Hacker News Reader

Comment by sisama | Hacker News Reader

I estimated the new prevailing wages for NYC/SF/SEA using z-scores and the new %-iles.

For NYC: (I II III IV) = (116,003 137,323 160,321 203,405)

For SF: (I II III IV) = (138,283 162,157 187,910 236,155)

For SEA: (I II III IV) = (128,082 148,708 170,957 212,639)

The level for an applicant is determined by their education + experience. Level I is supposed to correspond to an entry-level role requiring specialized skills in the field. These set the minimum base salary an applicant in the category must be paid.

N.b. They reflect _only_ base salary and not stock or bonus compensation. These levels will be unreachable for most; even those at FAANG.

More details - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vSeeTD1O...

View on HN

About 86% of H1Bs at Amazon, and 55% of H1Bs at Google won't make the cut anymore.

source: https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...

I believe thats quite an overestimate. Both Amazon and Google exceed the minimum required wage in each level on average by 93% and 73% respectively.

Separately, that is precisely what the article is doing. Conflating the minimum with wages actually paid to infer that H1B workers at large tech companies are underpaid.

Source: p52 on https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/oflc/pdfs/DOL-Int...

Well, kinda right? I think this may just be reflective of the long/fat tail of tech salaries.

The second column in that table shows how many people exceed the prevailing wage by 20% or more. In the case of Facebook, it's just 47.9%. And for Google and Amazon, it's 58 and 68 respectively.

Confusingly, they don't tell how many people exceed the prevailing wage at all.

Table 2 on Page 54 is even crazier.

Could you please explain how the article is conflating the minimum with wages actually paid? It gives the number of H1Bs by wage level in Table 5. So, wage level 1 would be those with wages between 17 and 34 percentile, right?

If this is an issue, FAANG could just rebalance their comp a bit to move some from RSU/Bonus to base.

Of course, Netflix won’t need to change anything. They already pay twice as much as the highest number here, all in cash.

For anyone still interested, the actual levels came out. They're much higher than predicted (as expected).

For NYC: (I II III IV) = (116,251 150,010 183,768 217,526)

https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1...

For SF: (I II III IV) = Not provided. Some notice seems to imply that any level must be >208k.

https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1...

For SEA: (I II III IV) = (139,880 167,918 195,936 223,974)

https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?area=4266...

Hey sisama, thanks for sharing this.

So, I highly doubt if Software Engineering salaries would follow a Gaussian distribution. My guess is that it would have both a fatter and longer tail than Gaussian.

Not an expert in statistics, but that's the case, wouldn't it push the 95-percentile wage level even higher?

Yup.

What makes this even more of an underestimate is that the actual numbers that will be used are not point percentile but mean of a decile range. That is Level IV wage will be mean of [p90-p100] salaries.

The departments methodology in setting these levels is quite amusing for anyone with a basic grasp on stats. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/oflc/pdfs/DOL-Int...

Amazon definitely comes under considering base salary only. I hear they have a cap 165K for base salary (185K in NYC/SF).

No matter how senior the position, it seems the person wouldn't qualify for Level IV. What would the consequences of that be? Can they just hire them at a Level 3?

Managers and above cant be hired at level 3. They are level 4.

https://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/NPWHC_Guidance_Revise...

Let's face it - it's pretty trivial for Amazon to go "Okay, now we have a H1B tier that get x% less stock and exactly the minimum requried base salary". It's not like they have a problem reaching that total comp, they just like to incentivize employees differently. I don't see them dumping the H1Bs entirely simply because they don't want to rebalance.

Its prohibited for employers to provide benefits to H-1B at a lower level than other workers. Stock/bonus compensation counts in that category.

does the rule not consider stock based comp?

If I look at the SDE salaries for the first four levels in FAANG and map it to your levels, the salaries seem roughly in line with average FAANG base salaries except maybe Amazon. If you want to extend FAANG club, even Microsoft will fall under.

What do the levels you mentioned exactly mean?

From another comment -

> Unfortunately, the levels dont map neatly to those categories. Someone with a Bachelor's and 1yoe can be filed as Level II. Anyone who is doing supervision with a couple of years of experience is likely to be 3 or 4.

Can you define formula in a spreadsheet so that by entering old wages for any new state, predictions are populated?

What makes you think these are unreachable? They seem like somewhat standard salaries for SDE/senior/staff/principal to me.

Two points: 1. Unfortunately, the levels dont map neatly to those categories. Someone with a Bachelor's and 1yoe can be filed as Level II. Anyone who is doing supervision with a couple of years of experience is likely to be 3 or 4.

2. Some people will certainly meet and exceed and this bar. But this is the _minimum_ required salary. For anyone other than new grads, there is likely to be significant variation in base pay and so there are those who will fall under.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com