[charanreddy]

With ~15 yrs experience across 2 companies, having been an employee, manager and head of dept. I have seen these cycles repeat.

I have seen my company issue mass layoffs multiple times in the past. Some of them were brutal and the employees did not see it coming. Kids just out of college who put heart and soul into the job for a pittance of a salary were fired as some one at HQ decided we needed to rationalise our head count. Miraculously people at the top drawing salaries of 300K USD and above weren’t impacted as much. When companies fire people they don’t show any kind of loyalty or the fact a certain employee has spent multiple years with us. Hence they can’t expect any loyalty back. It’s a commercial transaction where employee demands a sum for services provided and a company decided to hire or not hire.

I believe in the current scheme of things, employees have become short sighted going after quick riches with out considering quality of work or work-life balance or how a certain job fits into the overall aspirations. I only hope they didn’t assume this will last and sign up for commitment like a house loan or a car loan which they may not be able to service once things go south.

[VALLURIS]

There is a very bad practice among major IT companies these days.

How can one give hike on a offer letter ??

We offered jobs to 4 guys with 5 years experience only 1 guy joined on the same offer remaining three got 30% hike on our offer and joined some other companies.

This is after we offered 24% more on their existing packages.

This practice must be stopped across industry else it would back fire big time in coming days. More than the employees it will be tough for employers to manage their operations.

Since majority of these high offers come from startup we expect this as a short term effect. Most of the investors and VC’s have made it mandatory to follow best recruitment practises so we expect things to settle in another 6 months.

We are not against hikes or appraisals but there must be proper justification. A person earning 10 lakhs in one company is making around 25-30 just by resigning and getting offer letters.

[voldemort]

Employees want to maximize their salary. I don't blame them.

Employers want to reduce costs to maximize their profits.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I am associated with when we recruit at the CXO level we reference check with almost every boss/HR Head that candidate worked under over the previous 25 to 30 years. I kid you not. A lot of companies today do that for the CXO level.

Just wanted to point out that compared to the number of employees in the world, there's only a handful of CXO positions. Not everyone is going to end up in a CXO position anyway. They might as well make hay while the sun shines.

It has been documented umpteen times in this forum that loyalty had never been rewarded appropriately. So I won't bother repeating that here.

And let's not pretend that draconian policies like 3 month notice periods, bonds and whatnot were implemented for the benefit of the employee.

I was once sent a pilot candidate, a Filipino, who had, hold your breath, worked for 21 companies in 20 years of his flying career. No guesses what happened.

As for your pilot example, I wouldn't be too concerned unless that candidate has a history of bad airmanship (crashes, other breaches of standard operating procedures etc).

I'm pretty sure he didn't spend the rest of his days crying. He probably just shrugged and moved on.

(I'm going to ignore that you mentioned Filipino; seemed like an unnecessary detail).

Let more people make more money. Ultimately this should be good for the economy as a whole, as more money keeps rolling.

[Kapany]

I can sense a clear generation gap in the arguments presented here. Forty-fifty year old experiences don’t matter when the industries people are working in aren’t even a decade or two old. As many have pointed out, it’s a lot more transactional and people who know what they are worth are going out to get it. I say full power to them!

[superchamp]

Originally Posted by SnS_12

This unethical behavior by some employees is what will ultimately comeback to bite them. Once you have accepted a job offer and agreed on the salary how can you expect the new company to agree to match a new offer you received after your offer letter has already been issued by them. That just means you yourself don't know what you're worth and will never be loyal to a company and will jump ship on the next immediate opportunity. Once you have agreed to a salary honour it as if the same company asks him to join at a lower pay just because they have now identified a candidate who will work for lower pay I am sure he would be furious about this new sudden development.

Also, if salaries make 70% of a companies outgo then are they able to generate and sustain business going forward to make up for the 200 to 300% salary hikes to retain or add on new talent?

Such employees/candidates don't seem to be bothered to look down where they would stand in a couple of years and are currently happy making hay when the sun shines.

That's not how it is. Every one has the right to negotiate his/her salary. The employer wants to take the candidate for the lowest salary while the employee knows that they can't negotiate all the time. I don't find this a problem and in the current situation, let the best offer win

[Turbohead]

Here's a common trend I'm seeing from the posts here:

A) The Old School Culture i.e stay put in a company and be loyal to them. These views are supported primarily by current/retired business owners and management folks. I believe trust, reputation and long term connections are highly valued here.

B) The Cross Jumpers i.e jump across many companies to get the momentum to reach the top ASAP/ accrue enough cash to be stable financially. These views are supported by technical folks, groundwork staff. I see skills are of primary importance here and seem to have the last say in getting a new job and probably saving your job during a crisis.

I have a few questions at the risk of sounding naive:

1) When individuals in Bucket B jump very often, say once in a year/two, are relationships/ connections with fellow folks maintained? In such a short time are you able to impress clients/make valuable connections that can be used in the future? Say a referral for another job/ potential client for you start-up?
2) How often are people in bucket A, especially management folks, willing to jump? How much does reputation/connection matter than raw management skills? Or is there some other reason why people in Bucket A tend to stay longer?

