So it makes sense for them to advocate more H1Bs quotas: this will suppress workers salary at some point. Their argument is "the other option is to outsource entire operation to low cost area"
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If one person makes $200K and another person doing similar work makes $150K, who do you think will get laid off first? It's good the person making $200K has good negotiating skills because he'll be needing it soon.
You don't get $200K base the first interview. You interview 7 places and get offers, $150K, $150K,$160K, $190K, and $200K. Take the 200K. If you are from out of Silicon Valley, they usually offer present salary plus 15%. So if you are 100K in SD, you will get offers of $115K to see if you are a good negotiator. That's the system. My buddy lied about his income (gave himself a 40% pay raise) and still got 15% offers above his lied about income.
Uh, but they don't pay people with 5 years experience $200k base. I've already talked to about 15 companies, and thought I'd try to milk as much from them as possible. Some good companies that are public, some in a 3rd or 4th round funding from VCs (IE companies with a good financial backing). And most of them had comparable comp packages. Mine came in much higher above $200k because of my 10+ years of experience. But then again, down here, that's where I am right now too, maybe -10% less.
But none of the folks I know with just 5 years experience had a $200k base. So whoever keeps making those claims aren't telling the truth.
The reason they pay $200K in Silicon Valley is they can't people to move there if they are paid less. Also depends on the company and the position and negotiation skills of the engineer.
In the bay area, those numbers aren't correct either. there's really only about a 20-25% spread between SD and SillyValley base pay, 30% if you are really good at negotiating and you land a job at one of those bigger companies (definitely not the case at startups). Where the bulk of the compensation comes from is in deferred comp (stock grants and cash bonus). I actually had an offer from Google, and the base pay up there versus what I got down here wasn't drastically different. It was within the range of what one would expect the difference would be, not something totally outrageous. And since I do have more than 5 years of experience and many companies do want to hire me, I really didn't have a problem finding some other company to be competitive down here in SD.
In San Diego market this is correct, however in the bay area these numbers mentioned above are getting close
Most engineers people don't make $200k base on a W2. Especially people that's only been working for 5 years.I don't know where people keep making this shit up. $200k maybe after total compensation, including bonus and stock grants. But that part of bonus and stock grant will get significantly decreased when the company's performance is sucking wind, as it should be. That's why companies elect to pay part of the total comp package with bonus and stock grants. So when times are tough ,that's the first part to get cut. I'm surprised people are still thinking they will get a bonus or big stock grants. When a company is sucking wind, the last thing it's going to pay out is bonus and stock grants (except to executives)...