[Simha.k]

Hahaha. They bloody well deserve it. They brought this upon themselves. Here are a few of the first hand observations and experiences from these so called Indian IT companies!

Flashback to the year 2003 when a cousin of mine graduated from a bachelor degree in telecom engg. She was invited for a pool campus interview with Infosys and the salary offered was around 3.0lacs. Fast forward to year 2021, a distant relative of mine recently graduated and the salary offered is still around 3.2-3.5lacs. What kind of sorcery is this? How do you justify paying fresh grads the same salary for 17+ years!? What is the rate of inflation in the past 17 years? Bluntly put, I call them chindi chor companies!

Mohandas Pai, one of the earliest employees at Infosys made a statement a few years ago that all these chindi chor companies formed a cartel amongst themselves and ensured no company raised the salaries of entry level grads despite inflation and high cost of living across all cities in India. See his statement here
https://m.economictimes.com/tech/ite...w/62266919.cms

Let me narrate another instance. A colleague of mine in the year 2014 applied for a job at Infosys. He cleared all the rounds of interview with them. The final round of interview was with the HR. He was asked to write down all details about his academic scores starting from grade 10 till graduation/post graduation. This guy was solely rejected on the basis that he hadn't scored 60% in his graduation! Yes, not joking. The HR said this.

Later he went on to join another company for a much better job and salary. Cut to the chase, Infosys acquired this very same company he was working at! Now, he's part of Infosys with the same grades he scored in his graduation! What are they going to do now? Fire him? No. They can't, because he was an employee of the company they willingly acquired. Infosys applies this rule to everyone who wishes to work with them. 60% scores are mandatory from grade 10 till PG. This is applicable not just for entry level grads but to even top mgmt guys irrespective of the position they're applying for. Try applying once and you'll know it . The same is the scenario with TCS. TCS goes one step ahead and makes sure you can't even complete their online application if the system detects if there is a gap of more than 2 years(academic+work experience combined). Try it, I'm speaking from personal experience.


These companies, I tell you, they expect everyone to be of the same mindset. They're merely bodyshopping companies. Their sole agenda is to push a mediocre guy in to performing mediocre jobs with excel and power point.

Incident number 3. Narayana Murthy, the founding member of Infosys made a comment few years ago when anti immigrant Trump took office of the POTUS that Infosys must explore market other than America. I'm not able to retrieve any news link to the same. He was the CEO of the company for several years. He oversaw all these irregularities, visa gaming and all the operations under his watch. Yet, he made these comments after relinquishing all responsibilities from the company. Wow!

Just to let everyone know here, Infosys every year literally chokes the H1B visa system by making nearly 30k employees apply every single year! There are only 65000 visas available. But Infosys alone applies 30k+ applications! They make every Tom, Dick and Harry apply for a frigging H1B. Unless you're a house keeping guy in this company, chances are that they may make you apply for an H1B. Haha. Not to forget, they offer the threshold salary just to be accepted in to the system. Pls tell me when was the last time these companies paid a salary of $150k+ for an H1B job? They pay $65k-70k.
Read the below article how these companies game the visa system.

https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-in...-h-1b-program/

My rant is not solely aimed at Infosys. I had personal bad experience with other companies too. Cleared all rounds of interviews, offered a job and the job contract was never released. Ghosting by recruiters.. Low ball offers, under paid offers and weird terms and conditions etc..And the list goes on. 90 days notice period, making employees feel like a criminal and unwanted when they serve notice period, service agreements, service bonds, blackmailing and other nonsense are all devised solely by these Indian chindi chor companies and managers just to piss every employee off and to ensure they don't get a better job or prospects. Let's not forget NASSCOM is hand in glove with these companies and they just keep their eyes and ears shut and continue to act as though everything is fine.

My wife spent a whole day filling some nonsense forms when she joined one of these companies when we were residing in India. It was called NSR - National Skills Registry, a repository of all candidates who've worked with major Indian IT companies. I know for a fact that few companies threaten to blacklist candidates in the NSR if they don't toe the line. A recruiter friend of mine told me this. But she also said that would be the last thing they do and no company has the time or resource to go behind one person. Lastly, I'm not making these statements only because I couldn't land a job in to any of these. But merely stating facts here since these companies believe that they're a cut above the rest and to be associated with their company is a matter of pride! No, don't brand me as a case of sour grapes! I'm in a much better job and place today.

Today, we're at crossroads where employees are giving these employers a taste of their own medicine and these companies come out all blazing with such paid articles and media coverage. Nobody once bothered to listen to employees when they were in trouble. You reap what you sow.

Peace out.

[hdus001]

I wonder how legally enforceable some of the clauses are in a court.

