. I've worked
alongside some H1B workers who were top notch. But, I've seen the other side
too. Finding good talent is incredibly hard. We probably won't have to worry
about stagnant wages. Just don't get too attached to any employer, keep your
skills marketable, and you'll be okay.

~~~
hosh
Spend less time writing blog posts about how wages are going to stagnate?

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markahern
Surely having a concentration of world wide IT talent in the US is a good
thing? Even aside from that, I would have thought protectionism is not
something that will help the IT industry in any shape or form.

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btian
So he thinks that income inequality is bad, and his solution is fewer H1Bs
which will cause greater income inequality...

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ekm2
Why does everyone assume that every immigrant wants to be an employee?Some
also want to be founders,you know

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dmishe
So I know a guy at Microsoft on h1b who makes ~100k, is that underpaid or
what?

~~~
anonH1B
This doesn't look much, but that's from my perspective of a senior
professional with a family and living in the greater NY region. Redmond may be
cheaper, and surely for someone who is young, lives alone and doesn't yet have
an exceptional resume, $100k is a ton of cash. BTW, we should all be happy to
work in a profession where $100k can be even argued as "underpaid", remarkably
in these difficult times... only 6.6% of individual Americans make that much
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)).
And most of these have jobs that ain't any fun, such as lawyers or doctors.
;-)

Also you have to consider other items from his compensation. For one thing,
it's well known that Microsoft's health benefit is awesome (they are self-
insured so it's zero cost for employers IIRC), this alone can be worth
>15K/year. And I guess he'll have 401(k) matching, some bonus, possibly a
stock grant, maybe other perks like free food etc. You put all this together
and this guy is certainly making better than $150k/year, possibly more.

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general_failure
No Apple

