[on_and_off]

I can maybe help here.

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.