I joined TCS in 2000, and had signed a bond of 3 years/Rs 50k, with some hard to remember clause around the amount being higher if I had an overseas assignment during the last 6 months of leaving. I ended up leaving after about 2 years, some of which was spent on overseas assignments. Due to my circumstances at the time, I didn't give notice or anything like that, just stopped going, and sent them a resignation letter. In my resignation letter, I explicitly offered to pay the 50k. The HR replied saying I was in breach of contract, and some vague mention of legal action etc. This was over 20 years ago and never heard from them again. I'm guessing either the clauses weren't legal, or the amounts were too small for them to chase up.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I do not know how accurate this figure quoted by Nutgraf is. Certainly I have not seen it in 4 companies - all fairly large. Nutgraf/Ken in my experience go off the deep end where hard well researched facts go. I at least cancelled my subscription after a year because of this and wrote to their editor stating this.

+1

Originally Posted by GTO

The Nutgraf (an excellent newsletter from The-Ken.com) shared the following in my inbox. I was quite astounded reading it.

The newsletter talks about starting salaries being the same since a decade! It's as if time stood still, with no inflation:

I personally wouldn't be very trustful of the Ken's Nutgraf as a proper data source. Stopped my subscription to Ken over a year ago, so can't access the article you quoted, but my experience of the Nutgraf is that Praveen & team focused more on creating a eye-opening storyline rather than do proper investigative journalism. It's kind of stiching together a bunch of stories and putting it out for readers to do the investigation.

For instance, what they aren't quoting is the profile of candidates. Back in 2000s, Infosys and the lots would be hiring engineers from the top engineering colleges. As time progressed their sourcing pools went deeper and deeper (into Tier 2 & 3 colleges) and they also started hiring BCom and BSc graduates. The salaries were lower (as compared to engineers) and the training schedules and work were also kept different. I believe there are multiple starting job bands depending on your degree

- Starting salary for engineering freshers in Infosys (I was one of them) back in 2004: 2L.
- Starting salary for BCom fresher (a distant relative) in 2022: 3.5L - 4.5L. She's not able to get a call from the likes of Infosys, etc but the offers are from smaller tech firms.

As for attritions, they have been high across the market over the last two years. My previous employer (a top US MNC) had an attrition of ~15% back in 2021. So I'm not surprised to see 25% for these mass recuiters. Iirc their attrition in normal years ranges from 10%-15%, so the numbers during Covid are not that off the mark.

[V.Narayan]

I dashed off an email last night to the HR heads of two of the 4 companies I'm associated with - so that's covering about 20,000 to 25,000 employees most in India. replies were in just now. Their starting salaries for Indian engineering graduates is in the Rs 6.0 to 6.5 lakhs per annum range. Not saying there is no one out there not paying Rs 3.6 lakhs but just adding a data point here. In todays world where even the on-line and TV press cannot be trusted I prefer working with verifiable facts.

[vigsom]

Originally Posted by GTO

are they not losing sleep over 25% attrition?
- starting salaries being the same since a decade! It's as if time stood still, with no inflation

Originally Posted by libranof1987

MOST organisations (both product and service-oriented) are seeing crazy levels of attrition (25-40% is common)

I'm not surprised at this number, GTO and Libranof1987. The 25% is actually low, under reported. In my view anything above 40% is when the first alarm bell is rung. I'll narrate my experiences a little later in this post.

Originally Posted by dragonfire

recently hired my replacement - a subcon at thrice of what they are paying me

This is a norm across the board and across industries, dragonfire. Correct me if I am wrong on the following for someone with 15 years experience:

a. In manufacturing, the pay would typically be No. of years × 1.5
b. IT/ITES, would probably be no. of years × 2.5 (Exceptions always apply)

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

- Employees in India in the IT and financial services sector and other sectors show lesser value to training, longevity, building an internal network than employees in the West

- A 15% increment is the trigger point at which they jump. But sadly where HR practices go IT companies do a poorer job than an equivalent manufacturing organization.

My experiences when I moved into a senior role IT services after spending over 20 years in manufacturing:

