[alephnerd]

For most white collar jobs like tech here in the US, your out-of-pocket as percentage is income doesn't play a role in how we decide salary bands.

For a family of four, the average health plan is around $10k out of pocket from the employee along with around $20k in employer costs [0]. Yet the median American SWE salary is $187k [1] versus $66k in Poland [2], $93k in Canada [3], and $111k in the UK [4]. Either way an American ends up earning significantly more after healthcare costs and insurance.

The issue is salary expectations at the lower performance band haven't kept up with what is expected at that salary band.

> In the US that expense is very high, and is a major source of worry for working families

When benchmarked against similar peer cities in Canada [5] or the UK [6], CoL is roughly at par yet salaries are significantly higher in the US, especially when comparing peer tech markets like SF [7] versus London [8].

This is the crux of the issue - demanding 100% WFH well past the end of COVID made it hard for us to justify domestic hiring when

1. Async was successfully proven to not impact business operation

2. A reverse brain drain of all nationalities in the US during COVID meant it was easier for employers to work with them to open a hub office or GCC abroad

3. A new grad is demanding salaries that simply don't make the economics of training and hiring new grads work. At $70k-$110k it does, but not beyond that.

4. Companies have now adopted the Netflix model - by cutting low performers, we can actually give higher pay bands to employees who actually have a business impact, as can be reflected in the rise in 75th percentile tech salaries.

[0] - https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/how-muc...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/united-...

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/canada

[3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/canada

[4] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/united-...

[5] - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...

[6] - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...

[7] - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

[evantbyrne]

I think you make some solid points, but there are major tradeoffs some of the data is not totally convincing. If US workers are so much more highly paid than foreign workers, then we can reasonably expect the best workers to migrate to the US whenever possible. It's pretty easy for Canadians to cross the border. So one reason to hire American developers is for quality. The other is simply that these companies exist in the US, which means collaboration needs to be done in US time zones, which makes overseas workers far less efficient, not to mention the major negative impacts on worker morale. So there can be reasons to hire out of country, but the tradeoffs are significant even when well executed.

[alephnerd]

> If US workers are so much more highly paid than foreign workers, then we can reasonably expect the best workers to migrate to the US whenever possible

Not really.

No one wants to leave their families, and the upper tier of salaries in alternative geos are high enough to capture the higher talent tier because their salary expectations are based on their domestic condition.

On top of that, the US immigration system is severely backlogged. It can take decades for Chinese and Indian nationals to become green card holders, and we as employees increasingly expect foreign nationals to pay the filing costs - not us.

> other is simply that these companies exist in the US, which means collaboration needs to be done in US time zones, which makes overseas workers far less efficient and having major negative impacts on worker morale

Not anymore. WFH proved async work models can ensure business continuity.

On top of that, the bulk of layoffs during COVID were workers on work visas who were given the option to return to their home countries and open an office there.

This is what Google did in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Warsaw, Databricks in Bangalore, Amazon in Canada and India, and Nvidia in Bangalore.

Furthermore, we as employers don't really sponsor VPs, Engineering Managers/Directors, Product Managers, and Staff/Principal Engineers on O-1 visas. Most are stuck on some form of EB1/2 or L1/2, and those who apply to O1s who aren't founders or extremely critical to the business are being sponsored but filing out-of-pocket.

It just isn't attractive to immigrate to America long term anymore as a white collar employee in most cases now aside from unicorn roles which employees then use to boomerang back to executive roles or demand US salaries in their home country.

Ideally we need to build a domestic talent pipeline, but universities failed severely by watering down curricula in an attempt to compete with bootcamps, which burnt a lot of employers disincentivizing them from hiring early career, and state and local jurisdictions in the US just don't give us the support or pipeline needed to build a competitive early career hiring pipeline.

For example, in cybersecurity, I can hire someone in Israel who has done offensive security work for a couple years in a military, police, internal security capacity or someone in India who participated in one of the dozens of Police Force, Army, or Home Affairs cybersecurity internship programs. Similar programs like Cyberpatriots and the Cyber Incentive Program (approx $100M) were mismanaged as was found in a 2023-25 investigation by the DHS OIG [0][1] and an entire generation of students of cybersecurity scholarships quit in 2016 when the Trump 1 admin cut funding for cybersecurity scholarship programs.

[0] - https://fedscoop.com/cisa-cyber-incentive-program-dhs-inspec...

[1] - https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2025-09/O...

[evantbyrne]

> No one wants to leave their families, and the upper tier of salaries in alternative geos are high enough to capture the higher talent tier because their salary expectations are based on their domestic condition.

For 2x the salary young men have proven time and again they are willing to take the risk.

> On top of that, the US immigration system is severely backlogged. It can take decades for Chinese and Indian nationals to become green card holders, and we as employees increasingly expect foreign nationals to pay the filing costs - not us.

A challenge for sure. This and what you go on to describe could certainly shift some junior labor from H1B to remote contract. I would expect that shift to have a mostly net zero impact on other American exployment.

