[noobermin]

I getting seemingly contradictory comments here but one could weave a coherent story out of all of them:

1) H1B's get salaries that are comparable to US engineer salaries.

2) A middleman takes a big bite out of that, the engineer thus takes home less.

3) H1B's are essentially like most immigrants, indentured servants who have no freedom to leave their employers, thus have little leverage asking for promotions or even autonomy as an employee.

4) Companies probably are most aware of 3) but it seems like at least for FAANG the biggest factor is they don't want to invest in training people and rather want people who already are skilled and such. It's probably true if you draw your net very tightly yes anyone can find that there aren't enough qualified workers out there who won't demand I guess near half a mill salaries.