[brentoids]

Is it a good indicator of what the company pays entry level positions if the company mostly hires for one specific job. So would you use the Google, Microsoft, etc data as a good indicator of the average start salary of an entry level dev today?

[lobster_johnson]

H-1B salaries are actually "pegged" according to the title of each position; they call this the minimum or prevailing wage, and it's specific to an area.

For example, if a company is hiring a "senior software developer" in NYC, and the US government considers $120k to be the prevailing salary of a senior software developer in NYC, then the company must pay that person at least that much; Google can't pay any less, even if it wanted to. The wage database is public [1].

So that gives you the minimum, at least.

[1] http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStart.aspx

[justabystander]

Technically correct, but as we all know, the title of a job doesn't necessarily correspond to the job responsibilities. Scope creep is just as real for employee positions as it is for company projects/products.

[lobster_johnson]

True. I don't know how much the US government scrutinizes applications (which have to include a description of the position, responsibilities, etc.) and applicants. Perhaps not at all.

[ma2rten]

Yes, my job title on my US Visa was first Computer Systems Analyst, now it's Software Engineer. My college's who is also on H1B is Data Scientist, despite doing exactly the same work as me.

Our immigration lawyer decided on this job title, I didn't even know I was going to be Software Engineer before I got my visa. It's just that my college has a PhD and I don't. So, his profile fits that of a Data Scientist.

[sjg007]

Data scientist has a lower prevailing wage.

[gcb0]

the last level for sofware engineer in california

Level 4 Wage:$52.80 hour - $109,824 year