> > other is simply that these companies exist in the US, which means collaboration needs to be done in US time zones, which makes overseas workers far less efficient and having major negative impacts on worker morale

> Not anymore. WFH proved async work models can ensure business continuity.

Every non-US team I've worked with and everyone I know that works with offshore still have meetings. It would be incredibly dysfunctional to not have any collaborative time.

> Ideally we need to build a domestic talent pipeline, but universities failed severely by watering down curricula in an attempt to compete with bootcamps, which burnt a lot of employers disincentivizing them from hiring early career, and state and local jurisdictions in the US just don't give us the support or pipeline needed to build a competitive early career hiring pipeline.

Is that really what is happening? Because based on everything I can see, hiring standards are the highest they have ever been. As we get older, we have a bias towards underestimating the capabilities of younger generations, because we can see them making familiar mistakes in real-time.

[alephnerd]

> For 2x the salary young men have proven time and again they are willing to take the risk

First, sexist, and secondly in 2025 there's no guarantee that you would be able to live in the US long term on a work visa (but it's been this way since the mid-2010s), and if someone really feel the urge to immigrate to the West, then Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany are all easier and (excluding Germany) Anglophone (yes, NL is de facto Anglophone now).

The US just isn't as attractive a location to immigrate to anymore for a large amount of people in white collar roles.

For the cream of the crop who primarily target American BigTech (GAYMAN) or HFTs like Citadel or Jane Street, in India the salary and ESPP grant can afford you household help, a nice condo, and make enough money that you can invest in building generational wealth or angel invest. It was a similar story for Chinese over the past 10-15 years as well.

For Europeans and Canadians, both are extremely turned off to America due to the Trump admin, and at portfolio companies we've seen a significant amount of requests from employees to shift away from the US as a result. Even Israelis increasingly don't target the US anymore because of perceptions and have begun choosing Germany, Czechia, or remaining in Israel.

> I would expect that shift to have a mostly net zero impact on American exployment

A lot of senior managers and leadership in tech companies are in the same boat with work visas as I mentioned before. All visas categories go through the same backlog for naturalization in the US - be you a manager, VC, factory worker, or SWE. Heck the creator of PyTorch is himself on one of these visas despite being employed at Meta.

> Every non-US team I've worked with and everyone I know that works with offshore still have meetings. It would be incredibly dysfunctional to not have any collaborative time

Absolutely, but everyone makes time for Zoom meetings and finds a way to make it work, or people like me will hire someone else who can get it done.

> Is that really what is happening

Yes in cybersecurity and a large portion of databases. I even explained why in other HN comments [0]

This is why most of our dealflow is now in Israel, Eastern Europe, and India. Look at recent exists like Wiz ans PingSafe.

Even recent cybersecurity companies that IPOed like Netskope and Rubrik have overwhelmingly hired in Israel or India and with leadership being Israeli or Indian either in origin or nationality.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45421720

[evantbyrne]

> Absolutely, but everyone makes time for Zoom meetings and finds a way to make it work, or people like me will hire someone else who can get it done.

So we are in agreement that work cannot be fully async.

There are clearly some forces at play that are changing how immigration works in the short-term. I think where we differ is mostly this: our anecdotal experiences are radically different (I would say competency is increasing not decreasing as a general trend) and I would never bet against the momentum of the US long-term, nor do I believe that quality tends to remain steady or increase with offshoring. Maybe things are different in your niche. I appreciate being given a view into a different perspective!

[danans]

> For most white collar jobs like tech here in the US, your out-of-pocket as percentage is income doesn't play a role in how we decide salary bands.

Most people here in the US don't have white collar jobs nor compensation of a software engineer. They work in retail or other blue and pink collar professions.

A Canadian retail worker has much more affordable access to healthcare than their US counterpart.

[alephnerd]

This conversation is limited to the tech industry.

A SWE isn't in competing for the same jobs as a cashier at London Drugs.

[porridgeraisin]

> A new grad is demanding salaries that simply don't make the economics of training and hiring new grads work

This is just me, might not be representative, but as an indian CS graduate, I was willing to move to the US temporarily if it meant I could make FIRE money and return to India and basically chill out and work at interesting jobs without worrying about needing MNC/unicorn money to live well. I saw broadly two ways to do this - the startup scene, and the ridiculously high new grad salaries (which would enable FIRE in india after a few years) in the US back in early 2020s - when I was graduating. By the time I finished though, those salaries dried up like you are saying, and startup exits are easier in Blore these days and I can get funding from the usual bunch by just domiciling in Spore like flipkart did. Note that I did not expect the current AI bubble to last this long. Potentially could have cashed out on that. My impression is that if you know nvcc exists, you get money thrown at you in the US today... All in all, the idea fizzled out. Among my peers too, the people who went there for the usual M.S at a UC --> california job market pipeline are all people who are sure they want to settle in the US long-term, through the visa troubles and all. Others didn't go.

