I tried my hardest to read this with good intentions and I finished it. I thought the "20m read" label at the top was exaggerated given the size of my scrollbar. But it did indeed take a while.
This website is (1) saying nothing of substance, and (2) impossible to read. While the actual content of the article isn't worth discussing, this is a great example of what bad writing looks like. There's not a single paragraph in sight.
It's a very real problem though that these firms massively underpay employees, I have seen people making 50% less and telling of being forced by their managers to give a portion of their pay to them.
So at least the initial figures, that these companies underpay by 40%, seem entirely believable and a big problem.
This is dreadfully flawed. Comparing salaries at the top tech firms to a generic employee elsewhere is silly. That would mean that the whole industry is underpaid.
I would not say it is that flawed, since many of not most of these h1b folks work for these big companies. I don't know the exact numbers but around 2017 there were almost as many contractors at Google as FTEs working in the same offices on the same projects, but getting half or third of the FTE salaries.
These large consultancies staff at a lot of places that aren’t big tech. While they certainly have some good talent the overwhelming reputation with body shops is that they place some pretty mediocre talent.
> I don't know the exact numbers but around 2017 there were almost as many contractors at Google as FTEs working in the same offices on the same projects, but getting half or third of the FTE salaries.
Contractors get overtime. That’s why. It’s the same thing at most big companies when you compare contract and FTE for any position - one has higher salary and the other has overtime. It’s common for the contractor to actually have a higher annual (cash) comp.
This reasoning obviously cannot compensate for a difference of more than 10% or so.
And in my experience in most places software contractors are paid more. Contractors are simply the people who are good enough to be technical people who demand higher salaries at non-FANG. They don't get, and don't have a need for, job security and in trade get a lot more dineros. This can be because of specialized knowledge (e.g. knowledge of bank protocols and encryption, including the softer side of it (ie. what particular kinds of encryption actually protect against)). These people are not needed often, and not constantly, but when they're needed they're critical. Hence, lots of pay, switch from bank to bank often. This exists for specialized mechanical engineers in defense too, for example.
The data is more or less correct, however the comparison's are flawed. There are tons of US based companies that pay on the similar scale to all their employees regardless of visa status. Instead of tying the visa with the employer, giving it for a certain duration can go as a long term fix to address both abuse and supply shortage. Its takes preparation, skill and the mindset to make it to companies like google and meta.
I think its gonna be Software Engineers with AI skills or without one. It will definitely impact but it will take 5-10 years. Right now you still need to guide to AI. And being a good engineer helps.
My personal experience and perspective with off shore is that the AI is already better. I'm certainly not going to even entertain the prices we used to endure
Before 2016, I was an outside consultant working with some long-term TCS IT and dev staff at a Valley client company that was just acquired by HP. (IIRC, HP then preferred Perot Systems as a staffing vendor.) TCS folks were mostly living extremely frugally in the SF Bay Area at the time.
Sometime around there, I consulted for Motorola Mobility where they hired contractors around the world in Eastern Europe and SE Asia. That gig came to a screeching halt after the head of that department expressed racist remarks about remote people in my presence and so they ghosted me because they just assumed I would talk to their HR or take legal action; I was broke then and couldn't do anything about it except learn the lesson that a lot of corporate types really don't give a fuck about being decent or professional.
Yes, Captain Obvious. ;) It was before... I can't tell how much before without looking. Looking, it was Autumn 2009.
They included some ex-DANGER people, their architects were big design upfront-oriented rather than anything remotely agile, and it seemed like a stress pressure-cooker. Oh, and a large fraction of product social functionality of those generation of quasi-smartphones were entirely server-side running on a fleet of Motorola's CentOS boxes. They issued workers FireWire-based external backup drives, which I thought was bonkers.
tl;dr: Good riddance to them.
If you have something constructive to add, please feel free to chime in.
No, 100% would be equal to paying someone 50% of market rate. If market is $100k and someone was paid $80k, you could say “paid 80% market rate” or “25% less than market rate” (since a 25% pay increase would bring them to market rate)
You're mixing up your baselines. I don't know how you got there in your second example. 25% less than "some number" is always (some number * (1 - 0.25)).
No, in the same way that a 100% increase is a doubling, a 100% decrease is to zero.
If you said that the market rate was 100% more than the workers were being paid, that would be correct, but that's a different baseline and not what was stated in the title.
Seems like a mix of AI slop and right wing racism.
> But here's what most people don't know: their average salary is under $105,000 — nearly 40% below what tech giants pay for similar roles.
Why would you compare random software positions with “tech giants”? Would you compare the pay for a local race track driver with an F1 driver?
> This isn't a story about hard-working immigrants. It's a story about a business model that exploits the H1B system.
Is it being exploited? The article doesn’t prove that at all.
> When 28,000+ positions pay 40% below market, it drags down wages for everyone in the field.
No, you’re just describing the market. “When the average is X, the data points below the average are below the average”. See how useless this observation sounds?
> The $90,000 gap isn't because the work is different.
The software work at big tech is absolutely different than software work at a random client of consulting companies. The fact that they both have a similar degree requirement is completely irrelevant.
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There are so many more easily disprovable claims on this page. Conclusion: This is a propaganda website.
Underpaying someone by 100% is non-sensical.
I tried my hardest to read this with good intentions and I finished it. I thought the "20m read" label at the top was exaggerated given the size of my scrollbar. But it did indeed take a while.
This website is (1) saying nothing of substance, and (2) impossible to read. While the actual content of the article isn't worth discussing, this is a great example of what bad writing looks like. There's not a single paragraph in sight.
