US IT Wages set to Stagnate. Thank the Senate
markgamache.blogspot.com
markgamache.blogspot.com
My political views are somewhat out of the norm for this site (even on immigration), so I'll restrain myself and just point out: if the amount the average IT worker was payed went up, that would increase the income disparity, not decrease it. The average IT wage is already higher than the average wage. So the real issue here isn't "income disparity will increase" - the real issue is "dey terk er jerbs!" A message that meshes quite nicely with the title.
Or better yet, make a better product and take the profits for yourself?
Dev is in high demand right now.
"The real issue is 'dey terk er jerbs!'" -> "I want security."
Want more Americans to major in STEM? Stop jacking up H1B visas every time the professions available start paying a wage commiserate with the intellect required.
Yes, increasing the talent pool might drop the salaries of certain positions (competition does that), but it's not even a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things.
On the other hand, in a previous gig in the US (I first came through another H1B sponsor), I've suffered myself the consequences of low-grade H1B/tech hires; spent a few months in one of those Wall Street companies, sweating to salvage some horrendous code written by Wipro people who filled whole teams of said company. The problem of course is not their origin--I've also worked some great engineers from India--the problem is the H1B rules and GC backlogs, many Indians have to wait 10+ years for their GC, so they are easily victimized by abusive sponsors. (Some of what I say here apply to Chinese too, but let's avoid "India/China" repetition.)
To be fair, these extreme GC processing times are for EB3 (the lowest-skilled people); it could be argued that simply denying H1B for any Indian who wouldn't later qualify as EB1 or EB2 would make things better both for the American job market, and for the Indian engineers who are actually high-skilled. This solution can look unfair to others, but then again, it's hard to find a solution that's fair to everyone. For one thing, India/China's massive population is a problem; in a system without any per-country restrictions or backlogs, but with global restrictions like total H1B/year quotas, these two countries could swamp the immigration system (even more) in detriment to people from other countries who also don't have the benefit of large companies specialized in bringing people from your country to the US, or the network effect of a big, existing immigrant community. But even the EB2 backlog for Indians is long enough to often run into the 6-year H1B limit.
Another suggestion I have can sound like socialist heresy to many American ears, but... hell, just regulate the job market a little better. Or at least do that for people on H1B. Overtime work should be paid, with a premium rate of 50% minimum. Certain benefits such as decent healthcare coverage should be also mandatory. "Prevailing wage" should include average income from bonus and equity, in jobs where these benefits are prevailing. H1B workers should be allowed to easily transfer to another employer, with the only requirement that the new job pays equal or better in both salary and benefits. Companies that sponsor H1B's visa/relocation costs should be required to consider such costs fully paid in 12 months (that's typically enough to amortize those costs, as they typically put people to work in consulting jobs but take a fat markup on their salaries). Rules like these mean that H1B's would be even in some disadvantage competing with natives, but that's a good thing, would make the arguments in favor of H1B true which is good for Americans. And for us immigrants, the process wouldn't be any worse; I'll rather face the challenge of higher requirements of qualification before moving to another country, than the problem of moving easily just to be exploited for years and even suffer prejudice from native workers who blame immigrants for their low wages.
Also you have to consider other items from his compensation. For one thing, it's well known that Microsoft's health benefit is awesome (they are self-insured so it's zero cost for employers IIRC), this alone can be worth >15K/year. And I guess he'll have 401(k) matching, some bonus, possibly a stock grant, maybe other perks like free food etc. You put all this together and this guy is certainly making better than $150k/year, possibly more.