Point is, those high salaries were a big draw to a lot of people here including me. And in the absence of that companies now need to move here to get access to the same people. I think it is happening, unicorns/GCCs here are now paying quite well. I mean I had almost the median EU tech salary ($60K - 52LPA) for india cost of living at my _starting job_. So without the US starting salary being 150K-200K (a salary unattainable in india anywhere) like it was 5 years ago, it's a hard sell. Senior salaries are still high of course, but if you have to stay there 10+ years, you have a family there, kids there, loans there, and it is basically committing to settling in the US. Meaning that without the added security of the backup plan "return and you're either FIRE or super comfortable", its much more of a commitment to move. My circles have a selection bias of course, and for people who did not manage to get top 10% salaries here, the risk/reward is completely different.

[alephnerd]

My reply was primarily about American new grads - who overwhelmingly don't do grad school.

And your anecdote is exactly what I am trying to explain on HN.

We as employers are fine paying high salaries to mid-career talent, but it's hard to justify hiring a middle of the pack new grad from CSU East Bay for a $130k base salary new grad role when I can hire a mid-career US returned FAANG dev in BLR or HYD for $70k-90k TC.

We will still hire new grads in the US for a $130k-$180k base, but they will have to actually be worth it. The brutal reality is, if you didn't attend a target CS program for your Bachelors (Stanford, Cal, MIT, UIUC, CMU, UT Austin, GT, UMich, UW, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia), at this point you probably aren't landing a high paying CS job - just like how in India if you didn't get a good JEE score, you're essentially relegated to being stuck at WITCH because you didn't get into a good BTech program, and it's an employer's market

A lot of people on HN assume Indians (and other foreign nationals) only do b*tch work like legacy springboot crap (and ofc plenty of people do), but an equally large cohort is doing legitimately competitive and innovative work.

[porridgeraisin]

> The brutal reality is, if you didn't attend a target CS program for your Bachelors (Stanford, Cal, MIT, UIUC, CMU, UT Austin, GT, UMich, UW, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia), at this point you probably aren't landing a high paying CS job

But what about after masters? What are the expectations there? Now of course there is the research path which is publishing well in your masters, working at deepmind or nvidia etc,. But I am talking about people doing non-thesis MS and then entering the job market. Is the base salary for those people still high?

[alephnerd]

> But what about after masters? ... and then entering the job market. Is the base salary for those people still high?

Not really especially when you factor in international tuition and loan servicing.

While it does depend on the program they attended, their past work experience in India, and their ability to land internships, in general I'd say salaries tend to be at the 25th percentile and below of what is shown on levels.fyi nationally.

But in all honestly, newly graduated masters students would be in the same boat as domestic undergrads if not worse becuase there isn't an incentive to hire an international student domestically and then go through the jumla of filing their H1B while they are on OPT unless they are a unicorn but if you are a unicorn, why would you even do a course based masters?!?

In fact, most of the complaints on HN about "H1Bs undercutting American salaries" tend to be these kinds of students because of how desperate they are to pay off a 1.5 to 2 crore loan with double digit interest rates despite having almost no scope of getting hired here in the US.

> for people who did not manage to get top 10% salaries here, the risk/reward is completely different

Yep.

Personal anecdote wise, I had a cousin who was working at Tech Mahindra in Chandigarh so on the lower end of salaries and got the US MS fuwara and they ended up attending UF (which is expensive and not a target).

We warned him not to come, but he didn't listen.

After spending almost $150k/1.5 crore getting the degree, the only SWE roles he could get could only pay $70k-80k in the NYC/NJ area which meant their take home after tax was rent was a little under $30k a year and this was during the 2022-24 period so no one wants to sponsor and he had a massive loan/EMI to pay off that was in the $17k-22k range a year.

He basically burnt through an extreme amount of family net worth (which was significant as they owned a house in Chandigarh) just to service a loan and basically remain in the same spot as before.

Another cousin did something similar to go to Canada despite us warning them not to do so either and their career is functionally screwed because it's even harder to find a role in Canada, but at least they attended a "college" so the tuition hit wasn't as severe.

In both cases it did not make financial sense for either to leave India for North America - their families had enough money in India that they could have bought significant property in Chandigarh and NCR and build generational wealth despite not necessarily working in the best jobs, but a lot of capital was basically burnt in loan repayment.

Like, let's be honest - the only people coming to the US to do a masters have a significant amount of capital because no one is going to guarantee a 2 crore loan without significant collateral, but at that point there are just better asset classes to diversify into.

From a financial standpoint, if you are Indian, it honestly isn't worth it doing some random coursework based masters in the US because in most cases you just aren't going to be hired by good companies anyhow, because none of us are willing to spend the capital to sponsor for an H1B after OPT unless you somehow ended up at a GAYMAN.

[porridgeraisin]

Interesting. Well, hope my friends get into GAYMAN companies then... whats the Y in there anyway? And is microsoft still excluded from the acronym? lol.

[alephnerd]

The Y means YC, and yes.

MS has a strict "only-hire-in-India" policy now.

Not to be a downer, but given the current market they are kind of screwed.