| Yes by law there is a prevailing wage rule, however in practice this is abused. 1) It is basically never enforced
2) The people rubber stamping the applications don't have a clue about the person, the job, or the title What happens is employers pigeon hole developers into less experienced roles with lower pay grades according to the BLS (the source of data employers must use to justify the wage) For instance you can take a person with 10 years experience and either say she is a 'Level 1 Web Developer' at 52k in SF, OR you can say she is a 'Level 4 Software Developers, Systems Software' at 134k in SF. Which would you chose as an employer? And these are extremes, you can play somewhere in the middle depending on your comfort. http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStep2.aspx?stateName=C... and then I selected the BLS region as SF and you can see all of the occupations they define which sound similar and are described similarly, but have wildly different pay scales. EDIT: I'm reading the prevailing wage guidance document now[0] and employers can actually provide their own wage data surveys to determine prevailing wage. Wow! [0] http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/NPWHC_Guidance_Revised... |