> Every single H1b employee I’ve seen comp for was comparable anyone else on the team at their same level.
This is exactly the problem. That reasoning alone is what allows companies to outsource to save money if you think on a larger scale. If systematically every company just says, oh we can't get American talent, but doesn't increase wages to incentivize for more local talent and simply hires abroad it stagnates wages for all. There is no incentive to raise effective wages if we can just continue bringing in more people for the same wage.
Let alone the fact that I am not convinced that we don't have enough talent for a good portion of the roles as advertised.
Research grade PhD level candidates doing novel work I can believe, but getting another person who writes more REST API's and dashboards or ETL jobs I refuse to believe.
> doesn't increase wages to incentivize for more local talent
Are wages too low to incentivize local talent? Tech companies already pay high six figures. What is this "local talent" doing that pays more?
Working at other places. There used to be a thing called competition - where you'd pay more to attract people to leave elsewhere. Now companies stifle this and collaborate to artificially to keep wages down.
Instead they just throw their hands up and call it quits, hiring elsewhere instead.
This doesn't mean more domestic workers get jobs though. Existing workers get paid slightly more, but also more work gets sent to overseas offices.
(This is not outsourcing. The foreign workers are still on the company's payroll, just in an office where they don't need a visa to work).