[merpnderp]

Programming is sufficiently hard enough, wages will always be higher than most other professions. If I could make this money just about any other way, I'd likely give it a go. But either be a PA, a doctor, or one of the lucky few who graduate law school and make good money (and I think PA's make less than most programmers I know).

Otherwise be a programmer.

[notyourday]

$35k/year developer on H1B

[Y7ZCQtNo39]

Most developers aren't on H1B. There's what, tens of thousands on H1B, and hundreds of thousands of tech workers. While it's true some developers are underpaid, they are few in number and presumably of little significance on the prevailing developer wage.

[notyourday]

This stuff is funny to read. There are two cases:

1. H1Bs in "tech" do not affect salaries of those not on H1B so it is irrelevant that there are those who come to the US on H1B and make $35-50k/year in tech because it does not affect the market for $80k-250k/year jobs i.e. Old Navy, Gap and Banana Republic are totally different markets, Old Navy's $10 t-shirts and $25 jeans does not move upmarket and cannibalize GAP's $30 T-shirt and $80 jeans which in turn does not cannibalize BR's $120 T-shirts and $200 jeans - ask whoever shops for clothes in your family.

If that's the case, we should applaud Google generating more $35-50k/year tech workers and we all should be baffled by those complaining about H1B tech imports (the number of them is rather low compared to the number of 35k-50k workers training programs would generate so if we need those workers before we train ours we should lift the caps on H1Bs)

2. H1Bs in "tech" does affect salaries of those not on H1B because it eats into the market market for $80k-250k/year jobs. In which case having a flood of $35k-50k/year workers is a problem regardless if they are coming in on H1B or from ITT Tech/GoogleJobsTrainingSchool.

I would suggest we should really pick one and be consistent.