Bernie Sanders says Elon Musk is wrong about H-1B visas: 'Low-wage indentured servants'
Bernie Sanders waded into a heated online debate between the tech right and the MAGA base, calling for reforms to the H-1B visa system.
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Most H1-Bs are filling jobs that pay $200k+. Most Americans don’t know but tech jobs pay between $200k-$1m, and almost all of those jobs are taken by folks on H1-B visas. Rather than sourcing and training Americans for the best paying jobs in the country, the tech industry has lobbied Congress to flood the market with labor from India and China. We can only imagine these wages would be higher without the influx of these workers. But, the wages are still high, and they would love to flood the market with even more cheap labor if they could uncap H1-Bs to further drive down wages. There are people willing to work for $60k/year just for the promise of an American visa.
Additionally, H1-B workers are easier to control. They all fear layoffs or firings because losing your job means losing your visa, if you can’t find another job within 2 months. So, there is incentive to neglect work-life balance and change the culture of a company into “996,” which means working from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
And, there is widespread fraud and discrimination against American workers too. When entire departments come to be filled with people from a certain country, they tend to keep hiring people from that country. One reason for this is tech companies tend to hire from contracting agencies like WiPro, InfoSys, TCS, Cognizant, and HCL (WITCH), all of which originated in India and source from India, so they don’t focus on diversity at all (there have been lawsuits). Many of those contractors are doing jobs that should actually be filled by full time employees, but companies flagrantly ignore labor laws. When they do need to hire full time employees, they often convert these contractors. Also, many of these workers don’t have the actual qualifications for the job, so they falsify their resumes. I’ve interviewed candidates claiming 15 years of experience with a language, that cannot write a single line of code in that language when prompted. Those that can write code, don’t always follow best practices and can churn out cheap, hacky solutions that ultimately just need to be redone.
This is all an open secret in the tech industry. It isn’t more widely talked about because there are few Americans to actual witness what is going on. And, those criticizing the system risk being painted as xenophobic. It is good to see Bernie coming out against these practices because people on the right and left should be critical of it.
Most Americans don’t know but tech jobs pay between $200k-$1m
No, they do not. More like $50k-200k. But the rest of your comment is pretty much right.
Most common is $80-160k, the companies formerly known as FANNG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) are more likely $160-340k. A large part of that is their geographic area. Basically they primarily want workers who are already vetted by the other FAANG companies, so they're all in the same geographic location, and competing over the workers willing to live there.
Basically they're idiots creating their own problems that Elon wants to solve with H1-Bs.
Legally, the H1-Bs need to get paid roughly the same as American workers. We all know that's a bit slippery, but it does help keep the wages up.
The real benefit is that they either do what Elon says or they get kicked out of the country. Guess who's willing to put up with the most shit.
Levels.fyi is a good source of salary data. Above 200k is easy in the right geographic location.
In these locations cost of living is usually also pretty high. Making 100k in San Francisco is not a very good salary.
make six figures but share a 400 sq ft studio with 6 other engineers and get some floor space to set up your sleeping bag.
Most people in tech in San Francisco are making $300k-$1m. $100k is poverty line.
Like the other commenter suggested, check levels.fyi. If you’re in a major tech hub like Silicon Valley, $300k is average, and many people are pushing $500k. Some who are in highly specialized roles, or who hit the jackpot on the timing of their equity grants can get over $1m.
The app Blind has a lot of people sharing info on this.
I'd love to see the stats on this.
Average H1-B salary by state:
https://www.myvisajobs.com/reports/h1b/work-state/
These are salaries not including equity, which is usually the same or more per year as the salary itself.
USCIS estimated there were 583,420 foreign nationals on H-1B visas as of September 30, 2019.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
Why is the US government giving half a million jobs that pay $200k+ to foreign workers on visas when the median annual wage in the US is $48k. Most of these workers do not have special training or education that an American citizen could not acquire if given the right training program.
Definitely interesting. We had an issue in Australia with 457 visas back in 2014. Where claims of pay were disputed when a whistleblower showed 200 white-collar 457 visa workers, about half of whom were Korean nationals aged under 30, were clocking up more than 84 hours a week.
They were employed by the contractor Samsung C&T at Gina Rinehart's mine and were being paid the equivalent of $16 an hour for what should have been much higher paying jobs.