I believe thats quite an overestimate. Both Amazon and Google exceed the minimum required wage in each level on average by 93% and 73% respectively.
Separately, that is precisely what the article is doing. Conflating the minimum with wages actually paid to infer that H1B workers at large tech companies are underpaid.
What makes this even more of an underestimate is that the actual numbers that will be used are not point percentile but mean of a decile range. That is Level IV wage will be mean of [p90-p100] salaries.
> Unfortunately, the levels dont map neatly to those categories. Someone with a Bachelor's and 1yoe can be filed as Level II. Anyone who is doing supervision with a couple of years of experience is likely to be 3 or 4.
Two points:
1. Unfortunately, the levels dont map neatly to those categories. Someone with a Bachelor's and 1yoe can be filed as Level II. Anyone who is doing supervision with a couple of years of experience is likely to be 3 or 4.
2. Some people will certainly meet and exceed and this bar. But this is the _minimum_ required salary. For anyone other than new grads, there is likely to be significant variation in base pay and so there are those who will fall under.
One does not pay a couple thousand $ get into an eternal line. You need to have an approved I-140 i.e. an approved green card application to remain in line.
To do this a company must (1) hire you; (2) decide to sponsor you for a long, expensive process; (3) interview broadly and prove it couldn't not find an American to fill the role. Not to speak of a number of hoops an applicant has to go through.
I estimated the new prevailing wages for NYC/SF/SEA using z-scores and the new %-iles.
For NYC:
(I II III IV) = (116,003 137,323 160,321 203,405)
For SF:
(I II III IV) = (138,283 162,157 187,910 236,155)
For SEA:
(I II III IV) = (128,082 148,708 170,957 212,639)
The level for an applicant is determined by their education + experience. Level I is supposed to correspond to an entry-level role requiring specialized skills in the field. These set the minimum base salary an applicant in the category must be paid.
N.b. They reflect _only_ base salary and not stock or bonus compensation. These levels will be unreachable for most; even those at FAANG.