I know I have generalized a bit and things can vary, but I'd like a few insights and thought process from different levels of a given organization.

[Kick'OKicks]

Originally Posted by Turbohead

Here's a common trend I'm seeing from the posts here:

1) When individuals in Bucket B jump very often, say once in a year/two, are relationships/ connections with fellow folks maintained? In such a short time are you able to impress clients/make valuable connections that can be used in the future? Say a referral for another job/ potential client for you start-up?
I know I have generalized a bit and things can vary, but I'd like a few insights and thought process from different levels of a given organization.

Before answering the first question, yes you are indeed generalising stuff. There are many categorisations are possible.

Coming back to the question, in real IT company based on projects we hardly work for a specific set of clients or their stakeholders for more than 3 months to 6 months before moving to another project. The boring maintenance projects are different but not very rewarding like new development projects in terms of opportunities, money, exposure etc. Not many like to continue working in maintenance projects since they will be getting almost same salary for years.

Your connect within a large organisation is almost no one except for your current team members. After the project, another team, another client and another boss. In product organisation or small organisation it may be different but there your opportunities, exposures are very limited.

So changing jobs vs changing projects or teams shouldn’t be an issue in IT companies. All relationships including employee- employer relationships are short lived.

[hdus001]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

On a lighter note I was once sent a pilot candidate, a Filipino, who had, hold your breath, worked for 21 companies in 20 years of his flying career. No guesses what happened. What intrigued me is that he did not think this was abnormal! You can't build a career behaving like a taxi.

Here in the Australian aviation market, this is nothing out of the ordinary. Many of my friends are pilots and unless working for major airlines, job contracts tend to be short. As an example, one friend currently works as an instructor for 2 schools, owns a charter business with 2 chieftain planes, is a charter pilot for another firm, and also works as a train driver. He also teaches classes privately, which is how I know him, as he does my biennial flight reviews and is currently training me towards a private instrument rating. Actually pretty much every pilot I know has had a new job every few months whether it's instructing, flying cropdusters, flying skydivers, working for joy flight companies, charter flying etc.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Kapany

I can sense a clear generation gap in the arguments presented here. Forty-fifty year old experiences don’t matter when the industries people are working in aren’t even a decade or two old.

I don't understand this comment. Yes, TCS is 54 years old. And then you say industry is not even decade or two old? Are you referring to specific domains?

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by hdus001

Here in the Australian aviation market, this is nothing out of the ordinary. Many of my friends are pilots and unless working for major airlines, job contracts tend to be short. As an example, one friend currently works as an instructor for 2 schools, owns a charter business with 2 chieftain planes, is a charter pilot for another firm, and also works as a train driver. He also teaches classes privately, which is how I know him, as he does my biennial flight reviews and is currently training me towards a private instrument rating. Actually pretty much every pilot I know has had a new job every few months whether it's instructing, flying cropdusters, flying skydivers, working for joy flight companies, charter flying etc.

Thank you for sharing your information which is indeed correct. Having built businesses in aviation in 4 countries I do understand the difference between pilots doing short contractual work vs a pilot doing 21 different regular full time employments across 21 different airlines/ executive jet companies. Better we get back to the theme of the thread. No offense meant but I dare say too much energy on social media is devoted to correcting others {or what we think is correcting the mistakes of others} rather than adding a thought provoking point for readers.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by voldemort

Employees want to maximize their salary. I don't blame them. Employers want to reduce costs to maximize their profits.

Speaking for the employer - salary is one component of employee job satisfaction and it is for each individual to work out what combination of salary, work content, culture etc works for him. The employee is an important but nevertheless one factor of production that needs to be married to capital, infrastructure & entrepreneurship to create a business and thus as a consequence employment. An entrepreneur (like me) tries to strike the right proportion of these and their costs. Driving down employee costs is not a night and day pre-occupation of a business creator. Though it might seem that way to an employee.

Having said all this I will state that the humungous wage increase for Salil Parekh just as the pandemic is abating and just after many of his employees must have lost their jobs smacks of gross shamelessness. The Board and the founders and its NRC Committee has to answer for this. This year some companies (two of which I am closely linked to) decided to give the CEO the average increase given to the rest of the company given what the company, the employees and the nation have just emerged from over the last 24 months.

Just wanted to point out that compared to the number of employees in the world, there's only a handful of CXO positions. Not everyone is going to end up in a CXO position anyway. They might as well make hay while the sun shines.

Let each decide for himself/herself what they are aiming for. You seem to have missed the essence that maintaining relationships is important and as you climb very important.

It has been documented umpteen times in this forum that loyalty had never been rewarded appropriately. So I won't bother repeating that here.

Sure. But this thread is not the universe. Hell, even the IT industry in India, where employment goes is but a tiny piece. Maybe loyalty has not been rewarded in the parts of the Indian IT industry you have worked in. Some of us make the error of assuming that our experiences or that of our circle of friends are universal.

