Do startups often hire H-1Bs? I've only worked for a few, but they didn't start hiring H-1Bs until they we're fairly sizeable and had taken on a couple rounds of funding.

Certainly the $100k fee is going to make the application much more expensive (though you can amortize it across 3 or 6 years, right?), but it was already not exactly cheap to deal with the legal costs around H-1B employees.

> Among BigTech, maybe like ~20 companies will be willing to pay this per employee.

I think that's a vast, vast underestimation. Most companies, even not-so-big ones, will continue to pay it. Maybe they'll think twice a bit more for future hires, and try harder to find someone local, which I don't think is a bad thing. Or, of course, this could just represent another factor in downward wage pressure across the board, which is bad.

It’s 100k per year not per application. So you won’t be able to amortize across 3-6 years