1. The delivery account I walked into to head was always shown in red at 27-28% attrition, on a headcount of approx. 380, in Supply Chain
2. There were other "deals" with attrition at the lowest 15% and some at over 40+%
3. The client that we were working for was a huge North American conglomerate, used to seeing the same faces working for the entire 38 odd years of any employee's professional life, and they were never happy seeing new faces quite frequently. They also found replacement employees in our off shore delivery to be taking time to work as per their expectations.
4. I got down to finding out the cause of this disgruntlement among employees and did a survey asking for anonymous feedback via chits in a box. Surprisingly all employees responded. The bulk of the feedback was around career growth opportunities, pay and poor employee engagement.
5. Worked on the engagement part first and was surprised to see quick results. Simple things like extending the cab drop point for some employees in the dead of night, permitting a pick up closer from home, monthly meetings with the entire team over hi tea, interacting with folks on the floor at random started yielding results.
6. Next, I stopped hiring at the top 3 levels, and built a merit based mechanism to promote growth from within the team.
7. Hiring was only at the bottom 2 levels and we created a 10 week onboarding plan for all hires to come up to speed on the job.
8. In parallel, went through the salaries of every member of the team and was able to manage a pay revision for 270 of the 380 members in the team with negligible dent to the account income. This was, surprisingly approved, since the country director didn't want any noise from the client on attrition. The amounts accruing to any employee wasn't path breaking, but the intent was visible to them.
9. There were a few "senior" employees who used their rapport with the client to fake resignations every 2 years, earn a promotion and then reverse resignation. I created back ups to allow such people to leave at their next "attempt".
10. However, I also knew that these actions might work only in the short term, but knew that I'd done the best I could. In three years, I'd brought attrition down to single digit %, never heard of in this center, despite the competition still being there with all other threats status quo.

After all this was done, and the attrition needle was moved down, I realised that the company was never serious about high attrition and it was BAU to see high numbers, and just make noise about it.

When I left the company, I was surprised to see that I'd managed 100+ promotions, built up employee morale, with barely any dent to the account income. I left the company to take up another role closer to my subject matter expertise, but am still in touch with most of my old team - and they still relive the good old days. This might sound like a fairy tale but at least I'm happy that actions yielded results, and that people remember them even ten years later.

[Turbohead]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I dashed off an email last night to the HR heads of two of the 4 companies I'm associated with - so that's covering about 20,000 to 25,000 employees most in India. replies were in just now. Their starting salaries for Indian engineering graduates is in the Rs 6.0 to 6.5 lakhs per annum range. Not saying there is no one out there not paying Rs 3.6 lakhs but just adding a data point here. In todays world where even the on-line and TV press cannot be trusted I prefer working with verifiable facts.

That's very interesting!

Is that the highest band they are offering or is it a fixed amount for all freshers? If it's not fixed, what's the lowest band that they're offering?

I would also like to know what the same company was offering in 2019. Revisions in starter salaries have only occurred in the last 1-2 years and I'm 75% sure it would be in the 3.5 - 4 range.

[am1m]

Not just the big 3, a lot of companies are still doing well by following the same model- get the lower level maintenance and coding tasks that don't really require any innovation or even programming. You just need x warm-bodies to do the coding and testing. So those employees are easily replaceable.

I've seen it in several Indian offices of US product companies too. Once a product reaches the maintenance mode, the project is handed to the India office (and ironically the Indian management makes a big deal about that like we "won" something because of our skill!) and the US team is freed up to focus on the more innovative and actual architecture and programming work to develop a new product.

So there's really no reason to keep increasing employee salaries for the same job here. Experience, innovation, depth aren't required for repetitive tasks. In fact, HR would be happier if those employees leave so they can hire less experienced people to do the same thing for a much lower cost. Saves them the hassle of having to cover up layoffs later! Plus with the proliferation of fresh graduates coming out of tier-2 cities and towns armed with quick courses on everything from AI to ML to Data Science, the supply is much greater.

Yes, there are a lot of new startups that are doing some ground-up work, but the majority of Indian IT still operates on the wage differential model. I spent over 10 years with one such 'product' company and recently switched to a much, much smaller firm that can't afford to have people doing anything else but new product development and the difference is night and day!

PS: I'm not saying this is a completely bad/wrong thing- it's just a business model and it still works. But it is what it is.

[amol4184]

I am on the verge. What spins my head is that they won't give me hike but they will go out and hire someone at double the salary as mine to fill up my space. But that is not the only problem.

Managers in these companies are an issue too. They drive good employees away. Mid level non-technical managers without an iota of tech managing technical folks. Only a few non-tech managers can do that well and rest all result in a great deal of suffering for technical folks under them. Depending on how much you care you can either blindside everything and strut on coolly or get frustrated.

As an architect, meetings where these managers and tech folks all collaborate is well, a frustrating experience to say the least. We have had people leave the team and ultimately the company because they got tired of the management before the salary.

[RaghuVis]

I work for one of the top 5 companies mentioned in the opening post. My team was about 55-60 employees, most of whom had been in the team for more than 4-5 years, even though the annual hike was always less than 5% for all of them.

Then came the pandemic.

1) More than 70% of the team have left and have been replaced by new employees. Not even a single employee was retained by giving a counteroffer as the company policy does not believe in retaining employees by giving in to their demands.

2) Average hikes given to new employees are in the range of 150-200%. The company could have saved at least half of this spending had they chosen to retain their employees but senior management lives in a different world of thought. When I fought for a few employees, a VP told it to my face -- "I don't want to retain anyone who goes after money. I can throw even more money and get new employees and train them even if it takes time".