# Kitschy Heading
## n. Another Editorialized Heading
A table that is very hard to parse
* tons of bullet points
I'm sure it's not a coincidence that it's the exact (to the dot!) writing and formatting style ChatGPT outputs.
It's a very real problem though that these firms massively underpay employees, I have seen people making 50% less and telling of being forced by their managers to give a portion of their pay to them.
So at least the initial figures, that these companies underpay by 40%, seem entirely believable and a big problem.
This is dreadfully flawed. Comparing salaries at the top tech firms to a generic employee elsewhere is silly. That would mean that the whole industry is underpaid.
I would not say it is that flawed, since many of not most of these h1b folks work for these big companies. I don't know the exact numbers but around 2017 there were almost as many contractors at Google as FTEs working in the same offices on the same projects, but getting half or third of the FTE salaries.
These large consultancies staff at a lot of places that aren’t big tech. While they certainly have some good talent the overwhelming reputation with body shops is that they place some pretty mediocre talent.
> I don't know the exact numbers but around 2017 there were almost as many contractors at Google as FTEs working in the same offices on the same projects, but getting half or third of the FTE salaries.
Contractors get overtime. That’s why. It’s the same thing at most big companies when you compare contract and FTE for any position - one has higher salary and the other has overtime. It’s common for the contractor to actually have a higher annual (cash) comp.
This reasoning obviously cannot compensate for a difference of more than 10% or so.
And in my experience in most places software contractors are paid more. Contractors are simply the people who are good enough to be technical people who demand higher salaries at non-FANG. They don't get, and don't have a need for, job security and in trade get a lot more dineros. This can be because of specialized knowledge (e.g. knowledge of bank protocols and encryption, including the softer side of it (ie. what particular kinds of encryption actually protect against)). These people are not needed often, and not constantly, but when they're needed they're critical. Hence, lots of pay, switch from bank to bank often. This exists for specialized mechanical engineers in defense too, for example.
The data is more or less correct, however the comparison's are flawed. There are tons of US based companies that pay on the similar scale to all their employees regardless of visa status. Instead of tying the visa with the employer, giving it for a certain duration can go as a long term fix to address both abuse and supply shortage. Its takes preparation, skill and the mindset to make it to companies like google and meta.
Was this written with a LLM? If so, please add a note about it at the start of the article.
Similar could be said for US government contractors. Not as high as 80-100%, but 50-70% is common.
Thoughts on Ai's impact on this industry subsector?
I think its gonna be Software Engineers with AI skills or without one. It will definitely impact but it will take 5-10 years. Right now you still need to guide to AI. And being a good engineer helps.
My personal experience and perspective with off shore is that the AI is already better. I'm certainly not going to even entertain the prices we used to endure
AI Slop
Before 2016, I was an outside consultant working with some long-term TCS IT and dev staff at a Valley client company that was just acquired by HP. (IIRC, HP then preferred Perot Systems as a staffing vendor.) TCS folks were mostly living extremely frugally in the SF Bay Area at the time.
Sometime around there, I consulted for Motorola Mobility where they hired contractors around the world in Eastern Europe and SE Asia. That gig came to a screeching halt after the head of that department expressed racist remarks about remote people in my presence and so they ghosted me because they just assumed I would talk to their HR or take legal action; I was broke then and couldn't do anything about it except learn the lesson that a lot of corporate types really don't give a fuck about being decent or professional.
Motorola Mobility was purchased by Google in 2012 and gutted that same year
Yes, Captain Obvious. ;) It was before... I can't tell how much before without looking. Looking, it was Autumn 2009.
They included some ex-DANGER people, their architects were big design upfront-oriented rather than anything remotely agile, and it seemed like a stress pressure-cooker. Oh, and a large fraction of product social functionality of those generation of quasi-smartphones were entirely server-side running on a fleet of Motorola's CentOS boxes. They issued workers FireWire-based external backup drives, which I thought was bonkers.
tl;dr: Good riddance to them.
If you have something constructive to add, please feel free to chime in.
[flagged]
100% less than market rate is zero. They must be paying them something.
No, 100% would be equal to paying someone 50% of market rate. If market is $100k and someone was paid $80k, you could say “paid 80% market rate” or “25% less than market rate” (since a 25% pay increase would bring them to market rate)
You're mixing up your baselines. I don't know how you got there in your second example. 25% less than "some number" is always (some number * (1 - 0.25)).
No, in the same way that a 100% increase is a doubling, a 100% decrease is to zero.
If you said that the market rate was 100% more than the workers were being paid, that would be correct, but that's a different baseline and not what was stated in the title.
In that case their pay would be 20% less than market rate because the percent change is based on market rate, not the new value.
Yeah thats what it means.
Seems like a mix of AI slop and right wing racism.
> But here's what most people don't know: their average salary is under $105,000 — nearly 40% below what tech giants pay for similar roles.
Why would you compare random software positions with “tech giants”? Would you compare the pay for a local race track driver with an F1 driver?
> This isn't a story about hard-working immigrants. It's a story about a business model that exploits the H1B system.
Is it being exploited? The article doesn’t prove that at all.
> When 28,000+ positions pay 40% below market, it drags down wages for everyone in the field.
No, you’re just describing the market. “When the average is X, the data points below the average are below the average”. See how useless this observation sounds?
> The $90,000 gap isn't because the work is different.
The software work at big tech is absolutely different than software work at a random client of consulting companies. The fact that they both have a similar degree requirement is completely irrelevant.
-
There are so many more easily disprovable claims on this page. Conclusion: This is a propaganda website.