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Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

Seems like an open secret that tech cos like H1-Bs because they can pay them less and they’ll work hard because the alternative is getting fired and being kicked out of the country.

It’s a really backwards system with messed up incentives that probably needs to be reformed.

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Facebook pays software engineers on an H1-B with the same salary scale that they pay all software engineers. Some companies might work that way, but the top tier like Facebook and Google do not.

I knew and worked with multiple people at Facebook who were terrified of losing their jobs, as that would mean having to go back to an unstable home country.

I knew others who didn’t have such bad situations, but wanted to leave toward better offers and couldn’t due to H1-B and desire to get permanent residency.

Those I knew in the former category put in long hours because of their fear, those in the latter category were having their wages suppressed because of how these H1Bs are structured.

Sure, FB paid the same to H1B holders, but they’re getting a lot out of those folks because they have a harder time jumping ship.

Further, just because FB pays H1B holders the same at each band does NOT mean that H1Bs might not drag down salary for everyone by accepting lower offers. There’s a systemic component to this that ought to be explored.

> There’s a systemic component to this.

I truly think you are over-estimating the number of H1-B employees working these jobs in order to have the power to systemically drag down wages for everyone.

I didn't mean to make such a strong claim, merely to suggest there could be a more invisible component to the downward pressure. I've edited my comment to imply less certainty (though I think the amount of negatives makes it difficult to read now).

> I knew and worked with multiple people at Facebook who were terrified of losing their jobs, as that would mean having to go back to an unstable home country.

> I knew others who didn’t have such bad situations, but wanted to leave toward better offers and couldn’t due to H1-B and desire to get permanent residency.

These situations have nothing to do with FB or any employer at all though. That's just how the H1B visa/green card rules are. That's what is broken.

Base salary is similar everywhere. It’s the equity comp that is the difference, and the part that is more a function of the leverage you have as a candidate. H1-Bs are more desperate and less likely to have leverage to ask for high equity comp without a bunch of other offers.

And again the bigger part of wanting H1-Bs is that they’ll work a lot harder and turnover will be lower due to threat of having to leave the country.

And get them to work more unpaid OT

I know H-1Bs at Facebook who are pulling in 500k per year in RSUs.

and? with tech stocks at record highs it’s useless to look at current value of RSU comp vs what they got when they first signed.

all i’m articulating is that there are incentives that tech companies like FB have for hiring H1-B over American workers of the same skill level. Is your point that compensation has nothing to do with it and that’s it’s exclusively for other reasons?

I think the argument was that it has nothing to do with it, companies don't sit and follow a rule that prioritizes hiring H1Bs (talking about companies like Facebook here). In fact there are quite possibly a ridiculous number of steps in hiring an employee on visa.

What is alleged in the lawsuit seems purely self preservation, if FB doesn't jump through the hoops of getting PERM certified for the employee, they are going to leave and go to another company which does that. (Saying this without making a larger comment on immigration policies of USA)

The whole system is rife with fraud and abuse.

I've worked at several large corporations were workers would drift around different business groups, picking up work and getting another short term contract in order to stay in the country and continue to be gainfully employed. There was a running joke between managers about recycling developers so they never had to sponsor any of them.

I also worked at two different startups where they hired a developer and then a few weeks into the gig, they figured out this wasn't the person they thought they had hired. The second time, I wondered to a co-worker about it and he said there's a huge problem with one person (the qualified candidate) doing the interview and then they send a totally unqualified person to the gig.

I also experienced large teams were an Indian developer would be getting close to his H1-B expiring and suddenly send a manager an email about a "sick family member" and having to return to India, never to show up again. One of co-workers said its pretty common and the H1-B devs are constantly interviewing and if they get a fresh contract, they'll just leave the current company and start at the new one - without any heads up to anybody, they just ghost.

The whole program is so unregulated and so many loopholes for both sides to take advantage of, it needs to be changed for sure.

Facebook seems like the last company that cares about paying less. They typically give out offers higher than other employers in SV.

> They typically give out offers higher than other employers in SV.

That's putting it lightly. You can earn in the ballpark of 125%-150% of MSFT/GOOG (not sure about AAPL) in Seattle, all bonuses and incentives considered. On Blind, Facebook employees seem pretty open about focusing on their salary above everything [evil] Facebook does, and I would be lying if I haven't considered bending my morals for that paycheck (because it is absurd).

I hate to bring data to an anecdote fight, but it looks like Google and FB are around the same. MS does appear to be about 15% less.

https://www.levels.fyi/#

I don't think it's 125% of GOOG in the Seattle area, but marginally higher. Don't know about MSFT or AAPL here. My FB offer was something like 150% of my former non-FAANG employer pay (and I think I was relatively well-compensated compared to my peers at my former employer).

Anecdotally, +1. They were the highest offer in my recent round of interviews (Amazon and Google were lower, by 10-12%). (I'm a US citizen, if that is useful information.)

Some companies do care about costs. They care more about the second part.

But it’s also silly to say FB doesn’t care about overhead when they made a big deal about paying workers less if they moved to a lower cost of living area.

I mean I think people will work harder for ~2m in vested RSUs and comp over 4yrs than getting kicked out of the US. Maybe that’s just me personally.

Not everyone at FB gets paid $500k a year, especially if you’re on H1-B which is mostly for entry or mid level immigrants who have just graduated.

And if they do at the entry or mid level it’s because they joined at a favorable time and seen their unvested stock appreciate.

There is a reason why Facebook likes H1-Bs.

> Not everyone at FB gets paid $500k a year, especially if you’re on H1-B which is mostly for entry or mid level immigrants who have just graduated.

I don’t think mid level or new grads get that comp anywhere H1-B or not.

> And if they do at the entry or mid level it’s because they joined at a favorable time and seen their unvested stock appreciate.

