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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

Because Cisco is "underpaying" H1 workers is a myth that a lot of HN posters like to believe. Here's the data

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Cisco+Systems+Inc&job=Soft...

Cisco median pay in San Jose is $122k. This is before bonus and RSU as DOL doesn't accept those as salary. So basically median pay is around $150K

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> Cisco median pay in San Jose is $122k.

Yes that seems to be pretty close to the mean wage in San Jose for a likely "Software Engineer" job code: http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?area=41940... Cisco's (posted) wages span the different levels of that job description pretty well as far as I can tell.

However it's probably important to note that LCA data (e.g. the data on h1bdata.info) doesn't actually say anything about how much Cisco's paying. Those are just the wages Cisco has submitted in LCAs, but I don't think there's any way to verify that an LCA is connected to and used for an approved H-1B petition and actual employment of a foreign worker.

> Because Cisco is "underpaying" H1 workers is a myth that a lot of HN posters like to believe

Not sure about HN reader bias (*see edit below), but in this case the Labor Department clearly found some wrongdoing on Cisco's part. Would be interesting to know what that is? Perhaps Cisco is filing all these LCAs to signal that's they're employing workers in all wage levels, but only use the certified LCAs with the lower wages when submitting H-1B petitions?

Edit: OK, I'll admit that I do actually know about HN bias a few years back. That was abundantly clear from the shitshow that was the HN discussion about pg's "Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8799572

You could potentially argue that if Cisco and others didn't hire H1 workers, maybe the median wage in San Jose would be $200k. But that sounds like a little bit of a stretch. I also think about roles like HR and Marketing that do not have much competition from immigrants, but are still very low paying. I bet the median wage of HR role in San Jose will be much lower

> You could potentially argue that if Cisco and others didn't hire H1 workers, maybe the median wage in San Jose would be $200k. But that sounds like a little bit of a stretch.

I agree that would be a stretch especially because the yearly H-1B visa cap is 65,000 across all industries.

In any case, even if wages would be a bit higher without foreign labor, Cisco would probably only be responsible for paying at least the market wage for a position at the time the H-1B petition was filed.

> I also think about roles like HR and Marketing that do not have much competition from immigrants

Just a small nit (because I'm reminded of this every time I enter the US): H-1B is a non-immigrant visa type for temporary workers ;)

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