3) This attitude of senior management has affected the morale of seniors in the team who are still working here with the same old salary but now have to train new employees right from the beginning. They face backlash from clients as well due to timeline issues. This has prompted most seniors to look out for a different job and has added to the attrition (I am also serving my notice).

4) This new team of 60 is in shambles now. running like a headless chicken. The client is upset, senior management is upset and funnily, even the newly joined employees are upset as they have no one to guide them.

[EV NXT]

Let me give the employers point of view as most of the posts are from the point of view of the employee.

IT is a business and not an employee welfare scheme. If resources are available at lower costs why should a company pay higher? Yes, it means more profits for the stake holders but as long the company is not doing anything illegal it is only managing its business and profits. If the employees are good enough let them teach the companies a lesson by getting a higher salary elsewhere instead of complaining about their low salaries.

Would you pay more than the market price for your house painter / carpenter / car mechanic / accountant or even a pre owned car? So why should it be different for an IT employee? Aren’t these dictated by the market?

Additionally Skoda workshops and some big IT companies have a lot in common - recounting one of the many incidents as an indication of the highly shoddy quality of work of Infosys’ employees just to show that even those remaining don’t deserve what they are paid. I was interviewing the Infosys’ head of sales for Europe. The reason he gave for wanting to leave Infosys was that he was firefighting and addressing customer complaints about the shoddy output for 4 days and doing sales for only 1 day. He wanted to join a company where he could just do sales rather than pacify existing clients on the shoddy work output. This was an indication of the quality of work of the employees who didn’t leave! So much for the quality of work in a company like Infosys - I don’t think there would be much of a difference else where. Customers who get their work done in these big IT companies must find a lot in common if they own a Skoda car in India - work not done properly / repeat work / over charging for shoddy work etc.

As for cartels I don’t think they exist formally, maybe informally as cartels in this area would be succesful beyond a point and anyway it’s an open secret as to what the competition is paying for freshers. You can be part of the pack or be a differentiator depending on your hiring strategy.

Employees are nowadays wise enough not to remain loyal to any company and look after their interests first and the same is the case with companies.

All of this really means that the 25% is probably good for the business as fresh blood continues to come in and that may turn out to be useful to companies.

[amol4184]

Originally Posted by EV NXT

He wanted to join a company where he could just do sales rather than pacify existing clients on the shoddy work output. This was an indication of the quality of work of the employees who didn’t leave!

Scratching my head here about the conclusion you reached. Why couldn't that be an indication of 25-50% fresh blood's work instead? The recruiters aren't the brightest of the bulbs either.

[thanixravindran]

I don't think there is anything surprising here. And, I believe the impact is very less for both the Service companies and its Clients. Main reasons I think are as below -

1. Workforce remains in the same industry as they are not quitting like US or retiring prompting a supply gap to take corrective action. They are just circulating in the same space by pushing up the average cost through higher salaries. One part of it will be absorbed by clients through rate increase and other part is compensated by 'bottom fishing' to show the headcount.

2. On the freshers salary front, we forget about the supply of Freshers to IT job market each year from the countless universities, deemed to be universities and colleges (I am one of them in the early years). So this means, even with lesser starting salary, there is abundant supply available.

3. Short term impact is for the small to medium companies which will see increased cost or poor quality if you do not try to intervene both of which are inimical to their own growth (This again is always there and hence nothing new). And I believe there will be a long term impact to the IT Industry itself if the quality deteriorates too much (unlikely) or the price arbitrage become unattractive but I guess it will take a decade or two to happen.

PS: I may be wrong but my personal belief is the profits being shown by the big players are mainly due to corporate tax cut (and exchange rate to a lesser extent) as I didn't see any big growth or needle moving wins in the IT sector in last few years.

[adisan]

Originally Posted by amol4184

Scratching my head here about the conclusion you reached. Why couldn't that be an indication of 25-50% fresh blood's work instead?

Likely that the fresh blood had to be trained by the staff who stayed back, and the training was ineffective.

[locusjag]

Thanks to the 25% who leave, the rest are also getting pre-emptive hikes and fast tracked promotions...which could never have happened otherwise.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by amol4184

Scratching my head here about the conclusion you reached. Why couldn't that be an indication of 25-50% fresh blood's work instead? The recruiters aren't the brightest of the bulbs either.

Originally Posted by adisan

Likely that the fresh blood had to be trained by the staff who stayed back, and the training was ineffective.

IMO that is a wrong assumption. Even the best of minds with the best training would take time to ramp up to the same level of productivity as an average (for lack of a better term) experienced developer. But many in the top management fail to acknowledge this fact.