It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.)
If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.
Thanks for the data. I see comments across threads on HN that say that H1-B hires are common. What is the incentive to hire them then? Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? I guess there is a bit of cognitive dissonance with FAANG complaining about no qualified workers but then FAANG only hired people who went to Stanford or Harvard and such.
I worked at two FAANG companies and my degree is from the University of Arizona. I only met a few people there whose degrees were from elite schools. Where do you get the impression that they only hire people from Stanford and Harvard?
Many SV companies are in constant need of more skilled engineers.
Since the H1B visa can be transferred, when I arrived in the USA, nothing would have prevented me from going door to door and find a better paying job. Especially in the SV where there are tons of companies hiring.
So companies have a good incentive to give you a fair salary.
This is not true for all visas. In particular there is one visa (sorry can't remember its name off the top of my head) that is an "international transfer visa" : you work for one year for the company in a foreign country and then you can move to the USA while continuing to work for that company. It is pretty easy to get that visa but it is also very hard to transfer it to another company afaik.
Hiring is also a bit broken in our industry. The thing is, it is often pretty hard to distinguish what makes a good or a bad engineer. This being said, there are just not enough skilled engineers in the USA.
It would absolutely be possible to hire more local engineers and train them on the job but that would cost a lot of time for uncertain results. Companies prefer to hire engineers that can already be pretty productive from day 1.
> Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped?
Americans are plenty smart, but they are only 4% of the world population. American companies compete on an international stage and not having access to the other 96% of talent would be a competitive disadvantage.
I think it's more that they're fairly indentured. Their visa is tied to a specific _kind_ of work, they're legally prevented from making money in any other way other than their current job, and while they can change jobs, my understanding is it is generally viewed as risky (for instance, if the new place doesn't work out, you've got a few short months to find employment or your visa is no good and you have to uproot your life)
It'd be really interesting to see data on how often H1B's change jobs compared to the rest of the population.
My anecdotal experience as a hiring manager in tech firms for over a decade: it’s not about money, it’s about quickly finding qualified employees. Unemployment has been (until recently) low. There wasn’t some large supply of unemployed, qualified engineers sitting around. Nearly everyone I hired already had a job. Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone.
There are plenty of >200k H1B workers in SV, and I do believe these engineers and specialists will wonder how they can do their work elsewhere if they can't reasonably plan a few years into the future:
That argument is wrong. H1Bs are liked by Silicon Valley because they want to be able to hire the best people from anywhere, and not restrict their talent pool to 5% of the world population.
All reputable Silicon Valley companies pay people exactly the same whether they are on a visa, have a green card, or are a US citizen.
It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.)
If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.