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Comment by floxy | Hacker News Reader

>Amazon engineering is 80%+ h1bs.

That sounds staggering. Is there a way to verify this?

Wikipedia says in 2022 there were 4.4 million software developers in the USA. H1bs are ~85,000 added per year. Say over the last 20 years, every h1b slot was filled (by software developers), they never left the USA, and remained on h1b without becoming permanent residents or citizens. That would be 1.7 million H1b software developers currently working.

In reality a large amount become permanent residents or leave. However, FAANG and FAANG-adjacent are probably only around 1 million employees (not including Amazon's non-AWS workforce, but including non-USA employees). Still, FAANG+ are unlikely to be typically anywhere near 80%+ active H1b visa employees. Maybe AWS is a standout exception.

Now, how many software developers in FAANG+ are not born in the USA might be a very different story.

Have you ever worked at a high paying tech company? Most are > 80%

I have, and this is an absurd assertion

Agreed.

My n-1 firm was a household name in cybersecurity. We had a _lot_ of contractors but almost no visa-based positions. I worked with two of the few who were, and they became citizens to stay with the company permanently.

Yeah this person is just making things up, the majority are not H1Bs. Also, there's this popular idea (usually on places like reddit) that H1Bs at big tech are paid "slave labor wages" because "They can't leave". This is just not true, they get the same salary and stock ranges as everyone else.

Source: was H1B (worked at a couple of big N, but not Amazon) until I got my green card (and then citizenship).

You'll never hear more nonsense about the industry than when the topic of H1Bs comes up.

No, I haven't

As someone that works at AWS this is absolutely not true lmao

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