That’s the upside of working for a public company.

I agree but everyone on HN regardless of whether they actually work in SV or not seems to be under the impression that every new grad working in tech are all pulling $500k right off the bat :)

I’d hire any h1b out of FB if they wanted to leave. Will even pay market rates. Market is very tight on software engineers.

The problem is they /can't/ leave. It's indentured servitude and a wage supression program.

They can leave, it’s not hard to transfer a h1b. I bet a majority of FBs h1bs were poached from other companies or visa transfers.

I’m talking about situations where they are possibly fired.

I can only speak personally on termination of employment. When dealing with a low performance h1b employee, they were treated exactly like a regular employee and were given a low performance review. The company did stack ranked based year cuts so he knew he that he had a high change of getting cut with a below expectation performance review and a PIP and had 3 months to look for a job. Firing h1bs out of blue would make it hard to hire other h1bs. There maybe companies that abuse the situation, i have yet to see it. Most people aren't sociopaths and have empathy. Being a terrible leader/person makes it hard to do startups since talent won't follow you.

Yes most people probably can find a new job without being actually kicked out.

You still only have a little time to find a job. Just because you could find something fast doesn’t mean it’s not stressful, especially if you were fired for performance reasons.

Eric Weinstein makes the case that it's a wage tampering program for scientists and tech workers generally.

https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/107032731818526720...

https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/Weinstein-GUI_N...

Who says a founding member of the Intellectual Dark Web can't recognize discrimination, at least when it's their peers being discriminated against?

Don't forget it also drains the international talent pool.

There are great schools outside of the US; it would be foolish for companies not to hire from there. Keep in mind that if right now I wanted to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup

A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop

my only path forward is H1. They'll both be listed as "computer related occupations" and apply for the same visa in the same quota. Does that makes any sense to anyone?

I will disagree with the pay less part. I know people who get > $500K as a software engineer on H1b. Getting worker on H1b requires 1-2 month legal process, lot of paperwork and extra money. I think it is more expensive for companies to hire foreign workers. Some startups straight out reject visa holders since they don't have resources to hire them.

They're hiring the kind of person that would command $750,000 a year or more as a native American, then.

I have a good friend who was network ops for Riot Games some years back. He is a German who is in America on an H1-B visa. He and I spoke openly about his salary once, which was $97,500. I know Felix is great at his job... but given the experience and knowledge he had, along with the insane responsibilities he was tasked with, I wouldn't have done it for less than $125,000.

> They're hiring the kind of person that would command $750,000 a year or more as a native American, then.

No, they're not. Facebook employees have very thoroughly reverse-engineered the compensation bands in internal groups. We know for a fact that it makes no difference whether one is on a visa.

base salary is similar everywhere. equity comp is highly dependent on how much leverage you have and what other offers you have.

Equity is part of what was reverse-engineered and is also in clear bands. There was no obvious difference between visa holders and others.

Indeed, H1B holders might have less negotiation leverage. That’s a real problem but not really what we’re discussing.

So you’re arguing compensation has zero to do with preference for H1-Bs over American workers?

I'm arguing that there is in fact no preference for H1-Bs over American workers, at least for software engineers. Facebook wants to hire anyone who passes its interview process.

Facebook doesn't prefer H1-B's over American workers. This suit isn't about Facebook hiring H1-B's over American workers. It is about Facebook not properly advertising the jobs of H1-B's they have already hired to American workers. It is pretty obvious that you'd rather keep a worker that has already worked for you for many years over hiring a new guy who would need to get up to speed etc, even if they cost the same.

umanwizard is correct, in that salary + bonus + equity has been thoroughly reverse-engineered by FANG employees, and that H1Bs get equal pay for equal work, as their non-immigrant co-workers.

FANG hires anyone who can pass their hiring bar, regardless of their background, and there is always a shortage of applicants passing that hiring bar.

It’s bi-modal. Big companies playing nice and using the law as intended pay well. Smaller companies and body shops abuse the process: I’ve seen H1B jobs advertised via legally required notices that were tens of thousands less than what I was being paid for the same position/experience.

The big companies I have seen did indeed pay well. But I would not quite say that they used the law as intended. The hiring process for highly qualified contributors I've sometimes seen was more along the lines of:

1. Evaluate resumes and interview candidates, both US and foreign, practically without taking into account national origin and visa status (With the possible exception of national bans / not eligible for visa due to past deportation, etc).

2. Once decision is made, let the immigration department figure out a legal way to get the person hired a visa (through H1B, internal transfer, whatever).

3. If the H1B process prescribes advertising the position to US applicants, that will be done, but the decision for that particular job has really already been made (then again, big companies are constantly hiring, so maybe US applicants get considered for other suitable jobs).

So while I don't think these companies, in general, are trying to get cheap labor, or discriminating against US applicants, some of the provisions of the law (giving strict priority to US applicants) are only being followed in a ceremonial way, and, giving the fluid nature of job characterizations in the industry, are probably near-impossible to follow in a realistic way.

It’s less than what an American worker of the same skill level would get because their ability to negotiate is way reduced.

Some companies do care about costs. FB cares more about the second part.

And knowing that someone is getting $500k is an outlier given that more senior engineers would likely not be on H1-B at that point in their career because they’d have a green card by then. So your anecdote doesn’t apply to the majority of cases I’m talking about which is at entry or mid level.

What company? It’s public information and the salaries can be looked up.

Here is Facebook:

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook+Inc&job=&city=&ye...

You are only required to report base salary in H1B petition, so that's what you see there. It doesn't account for total compensation, most of which is equity.

They hire H1Bs because it's much harder to change jobs with the visa. In an industry that otherwise has high turnover, even for people in the > $500k range, this gives the companies leverage over workers that they wouldn't otherwise have.

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