Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

>Some employers have exploited the program to hold down wages, disadvantaging U.S. workers,

Change "Some" to "All major employers". I worked at a fortune 500 company in IT and all they hired were H1B employees over the past 15/20 years. The last raise we got that was above inflation and health insurance increases was before 2000. I left 2 years ago and after I left they fired almost everyone in the IT Dept I was in and replaced them with H1B.

So I hope this sticks. Plus remember, H1B people should make a fair wage too, all too often their salary is set by their contracting firm and is far far lower then what we got.

View on HN

As someone who previously worked in US with H1Bs who were making well over half a million, I doubt your statement. I have moved out of the US a few years back though.

But regardless, I sincerely hope this policy sticks without any loopholes. This policy will only incentivise companies to move more of their operations to other countries and only keep the bare minimum in US to keep their US business thriving.

As someone who worked with mulitple H-1Bs making less than their peers, I believe his statement.

This visa is very two faced. One hand, it's been used to import some really smart people into the United States who have gone on to do incredible things. Other hand, it's been used for job replacement by "native" workers who can do the job but were "too expensive".

I've worked with and hired people on H1B. At least from my experience they're treated (from a job offer perspective) just like any other candidate. Some get bigger offers because they negotiate well, are in high demand positions etc and some don't. There was no lowballing candidates because they're on H1B or need sponsorship.

Then that's your experience. I've worked with H-1B where their salary was lowballed or job title was. Not to mention the difficulty in switching jobs and 5 years in, they were severely underpaid.

My original comment about being two faced I still stand by.

It is absolutely not all major employers. I'm on a visa and have worked for two major tech companies in the US over the last 10 years. I have never been a contractor. I've also compared salaries and know I am doing comparable or better. The majority of my team have always been naturalized citizens.

Name and shame?

The H1B list is all public. You can search through the data on h1bdata.info if you want.

There are many people on H1B's whose employers will not have a problem paying a $100k fee, but there are also many other firms that will not pay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com