And let's not pretend that draconian policies like 3 month notice periods, bonds and whatnot were implemented for the benefit of the employee.

My post did not touch upon or allude to these factors at all!!?!!
<emjoi scratching his head in confusion>

As for your pilot example, I wouldn't be too concerned unless that candidate has a history of bad airmanship (crashes, other breaches of standard operating procedures etc).

As someone with reasonable experience in the aviation industry I'll take my call on which pilot or engineer to recruit.

I'm pretty sure he didn't spend the rest of his days crying. He probably just shrugged and moved on.

Not sure how this comment has any relevance to this thread.

[voldemort]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Speaking for the employer

Okay. Thank you for your perspective. I consider your words to be in good faith, although I don't necessarily agree with your points. Let us agree to disagree.

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

The employee is an important but nevertheless one factor of production that needs to be married to capital, infrastructure & entrepreneurship to create a business and thus as a consequence employment. .... Driving down employee costs is not a night and day pre-occupation of a business creator. Though it might seem that way to an employee.

I imagine that this should hold true for most industries, but for the industry in question, despite all it's talk of moving to different pricing and business models, the fact is that the Indian IT industry is in the business of selling bodies in seats, and given that it treats it's labour as a commodity, that cost is the number one driver of its margins. Also bear in mind this is mostly a phenomenon with Indian IT companies . Labour cost is the "COGS" of the Indian IT industry.

Let me quote from a recent Ken article

“We are in an environment where demand is chasing supply. It’s a good problem to have. The way to fulfill the demand is through freshers. Once the freshers feed in into the system, they take 3-4 months to come into production. That’s when you’ll see the overall benefit of hiring. Over a period of 6 months, with more freshers coming in, you will see moderation of this from a more macro perspective.”
Nilanjan Roy, Chief Financial Officer at Infosys

The author of the article continues

It seems like all leaders in IT service companies constantly speak the same jargon-laced buzzwordy statements. It sounds like English, but it really isn’t. So I’ll translate. What Mr. Roy is saying is—Previously a lot of people wanted to work for us. Suddenly they don’t. We think this will get fixed. But it will take time.

Paradoxically, that statement describing the solution is a perfect illustration of the problem. Infosys says that the solution to losing employees is to hire more freshers. But the problem is how they describe them. Look at the words they use to describe their employees. Feed into the system. Production.

If IT company management are not focused on driving down costs, they have a strange way of showing it. As someone in the middle - neither entry level, nor senior management, The focus on costs is so much that it's self defeating. There are strict margin criteria for every team, team pyramids (senior junior ratios) are strictly enforced. Bell curves are mandatorily enforced in every team. To the extent that it gets in the way of retaining good people and growing business.

To give some examples - most companies in this industry (I've worked in a couple, and have friends in all of them). These are rare but most in this industry probably know of at least one or more happening in their own teams.

They cannot take too many onsite projects even if they have people because it skews the margins (onsite margins are lower)
Sometimes certain client billable roles cannot be resourced because the team is at the limit of the ratio and there is no room to add seniors
A percentage of people in every team will get their pay cut or laid off regardless of the fact that they are doing well. Curves are non negotiable.
They want to build IP and platforms etc, but their compensation and benefits are nowhere near a Microsoft or oracle, or heck, even tier 3 product companies in India so nobody joins as an external hire, and the internal hires who get placed in these teams move out because there is no onsite.


I feel the answer has to do something with the stock markets and ratios that are way above my pay grade. In the current way of the world , between capital and labour, labour loses in the long run.

[atnyia]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Driving down employee costs is not a night and day pre-occupation of a business creator. Though it might seem that way to an employee.
You seem to have missed the essence that maintaining relationships is important and as you climb very important.
Some of us make the error of assuming that our experiences or that of our circle of friends are universal.This might be your frustration with your employer speaking.

The maintaining relationships part is perhaps the most significant as one climbs up, usually more than the job skill. People at lower levels at times aren't able to relate. It's not a negative statement. One can only create great results if he is having good, trust based relationships with stakeholders.

I do however have a different view on the rest of it. IT services sector is having 25% churn by design. For the HR, manpower is the cost where they want to show 'efficiency'. They will hire new with 50% hikes but will not give you a 15% raise. There could be multiple explanations but from the employee's perspective, it seems so unfair because the job is same. Perhaps that's why it has become so transactional.

Could be very different for privately held small businesses, but the mainstream IT services companies with lacs of employees work like a machine with very little regard to engineers. We shouldn't extrapolate the same reasoning.

[ksaurabh21]

I think it's fair for an employee to maximize salary. Service companies give very small hikes. If you are in top management, it's a different ballgame like Infosys CEO getting 88% salary hike. At a regular employee level, it's usually in low single digits. So, if some new employer is offering 30%, why not? That being said, it's also important to consider the company culture, kind of work, etc. before jumping jobs. Increased salary in a new job gives happiness for first couple of months, but what keeps you going is a good work culture and type of projects you enjoy working on.